8/12/20 Sales Assembly's Study Break featuring Devin Reed
Devin Reed, who leads content strategy at Gong, analyzed 40,000 sales deals and found that generic big-name logos actually reduce close rates by 22% overall, up to 47% on first calls. Instead, use 5-6 specific comparable customers in the same industry or size. Frame each story around the buyer's problem so they see themselves in it.
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All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another sales assembly study break. I'm Christina Brady, president of sales assembly. Want to give a shout out to Vidyard, our sponsor, and today I'm here with Devin Reed. Devin, tell us who you are and what you do.
Yes, I'll give you the short answer of who I am. That can be a deep question, but yeah. So I'm a sales pro turned content strategy. So I was in sales for six years, in the trenches as a full cycle. AE was the second sales hire at Gong in 2017, and about a year ago, I moved over to the content strategy side of things, where I'm now responsible for thought leadership, content marketing, and social media.
That gives you a lot of unique experience to draw from, and that's exactly what everyone needs. So as you're thinking through your Rolodex of different areas where you could lend in and help, what would be one to two really tactical tips that you would give to revenue producers right now?
Yeah, absolutely. So I think, you know, today of all times, you know, we're doing our best to really kind of comfort buyers, right, and show them that it's okay to move forward. There's enough chaos in the world. We want to provide a sense of understanding. And one of the tools that sales pros use all the time, marketers do it too, is social proof. Right? It could be a case study, it could be a reference call, it could be the logos on your website. And so social proof is something that salespeople have been doing for a long time. It's part of almost every sales cycle. But what we found at GONG Labs, which is our research team, where we look at different trends and insights based on our user data, web conferencing, calls, phone calls, and emails, is that social proof can actually backfire in a pretty big way. And so we analyzed 40,000 sales opportunities, and we found that there's actually a decrease in close rates when sales pros use social proof. Actually 22% lower close rates, and it jumps all the way to 47% lower close rates if it's done on the first call, which is kind of brain melting. Right. It doesn't really make sense. It doesn't add up. It's counterintuitive. And so when we looked into it, what we realized is that sales pros oftentimes use social proof in a way that backfires. And here's what I mean by that. What you're doing in social proof is you're trying to kind of create a group, right? There's other people like you with the same problems that use our solution. Right. So you should join them. But what happens is they actually create a group that alienates their buyer. And so here's an example, right? If you're selling to an SMB company, you know, sub 200 employees, but you lead with them and you say, hey Devin, we sell to Google, Facebook and Microsoft. Well, immediately what happens is you built a tribe or a group and you've put it over there. But I don't see myself in that group because I don't really relate to those companies. Right. I don't have 10,000 plus global employees. And so that's the reason why it backfires and actually alienate buyers. And so if you'd like, I can share a couple tips on what to do instead.
That is exactly what I was going to ask. Because when I think back to a lot of just the early on training that I was either in back in my AE days or that I've seen, that is a really common tactic for people to use. But to your point, I think there's not enough research on the front end to do it correctly. So people drop big names thinking it's gonna sound impressive and instead their buyers are like, well, we're not even competing with them. So if they're buying this, then you're probably not a fit for us. And so I think this is a really good thing to think about. So yeah, go one level deeper.
Perfect. And yeah, that's exactly it. Right. We use our big enterprise logos like, hey, we sell to Amazon, we sell to these companies. It's good for credibility, right? Shows that you're like a big deal, I guess, but it doesn't really like work for like one on one deals. And so yeah, what to do instead is instead of listing two or three companies, list six. Because what you want to do is kind of incite that FOMO feel, right? Just like you said, it could be people they directly compete against. It could be people specifically like really within their industry and also company size and even better geography. So what you're trying to do is create a larger, more specific group of people or companies that you can list. That's step one. And step two is you actually want to lean on a specific customer story and you want to center it around a problem. Because even if you know, hey, one of the companies you mentioned, they're twice as big as us, they're actually international, we're not quite international. Right. So it's kind of like a semi fit. What you can do is focus on the problem. Because if you can describe the problem or describe the buyer's problem better than they can themselves, they'll automatically assume that you have the best solution. And so what you want them to do is as you're telling the story, like, hey, hopefully it's the same title. They had the same problem. They were having the same challenges in trying to solve that problem. And here's how we helped. What will happen is your buyer will start to put themselves in your stories shoes, if you will, like the protagonist, right. So they'll start to see themselves and they'll have this like self discovery. Okay, that actually sounds a lot like me. And I'm really interested in understanding how you can solve it. And so they'll lean in and that's how you can really start to use social proof to get people much more interested.
I love that. Do you find that you have more success social proofing by listing out companies that compete directly in the same space? Or do you find companies that are similar in terms of culture or maybe companies that are competing for candidates? Like, where is this sweet spot in terms of which companies I should list off?
That's a good question. So I would say look at kind of like what you were doing is like characteristics of these companies, right? Like you want to be as specific as possible so someone competes directly. You know, it resonates because they have, they're solving the same problem for the market. The other one is, yeah, you can look at things like geography, other teams that are in Chicago if you want to look at, you know, they're also international because that's a kind of a specific trait depending on, on where you're selling. And so I would say get as specific as you can. 5, 6 traits if you have it, if you have a big enough client base and then like I said, dive into like the actual problem that you solve.
That is awesome. Thank you so much for the tip. Super helpful. And you've definitely got my mind spinning on this. So that's what this is all about. So, Devin, thank you again for taking the time. Thank you all for joining us for our sales assembly study break. Thank you to Vidyard for sponsoring the content and we will see you next week.
