Why Deals Die Inside the 10-Yard Line with Randy Riemersma

0:10Randy Riemersma: Welcome to the Revenue Builders podcast hosted by John Kaplan and John McMahon. Today's conversation features Randy Riemersma, founder of Sell with Precision and a sales leader with more than 35 years of experience building and leading B2B teams. Randy explains why deals lost inside the final 10 yards are rarely about product capabilities. They are lost when the buyer no longer has enough confidence to take the risk. He breaks down how elite sellers reinforce belief through executive alignment, credible proof points, and consistent communication with the champion. Let's dive in.

0:43Look, I'm going to say something crazy. I think all deals lost inside the 10-yard line had nothing to do with your capabilities. It has everything to do with their lack of confidence. Because I think sometimes we're for data salespeople, we're selling somebody$3 million worth of software, if this hits the fan, their job is at risk, which is why when we get inside the 10-yard line, there are some things that we've got to have done very, very well. Our customer referrals have to have gone absolutely cold stone fantastic. Our executive alignment with them has got to be fantastic. John, I know you're going to love this.

1:20We have to be texting with our champion on a daily basis at this zone because they are going to be getting nervous. We have to hold their hand. Our surround inside the 10-yard line has got to be execution excellence on our side because they've already decided about the product. They've already agreed to the business case. Now it's like, I'm about to put a pen on a piece of paper. Am I going to lose my job for this? And it's our job to make sure they don't. That confidence, if we do a great job there, creates that urgency that gets us all the way into the end zone. Great. Totally great. So one, I'm really fascinated by this conversation and I've been studying and people, you know, you've heard like when we were younger, you'd see it in locker rooms or whatever.

2:04People say believe like they would just have a they would just have a sign called believe or so. I don't know. A couple of years ago, I started to really dig into and the science behind belief. is so incredibly pure and telling. They have it down to the science of like healthcare. There are differences in outcomes when a patient believes that they are, and even in placebos. So they've given medication to somebody that has a problem and they've given a placebo effect. And until they did this and studied it in medicine, they really didn't capitalize on it. But people, by the very sense of believing something, will look for more evidence around them that they're right and it's true.

2:56And I find this so fascinating. And if I'm a seller today, I would learn as much as I can about a belief system and how to leverage someone's belief system and incorporate somebody's belief system because they wind up, it's a self -fulfilling prophecy in so many cases. Now, I don't want to minimize anybody's illness and I'm not trying to do that. You know, what I'm saying is, I'm saying is that if you're a seller and you understand that at the point where Randy's talking about where customer needs belief, they needed you to listen to them. They needed to be heard. Now they're moving to, you know, they needed to understand the differences and the solution.

3:38You can do all that great. And at the end, if you haven't plugged into their belief and help them believe by great proof points, case studies, testimonials, showing them that it's going to work in their environment, whatever it is. I would just be studying that right now if I was a, you know, and I think all the elite sellers are probably unconsciously competent about why am I so good in the late stage of the ballgame on the 10 yard line is because I leave no doubt that that customer believes. Now, the other thing is, if you don't believe, this is a big thing for me. If you don't believe, you are not going to get anybody else to believe.

4:17And I'm so glad you said that. I was going to share the best way to create belief. Belief is transferable. Yes. Belief, enthusiasm is transferable. So many emotions are transferable. If I am a subject matter expertise, an expert in this situation, I'm an oil and gas guy, and we're doing an installation, whatever it is. And I've talked to you the whole downstream, blah, blah, blah. And we're at that 10-yard line of surrounding with all those other things. You're going to look me in the eye and prospects are going to look the sales rep in the eye. And they're basically going to ask him, yeah, but do you believe?

4:52And if I'm an elite seller and I know this stuff cold and I know the use cases, I know our company and I know what we can deliver, I can echo that back and I can transfer that belief to them, which is critical. If you can't, it's going to show up in your pupils and their basal brain is going to pick that stuff up. Their limbic system is going to be like danger, Will Robinson, which goes back to what John was talking about. They're going to go home with their wife or husband and be like, yeah, I don't know. Maybe I don't spend three million bucks tomorrow. So, Randy, you talked about when people show up, they have to have a point of view, right?

5:27They should be prepared to understand, like we said, all the persona, the use case, how that persona is measured, what their pains are, what their deliverables are. Talk to us about what you mean by a point of view or a provocative point of view. Great question. So I think, and this is where I see so many reps get stuck. And I think this goes back to preparation. You got a preparation. You know, I got this list of attributes for the one percent. Right. And one of them is preparation. They do the research, whether a company is publicly traded or not. I believe that if you're going to have a provocative point of view, you and this goes back to a little bit of challenger selling.

6:16You know, you're going to teach someone you're going to tailor the message. You're going to take control of this thing. And the provocative point of view is where we take control. Right. Right. Because we know stuff again. This goes back to that early phase. This guy or gal might know something that I don't know. I am curious about them that that brings the defense shields down a little bit, which is the number one thing we can do is if you can increase receptivity for an early stage prospect where they actually might listen to you versus bombarding them with your education. That's a huge thing.

6:47Right. So I create this idea that I may be a person of interest. I know things about your industry. I have a point of view, a provocative point of view of how a different world could look. They obviously haven't imagined that worldview today because they aren't in it or they haven't seen the value of it. They aren't in it. So through preparation, through being a subject matter expertise on this stuff. And I can't say this enough. We've talked about it three times. Let's talk about it a fourth time. When you are preparing executive messaging, provocative point of view for that economic buyer that has way much, that guy or gal is already way too busy.

7:28The requests coming to them for money have tripled what their budget is. You've got to rise above the noise. You cannot sound like a sales rep. You must sound like a peer. So I think part of the provocative part is not sounding like a sales rep. Understanding their business logic, what they're trying to get done. You know, I'm going to take a very short story about a customer that we dealt with years ago when I was working for Kubik. You guys remember Tim Kubik in the contact solutions in the call center area. All of our deals back there were one, maybe two, three year deals. But we found this deal where a company was their revenue growth.

8:07They're doing a bunch of consolidation. Revenue growth was 14 percent. Their operational expense growth was 17 percent. So we know that's a going out of business sale. we didn't we did so much work below the line to figure out what was going on what we could impact but our message back to this guy was literally three slides and it was on how to get their op x growth expense of 17 it was just escalating like crazy down to 11 and a path to get it to 8 and we talked about ebitda we talked about earnings per share we talked about what that do for manpower and all these other things. It was a pure business to business, leader to leader call.

8:45We never talked about the technology. Our provocative point of view there for him was, there's a way to take this operational disaster that you have through some consolidations, et cetera, and drive it down. So it's actually contributing back to the business in a better way. It's research, it's prep, it's being an executive in the room, telling an executive message, not a feature-led, no executive cares about your shiny penny thing. They really don't. They really, really don't. Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you enjoy the content, please subscribe, rate, and review the show to help us reach more people.

9:23This show is brought to you by Force Management, where we help companies improve sales performance, executing the growth strategy at the point of sale. Check out forcemanagement.com for more information. Thank you.