Turning Interest into Action
Turning Interest into Action
Part 4 of the Coral Guide to Go-To-Market Execution for Climate Startups
As many have experienced, working remotely gives you a front-row seat to your spouse’s work life. You quickly learn who has the more dramatic conference calls and who talks the most to their computer. You also pick up pieces of their work and lingo. How many folks have started to use terms like “leverage”, alignment”, or “synergy” over dinner?... or maybe that is just us. Chris has heard me run too many program meetings, constantly hearing “what are the risks?” or “what’s the path to green?”, and by now I could fumble my way through one of his sales forecast calls (ed. We’ll put this to the test). So today we’ll do just that as we cover strategies for advancing prospects through the sales funnel.
In the third part of our GTM series, we shared our approach to navigate the complexities of bringing products to market, ensuring sustainability and growth, by targeting innovation arms of large companies and leveraging non-dilutive capital. Today we’ll dive deeper into how to effectively manage these deals through mid-funnel, transitioning these pilot projects to full scale production deals. You have heard us say this many many times, but the market is tough right now. Budgets are growing, but still very tight right now, so deals will take longer than expected. Focus on getting back to the basics, keeping deals moving even if it’s slow, and obsessing over your sales conversions.
Key Takeaways
We’ll go into more detail in the next section, but if you’re in a rush a lot of mid-funnel sales execution can be summarized by these four bullets;
Stakeholder Mapping - Identify all the decision makers and influencers within the target company. Have a conversation about their business, what are their goals, what are they measured against, and get clarity on who has budget authority. If you haven’t reached the individual who will be signing the contract, you are not done networking.
Always Add Substance - Never send a prospect a message saying “Just checking in on the status of [insert generic ask here]”. Just don’t. If you don’t have any substance to add, don’t send the message. Every customer touch should include a relevant case study, podcast, product update, etc. If you don’t have these materials, go yell at marketing or product; especially in a start-up, everyone is responsible for sales, not just the sales team.
Know their OKRs - Today’s CFOs are more picky about where they will spend money. However, every VP+ exec can find, at least some, budget to hit their top 1-3 goals for the quarter. Your job is to provide compelling evidence that your solution delivers value against one of these goals and mitigates their risk of missing goal.
Always have a Next Step - Never end a call without getting the next call booked. Mentally it is a lot harder for a prospect to cancel a meeting once there is a calendar hold than it is for them to ignore an email asking to schedule a meeting. If you disagree, just go look at your inbox and see how many emails you’ve left sitting because you’re waiting for things to calm down before you revisit the conversion.
You’re now thinking it can’t be that simple. And you’re right, sales is a weird combination of art and science, but this will get you heading in the right direction. Go back to the common complaints explanations you’ve heard from sales recently - “I keep having the same meeting over and over again and can’t get them to commit”, well have you asked about their procurement process and confirmed who has signing authority? “I’ve emailed them five times to schedule a call but nothing”, maybe try picking up the phone or proactively sending a calendar hold. “They just don’t have the budget for another tool”, probably true but they might have budget for a solution.
Middle Funnel Expanded
In part 1 of the GTM series we covered top-of-the-funnel pipeline development. Middle-of-the-funnel is the stage where your potential customers are actively evaluating your solution against their current solution and competitors as well as considering how your product fits into their operations (does it address the need? what is the switching cost?). To be successful here you need to have a deep understanding of the customer’s needs, including their pain points and goals, and tailor your value proposition to address these needs directly. Use the initial calls to gather detailed information about their challenges and objectives. Ask about their goals, but don’t just get the list; instead get a clear force ranking on priorities so you can sell high enough on the list (remember there isn’t budget for everything but there is for the top 1-3 goals). And if you are stuck, ask open-ended questions. Just having a conversation will help you uncover insights that might not be immediately apparent.
Second, mid-funnel is about selling a map and a bridge. In this market you are in the business of selling to CFOs; their job is to effectively allocate capital from areas of the business that burn money to those that generate returns. You need to understand the incentives and where they’re trying to go so you can sell a solution and a path to implement that will help fuel the company’s revenue stream. Create case studies that showcase how your product has solved similar problems for other customers. Provide proof points such as ROI calculations or performance metrics. Tangible examples can significantly strengthen your pitch.
Third, if you are doing the same demo paired with a 30 slide deck, please stop. The point of the product demo is for you and the prospect to talk about the ways you can help them win, not to run though the same list of discovery information your SDR sent over. Customize the demo to reflect the specific use case of your prospect. If you don’t know what the use case and pain points are, ask questions! Show them how your product solution integrates with their existing system and processes. These meetings should be a conversation not a lecture. If you don’t know which bucket you fall into, go look at your call metrics and see how much time you talk compared to the prospect.
Finally, understand there aren’t winners and losers between sales reps and prospects. Getting a signed contract needs to be a mutual goal and the job of the sales rep (and their leadership) is to help design a structure and a price that makes it a win for all parties. You want to remove emotion, demonstrate your focus on creating value for the client, and ground conversations in transparency and respect. Create mutual accountability.
Mastering middle funnel sales deal execution is crucial for climate tech startups to convert interest into committed customers. Understand customer needs, provide compelling proof points, offer customized solutions, and continuously aim to demonstrate value at every stage of the sales process. It makes the difference between stalled opportunities and successful deal conversions.
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