What do you mean by personalization? That’s a question I hear less about and every time I ask it a different answer comes about. After conducting a fairly small primary sourced sampled survey & my own experience. The outcome reflects on a focus around a hybrid of corporate, business & industry vertical, related form of personalization.
Question is how do you generate clarity around the process and successfully execute on it?
Understand your customer by uncovering their corporate & business related strategies, risks, challenges & plans that tie into your business value proposition & that holds a strong sense of focus & need for your organization to help execution in De-risking some of their new or already existing initiatives that contribute with high impact to the prospect’s top line & bottom line. With some organizations that are being heavily hit by the pandemic (COVID19) and as a result looking to ensure business continuity & cost optimization across all the functions within a business, to organizations that are currently benefiting from the pandemic and as a result looking to expand their footprint across different geographies, verticals & expanding it’s different functions. The one constant driver that is consistently growing in all of this is that of positioning every function as a revenue driven function in principle and ensuring clarity, focus & execution in alignment with the corporate & business strategies & plans set out by the Board & the C-suite team every quarter.
Personalization needs not just the above alone but also the right person, ideally the right time and leading with preparation & curiosity go a long way in making valuable relationships with your prospects. Curiosity is the art of putting yourself into the prospect’s shoes and ask the most relevant, prioritized high impact questions that are hard to answer & to which your understanding of the industry, your business & successful relevant case studies can help create an informed decision making advantage for the prospect on how to execute on those challenges and de-risk as much as possible those important initiatives.
Here are some foundational curiosity driven questions that can be delivered after defining the context & intent to your cold or discovery call (where the right tonality is crucial with eagerness to learn more) as well as email & any other channels of outreach you apply.
“Having read your Q3 10-Q report it seems that (prospect company name) is heavily focused in de-risking its lack of strong branding & presence internationally with focus in international expansion & hiring highly skilled talent within (specific region) to ensure successful execution of your 2 year plans & expected targets. (your start/company name) holds a very steep learning curve within the (name the industry vertical your prospect is in) serving our customers ( name minimum a couple more if possible organizations that operate within the same vertical and ideally as close of a competitors with similar size & scope) on how to execute in strengthening their branding & creation of a skilled talent pool internationally that led to further revenue growth.”
Would you be against me asking
- How are you considering further de-risking your internal branding & hiring objectives?
- How impactful is continuous improvement to your current foundations and approach to de-risking your initiatives on you, your colleagues, function & business? ( hard to have answer to all four but depending on the scenario majority of the time Function & business will be most important as they cover the prior two)
- How is an ideal partner suppose to align and support the successful execution on your (remember it is always about high impact) initiatives?
The above example, process & approach applies to SME, MM & Enterprise. alike as nowadays valuable and relevant insights are available in many ways. The reason Strategic & Operational “How’s” are very important is because Why & What is already defined by your customer and your marketing team, the gap is in the “How” to execute successfully the clearer the alignment on the “How” the easier to focus & execute will be for you & the buyer in tandem. An SDR or AE that leads with value will always create a good first impression to the buyer learn more about the prospect and how the relationship can translate into a meeting, opportunity & a long term deal. “When you are good at something, you’ll tell everyone. when you are great at something they’ll tell you.” — Walter Payton. Allow for the prospect to appreciate the bond & trust created & thank you for a great and valuable buying journey experience.