Sell More by Targeting the Medium-Sized Organizations - Donald Kelly - Revenue Today - Episode # 075

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I wanted to come back and tie the story up and show you an example that did work. So fast forward to a company that I worked for that did practice all of these things. They did understand their product market fit. They did determine who their ideal customers were. They did gather insight. They focused on one single, single industry, and they were very specific on their value proposition. This company was where I worked at was in— it was a software company. And we focus a lot of our time in the government space, specifically city, county governments, and K-12. And when I started working with this organization, I was thinking like, man, this is probably gonna be a tough thing. Like, how in the world are we gonna, you know, really thrive and succeed with such a narrow focus? Now, there's so many city, county governments, and K-12s that are out there. And the software and solution could be beneficial to public sector organization as well. But what they saw that many of these school districts and many of these cities and counties had old outdated solutions and their software tend to be able to solve a problem, but it was not— wasn't too complicated and it was— they wanted something easy to use. So this company came in and just started there and started to thrive. And one school found benefit from it and fell in love with it and used it and recommended to another school. And then someone else in the city heard about this and then the city recommended it to another school. recommend it to another city. And they really just start to hyperfocus. So when I came into the company, I didn't need to worry about what industry we needed to focus on. We had a foothold in this particular industry and people were loving it and people wanted it and people were using it over and over and over again. Now, the other part to this situation as well is that not only were people using it and people enjoyed it, was also we had— we were known at the events that we went to. We were known at the conferences and we were known by those different individuals that would leave one department or one company and go to, excuse me, organization, go to another organization. We were being, we were being, we were being passed around, so to speak, by all of these different folks. And it was fascinating because it made our life easier as sales professionals. Now here's a secret part that we, I came to realize too. When I first came into that company, I remember Ian, and I'll call him out on this. He was an awesome individual. So Ian, he and some of the folks in the Client Success Department, They saw this young kid coming into the company and eager when I would talk to them and say hi to them. And I think, you know, because, you know, we were, we just all became cool. But he gave me a tip and an advice that I've used ever since then and worked when I worked with other companies. He told me this super awesome secret, and I think you all could take advantage of this. He said, make sure you go for these type of city, county governments and K-12. I was like, well, well, we know our niche already. We already know the group of people. He said, well, these are the group of people that never call in and never complain, but they use our solution over and over again. It wasn't the large cities like the Houstons or the cities like New York. He said the— and it wasn't the small ones like, uh, you know, a small town or rural community. It was a medium-sized organization. They had enough pain, they had enough problems, they had enough difficulties, they had a decent budget, and they could use our solution over and over and over again. And once I started to really take— I took Ian's advice and I started to go after that market. And started to focus on that, I saw that my sales started to increase and I started, that I started to thrive. I started to sell more. I started to outbeat some of my, my, uh, my team members. And it helped me with the proper training to get on the trajectory that led to a top performer status. I didn't reinvent the wheel. We just found product-market fit. And then because of client success, the people who talked to all of our customers, they were able to help me to determine the finite The focus group of people that I should spend my time with. And that was able to help make a difference. Everything that I shared with you, those 5 points resembled what the second company did. And you could do that as well. It's not complicated. It's not difficult. And you can thrive and succeed. The mistake, again, I want you to be aware of is that you don't go further. Don't, don't run faster than you have strength, so to speak. Don't start building before you actually know what you need to build. Test it out, try things. Don't hire this wonderful team of staff and put them all on W-2 before you can actually afford and take care of them and bring in revenue properly. Now, if you have some investor money, that's a different situation, but you still want to make sure you're responsible for the funds that you're bringing in with that. When I worked with the second software company and were able to apply these things, they were able to— we saw that the company grew tremendously. The company was able to eventually get acquired, and that acquisition led to everyone being happy when it's all said and done. If this was helpful for you and you are determining your product-market fit and this was able to guide you and give you some encouragement, I'm glad. And if you wanna connect with me, you can find me on LinkedIn, Donald C. Kelly. I wanna see if there are any questions that I can answer for anyone. If any questions came through, any questions came into the comments area or anything that we can take advantage of at this point. All right, so no questions on that there. So here's one last thing I want to give you. So this is your bonus tip as you leave and you go to— and you go out with your organization. Avoid complacency. And what I mean by avoiding complacency is that once you figure out where you are, you've managed to achieve some kind of product-market fit in your industry, don't assume that you'll always have it. Think about some of the companies that we've seen, such as Blockbuster or some of the, you know, other companies that's gone the way of the earth right now. They were in a successful niche, they were in a successful market, and they stopped innovating, they stopped advancing, stopped producing. And because of that, their market changed, and they weren't able to change as quickly because of the established core desires or beliefs that they set up already. And you shouldn't do that. Don't fall complacent. Don't let your customers leave because you're unwilling to change. And sometimes you need to cannibalize your own business. The way I teach my team, and we would talk about it, it's like, look at our company, look at what we're doing, and then figure out what can we do to outsell ourselves? What can we do to outbeat ourselves so that we can almost be like the chameleon where we evolve and we adjust and we change with the market and give them exactly what they want? If your team is struggling with product-market fit, how do you work with your team To still make sales, or do you? So Elise brought up a great question. Great question. If you if your team is struggling with product market fit, how do you work with your team to still make sales, or do you? So I would say again, go back to my situation. I think one of the the big part with that too is you know you can try to test it out at that point. At that point, I did a simple well one strategy I did with when I worked with one of these companies. I went to my competitor. So this is a secret. You can try it and it works. I went to my competitors, uh, and this company was already established and they're trying to do things, but I went to the competitor's website and I read the competitor's case study. And as I studied what the competitor's case studies were saying and what they were doing and figure out what niche they were in, I was able then to take that information because the pain that they were facing was the same exact pain that we could solve. And that was able to help me to help pivot our, my sales efforts. And the team similarly did strategy like that was able to help, and we were able to help, uh, to, to adjust. Now, this is for a company that was nimble. It was a smaller startup, a smaller organization, and we were able to kind of do those, you know, scruffy things. And I imagine some of you find yourself in a situation like that. So if your team is already there, you already have the salespeople, you don't want to go and fire all of them, do that. Go ahead and see what the competitors are doing. Read their case study, sign up for their, their, uh, their blogs and so forth, and you'll be amazed. Watch their videos, and that's going to help you to be able to help focus and pivot And maybe you could add a little differentiator, quote unquote, reason, so to speak, to help with that. Hope that helped at least, um, give you, uh, some answers or give some ideas towards that. So until— so with that being said, I'm going to give you— go ahead and give you 2 minutes back in your life. Hope this was able to be of help to you. Again, if you want to connect with me, you can find me on LinkedIn, Donald C. Kelly. Would be an honor to connect with you. But as always, I want you to find your ideal customers. I want you to know what to say when you reach out to them. I want you to close more deals. But most importantly, I want you to raise your level of thinking and go out and do big things. Thank you so much.

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.