Overcome Anti-Sales Bias
Prospects’ decision-making is biased against B2B Sellers, regardless of product value. This is obvious from the success rate of sales – approximately low-single digits even among “qualified buyers”.
The reason is simple – it's more convenient for Prospects to dismiss and ignore sales pitches than engage. Prospects have many problems to deal with in the course of their business and a sales pitch often feels like an interruption. Engaging requires time and potential change with uncertain value. It’s emotionally easier to simply ignore them.
This is why the “easiest” Prospects are those feeling significant pain or so-called “early adopters” – they are already emotionally predisposed, negatively and positively, respectively, to engage on the actual substance of your offering.
For the rest of your market, Sellers bear the responsibility to engage Prospects emotionally. To overcome their anti-sales bias, offers must be more emotionally convenient to engage with than to ignore. Only then will Prospects be receptive to Seller and product features.
Most Sellers focus their sales pitch discussing themselves, their offer, and substantive value creation. This approach plays into Prospects’ preconceived biases, helping them say “No.” The outcomes are as frustrating as they are common – long sales cycles, competitors with inferior products winning sales, and the sinking feeling that Prospects “just don’t get it.”
Let’s explore why this happens and how to change a Prospect’s bias to Seller’s benefit.
Prospects consider Relevance, Necessity and Credibility of all offers presented to them.
Each is initially biased against the Sellers because it’s nearly always more convenient to say “No”.
Relevance
A Prospect is incentivized to deem a pitch irrelevant simply because it results in one less problem or issue to consider. If it’s relevant, they must invest time and energy already allocated elsewhere. Sellers help Prospects say “No” by:
Talking about their Product
No Prospect cares about a Seller’s product or vision. They care about themselves. Figuring out “what’s in it for me” (even if Seller does this in slide 2) requires cognitive space already reserved for something else. Prospects never reach Slide 2.
Describing Generic Outcomes
Prospects can’t easily figure out whether Seller can in fact “Save [X] time and help grow revenue by [Y]” and they don’t have time to figure out if it’s true. So they assume it’s a lie.
Talking about Problems
Prospects often get defensive or deny they have the problem, forcing Sellers to argue with Prospects over whether they have the problem rather than show how Sellers’ offering can help.
Focusing on Technical Outcomes
Businesses care about business value (money, revenue and clients). Prospects dismiss Sellers that don’t make that connection. Even if your immediate Buyer is technical, the business is always involved.
Relevance to a Prospect is evaluated relative to their business, not your product. It’s more effective for Sellers to first define Prospect’s business in a slightly new frame, confirming their view but also defying their expectations to create intrigue. Here is a simplified example of emotionally engaging on Relevance.
Slide 1: “Every Company is a Data Company”
Prospect: “Huh, interesting, what do you mean?”
[Seller talking point]: “In today’s market, all companies must fully integrate real-time data in all business-decisions”
Prospect: “This is something we want. Tell me more.”
Every company knows data is important, yet may not self-identify as a data company, creating interest to learn more. Second, your product is irrelevant to your Prospect, but the outcome your product enables can be interesting – so start with the outcome. This example also sets up the opportunity Seller can offer – operating more like a data company. Your specific product and features can come later.
Necessity
From an emotional perspective, it’s easier to deem a new offer as a “nice to have” rather than a “need to have” because it avoids disrupting previously-set priorities or investments. It’s annoying (and risky) to change course. Sellers help Prospects defer buying decisions by:
Not Engaging on Urgency (Most Common).
Prospects have done “fine” without this technology and you’ve given them no reason to think differently. They will wait for competitors to test things out first.
Equating Value or Features with Need.
Often Sellers will demo cool features and comment “Think about what you can do with this…” Prospects can’t evaluate value in the abstract, and wonder whether it’s even necessary.
After a demo that a CXO admitted was pretty incredible, he turned to me and said “This is a Ferrari, but I think we need a Ford.”
Creating Fear Unrelated to Business Value
This approach has the same issue as presenting problems described above – it’s easy to dismiss as “not a big deal”. “Legacy Code,” “Slow Development” and “Inefficiencies”, even if they are real issues, create urgency for Operations and or Technical teams, not the business.
Prospect: “That’s why I hired [CTO], he’s working on it”.
Prospects feel urgency about their own business goals, not Seller’s product. Emotionally, this is easiest accomplished by creating a contrast so the Prospect has something to compare. Importantly, this should not be “life without your product” and “life with your product”. Rather, the contrast should be something relating to the Prospect's business, dividing it into stages over time, or an “old world” and the “new world” (Your product of course will enable winning in the “new world”). Assuming you accurately frame the distinction(s), Prospects will care because they want to be prepared for the new reality.
Salesforce (the subject company for the famous sales book “Predictable Revenue”) has done this consistently throughout its history. Here is a recent example from their sales deck:
A recent example I’ve used with success is comparing the world Pre-COVID and Post-COVID, differentiating between the past (e.g. digital as an important option) vs. the current reality (e.g. digital-first) together with how businesses operate in each period. This creates “stakes” by showing how operating in a certain way in the new world enables winning (things that your product enables, without mentioning it!), and being caught in the past puts you at risk of losing. Follow up with examples of companies that won and the companies that lost. A Prospect is likely to feel urgency, wondering if they are ready to win in this new world and whether they are part of the “winning group” or “losing group.” This incentivizes them to understand how Seller thinks about winning in the new world.
Credibility
Though credibility is about whether you can “solve the problem,” practically it’s about avoiding risk. The famous line about IBM is not “IBM works”, it's “You can’t get fired for hiring IBM.” Prospects are incentivized to collect data points from newer Sellers instead of buying – demos, free trials, white papers. They care less about whether you can succeed and care more about protecting against failure. Sellers help Prospects avoid purchasing decisions by seeking Credibility through:
Features:
Prospects know at the time of purchase, they cannot know with certainty whether Prospects offer will add value. Features are easy to exaggerate about, so Prospects constantly want proof. This often creates a never-ending game that newer Sellers can never win.
Specific solutions previously implemented:
If you seek credibility by saying you built X for a company, Prospects will take you literally, and consider you at most as credible only for X. Any additional feature or alteration will come with a request for a demo if you can meet their specific requirements. Newer Sellers will always lose to an incumbent that is viewed as safer.
Credibility can be established without a long client history. Because proof of value is impossible (regardless of Seller’s experience), Sellers can use empathy and understanding to build credibility in place of a long client list. Properly setting up Relevance and Urgency is foundational because it establishes that Seller understands the Prospects’ situation. Building on this, Sellers should show they understand Prospects’ frustrations and feelings in the old process. Validate Prospects’ emotions, do not solve them (yet). Then, show them how the process can work in the new world, and associate it with positive feelings, again without discussing your solution. Here is an example:
Slide [5]: Life Insurance E-Application – Common Challenges:
Requirements are constantly changing
Many groups seek to provide input at different times
Hard to iterate quickly
Prospect: “Yes, we have business requirements that are signed off, and then mid-development marketing and legal come in and want to change everything. It’s a complete mess. Do you have a better way?”
Slide [6]: Software should be adaptable to change because Business needs are constantly changing. Software should:
Simplify creation of a v1
Enable rapid changes to software
Broaden the user base that can provide input and effectuate these changes
Slide [7]: We built the life insurance application for Company X – this is what changed using our process:
Enabled business teams to provide input and make last minute changes without affecting deadlines
Adjusted the integrations for the underwriting application more than 5 times based on third-party vendor needs
Empowered client to make key changes after production deployment
The goal is to demonstrate that beyond achieving an outcome, your solution can create the necessary processes that the Prospect needs to succeed more generally. Prospects will then connect those processes and feelings to the outcomes they want, expanding the reach and relevance of a specific solution. Consider – changing requirements and too many stakeholders is common for all software development. If you can solve that with Life Insurance, you can probably solve it for other use cases as well. This is what it means to be a “Partner” – understanding Prospects, their situation, how they feel and how they want to feel, and offering a credible path towards achieving it. Missing features become secondary because no software provider, incumbent or startup can provide EVERY single requirement and Prospects know they’ll probably change anyway!
