In this Revenue Today episode, host Jared Robin interviews revenue leader Kevin “KD” Dorsey, who shares a strategic lens for forecasting and innovating: start by identifying what will stay constant over the next few years. He cites Jeff Bezos’s interview where Bezos argues that Amazon’s focus on immutable customer desires—lower price, faster delivery, broader selection, and trust—guides its innovation. KD expands the concept to broader revenue dynamics, noting that human psychology (emotional decision‑making), pricing expectations (customers want lower cost), desire for ease, speed, and trust are stable fundamentals for buyers and employees alike. He then maps these constants to current market trends: product‑led growth (PLG) and community‑led growth (CLG) arise because prospects want to try products before buying; month‑to‑month contracts, transparent pricing, and guarantees reflect the demand for low‑risk, easy purchases; customization in cloud solutions is gaining traction as buyers seek tailored experiences; and buyers care more about outcomes than raw usage metrics. KD also flags what is changing: generational shifts (Gen Z vs. Millennials), the rise of remote buying environments, and the emergence of AI tools that can evaluate demos and recommend solutions. He urges revenue professionals to align their strategies with the unchanging buyer fundamentals while staying agile to these evolving variables.
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Sales, marketing, and RevOps. It's sink or swim out there, and yesterday's strategies and tactics won't help you today. This is Revenue Today, and I'm your host, Jared Robin. Join me as we interview revenue leaders in our community to learn what steps we could take right now to help you scale yourself and your company. Revenue Today is sponsored by Rev Genius, and we're on a mission to bring inspiration and creativity to all revenue professionals in the world. Want to shout out our sponsor Demandbase. Demandbase is smarter GTM for B2B brands. They help marketing and sales teams spot the juiciest opportunities earlier and progress them faster by injecting account intelligence into every step of the buyer journey and orchestrating every action. For more information about Demandbase, visit demandbase.com.
So now this is something to think about. Okay. One of the best interviews literally ever, in my opinion, around this topic came from Jeff Bezos. And I will send a clip out to everybody afterwards. I thought about playing it. There's just not enough time for it right now. But basically the interviewer asked, how do you innovate so well? Like, how do you predict the future? Like, how do you know, like, how to stay ahead of things over the next 9 to 10 years? And the way Bezos answered this question was gold. The way he answered it was, well, when we are trying to innovate or trying to predict the future, a better question is, what won't change? What won't change over the next 4 to 5 years? And that's where we focus, because we can predict that. And so paying attention to things like what won't change, right? Because if you want to predict the future, focus on what won't change first, then you You can think about what will change, but what do you believe that is stable now will still be stable later? And some of the examples that he gave in this interview, he's like, I don't see a world where Amazon customers want things to be more expensive. Hey Jeff, everything's great. Yeah, we love it. We just, we just wish the products were more expensive. He's like, I don't see a world where Amazon customers want things to get there slower. I don't see a world where Amazon customers will want less selection or to trust a product less. So notice if you think about their innovation, They focus on innovating on things that won't change. How can they drive price lower? How can they verify trust of the employees or of the customers with reviews? How can they make sure they have a full product selection? How can they get it to you faster? That's where they're innovating based off what you as a buyer wants and then innovating on the things that will not change. So answering this question is actually a better way to prepare for the future in terms of what won't change. Change. Taking some time to think about this is key. And I'm gonna give y'all some examples here as we go through this, right? So if you think about at a high level, what are things that won't change? Well, people overall are not gonna change that much in terms of like how we make decisions and how our brain works, right? So understanding human psychology, right? That's pretty wired right now. We have preferences, but how we make decisions, right? Emotionally before logically, that is how our brains work. Right? How we label things, how we need to understand things, how we connect the dots between things, how we compare things, that won't change. So it's making sure you're ready for that. Pricing. Are people gonna want to pay more for a product or less? We know they're gonna wanna pay less. So it's knowing that and thinking about that. Ease, right? Can you picture a world where a buyer's like, you know what, that was actually too easy. I really wish it was harder to implement your product, or I really wish it was harder to get set up, or I really wish it was harder to buy. Right, we know people want ease. This is going to continue. And also speaking to my leaders, this is something to remember too about your people. If you're leading an org, what won't change? Well, are people going to want to make more or less? Are people going to want to work more or less? Are people going to want more flexibility or less? We know what those things are that won't change. You adapt to those things. Speed— people want to get things done and want to get them done faster. What won't change? Your customer's customer, right? What do you know about them that won't change that will help you help your customer more, right? So these are the things that you need to be paying attention to. So let's get here. Have you really ever asked yourself this question? What do customers want? What do prospects want? Because this will help us adapt sales for the future. So first one, customers want to try the product. Prospects want to try the product. We know this. Can you envision a world where a prospect goes, nope, nope, nope, I don't want to try it. Just implement it for me. I have zero interest in making sure it will work for me. Right? You know this. So what are we already seeing popping up? PLG, product-led growth. Why? Because the prospect wants to try the product. We know this. We know they want to. So if you know this, this will help you innovate. Because think about it this way, I'll reword it. Company A, Company B are going head-to-head, same product, same price point. One product you get to try, the other one you don't. Who do you think the customer picks? The one that they can try, right? So it's knowing this. That's why you're seeing PLG pop up, right? This is where live demos, sandboxes are showing up. What do prospects want? They wanna be able to trust that the product works. This is where you're starting to see CLG popping up, and I'm gonna talk about this one a little bit more, but you have community-led growth and customer-led growth. Okay, let's be honest, y'all. Do prospects want to talk to salespeople? They don't. If you know that, if you know that, it changes who you have them talk to. They want to talk to their peers. They want to talk to users. They want to talk to customers. They want to talk to people that have actually used the product. Most salespeople, funny enough, sell products they don't use. Some of y'all get to sell products to salespeople, which is great, but the vast majority of us were selling products we don't even use. So how can we ever really communicate to that level? So You know customers want this. How are you adapting? Safer terms. We're seeing this come up more, right? This is why you're seeing more month-to-month show up right there, because who wants to commit to a product that they don't know will work, that they didn't get to try for over 2 years upfront? That's a harder thing. And also too, you think about how buying's changed. Same idea, right? Making sure that they have good terms, right? They want guarantees in there. Transparent pricing. We know this, we know this, y'all. And as much as we in sales don't like this, we don't wanna just put the price up there. That's what the prospect wants. So if you are able to admit that and willing to adapt there, it's going to change how things run in the future. Putting these things on the website, easily customizable. This is a big one as well. Custom software versus platform. I do think you're actually gonna start seeing more custom cloud products than these platforms, right? Because it used to be on-site, right? It came on-site, but then it was custom on-site. Now we've moved to platform in the cloud, right? It's in the cloud, but everyone kind of has the same tool. I think it starts to shift a little bit more back to customized cloud-based products to our use case, how they want to use it, and having more customization being available because that's what customers want. And sellers, you know this. How many times do you have a deal online and then someone's like, well, I would buy it If you could do this, if you had this feature, I would. That's where I think the easy customization is going to have to play a big role in this, right? And the results versus usage is a big one. Customers want results; they don't want usage. The amount of times I've heard from like my CS rep like, "Hey, your utilization is great." I don't care about my utilization; I care about the results. So now let's talk about the things that will change. The generation of the buyer is continuing to change. More and more of the buyers are millennial, Gen Y, and eventually will be Gen Z as. Well in terms of the generation of the buyer. That will change, right? So how well do you understand the generational differences and preferences in terms of how they like to buy? Another thing that a lot of salespeople don't read on— consumer psychology. How is Gen Z as a consumer different than millennial as a consumer? Do you know? You might want to research that. Example: Gen Z relies significantly more on video for reviews than millennial that prefers written text for reviews. Interesting to know, might be something you want to adapt around, right? The setup of the company. Are they remote or in person? This is also something I don't think gets talked about enough. It's harder to buy remotely too. It might be tougher to sell remotely. That's up for debate, but it's harder to buy remotely, right? When I was still leading my org of over 150 people and I wanted to buy something, you know how hard it was to coordinate all these remote meetings and you don't know the time zone people are in and it's hard to get that real connection on why you do things because you don't have those same water cooler conversations. By the way, sellers, that's where a lot of selling happens is the water cooler after the demo where me and my directors are talking about it. Whereas when it's a Zoom call, it just ends. So the setup of the company that's changing, how does that affect buying technology? This is one of my personal favorites, right? Anytime that sellers are like, no, like AI will never replace us. What if it replaces the buyer? What happens when you're pitching to a black box? What happens when there is a tool, which by the way, there will be eventually a tool that will listen to all of the demos and determine which product is best. Listens to all the demos, goes through all the feature sets, goes through all the tech specs, goes through all the API, goes through all the reviews, all the communities, and then determines and just suggests, hey, KD, here's the tool for you. How are you selling against that if you aren't also enabled with technology, right? Because the buyer is getting more and more technical. Technology— try this again— technology behind them as well. And your customers will continue to change. This is making sure generationally in focus, like we talked about, that you're aware of this.
Whoa, another great episode of Revenue Today. For show notes, links, and mentions, visit revenue today dot live. For all my friends in the Rev Genius community, thank you. It's been awesome to spend this time with you. Please DM me any feedback and ideas in our Slack channel or on LinkedIn. If you're not in RevGenius, join us at revgenius.com. It's free and it only takes like 2 seconds and you'll be joining a group of 27,000 revenue professionals strong. We've got it all. Looking forward to seeing you there. Catch you on the flip side.
