How to Find The Right Clients

Episode 950: How to Find The Right Clients, with Jeff Koser

How to find the right clients? Learn from Jeff Koser about supercharging your sales by learning how to find the right clients.

Want to learn how to find the right clients? Then it’s time to learn from Jeff Koser, who is a successful entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in executive sales management, consulting, and business strategy. He wrote a book on it. Actually, an award-winning book, Selling to Zebras. Jeff has appeared on some of the largest B2B sales podcasts over the past couple of years and he always leaves listeners with something that increases their sales effectiveness.

What you will learn from this episode about how to find the right clients:

• Jeff explains what a “zebra” is, and he shares why working for a foreign-owned company with no prior sales in the US became the foundation of the zebra philosophy
• How to find the right clients while making the process easy and recognizable as spotting a zebra
• Why zeroing in on the ideal client helped Jeff and his team close a deal with 90% of the new clients they pursued
• Why recognizing critical business problems for potential prospects and focusing a content strategy around those pain points is the best way to survive challenging times
• Why your content should revolve around seven key attributes, and what those important attributes are
• How Zebrafi is beta-testing software that connects to Salesforce and will show you how to find the right clients that match the profile of your existing top customers
• Why focusing on pipeline close rate, average deal size, and length of sales cycle are the three key metrics that will supercharge your sales
• Why Jeff believes that focusing on a high volume of prospects is actually detrimental to the success of your business and a waste of your money and time
• How your proven success with customers like your zebras can help you land business with your zebras

Resources:

• Connect with Zebrafi for a special offer to Onward Nation listeners for six months+ of unlimited free usage of the Zebrafi Salesbot, an AI-driven application that identifies prospects that are similar to the user’s best customers. The offer to be part of the beta program is good for 6 months or more and it’s FREE!
  • https://zebrafi.com/salesbot/
  • https://zebrafi.com/
• Email: [email protected]
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-koser-4a3911a0/
• Time to learn how to find the right clients with the help of the Zebra Salesbot

Additional Resources:

• Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
• Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
• Stephen Woessner’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner/
• Listen to a similar podcast on how to find the right clients from Predictive ROI

 

 

How to Find The Right Clients: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation, where I interview today’s top business owners so we can learn their recipe for success, how they built in, how they skilled their business. In fact, my team at predictive ROI, you know, during the crisis, during the challenges that we’re all going through right now, we started this process actually back in 2019 when you heard me start talking about doubling down on content.

 

How can we be helpful? Well, we have completely doubled down on the doubling down right now. And so we have recently rebuilt and continued to build out our free resources section on PredictiveROI.com. So you can download free practical and tactical guides for everything from how to build out your own authority sales machine, everything for how to create your ideal client avatar, how to build out the value ladder, a sales funnel, how to make sure your content strategy aligns with the ten truths of being an authority.

 

So just go to PredictiveROI.com/resources. It’s all there. It’s 100% free. And as always, everything you request will be sent right to your inbox. 

 

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How to Find The Right Clients: Jeff Koser’s Introduction

 

Before we welcome today’s guest, Jeff Koser. Let me share some additional context here. Why, why when Jeff said yes to coming back for this encore, you can go back to episode 862 Onward Nation.

 

You can go back to that first episode and, and get additional context and so forth around Jeff and I sure hope that you do that. But why? I was super excited when he and I started having this conversation about an encore. Why I knew that not only would it be awesome to have his voice and expertise and insights and wisdom as part of an episode again, of course that would be awesome, but also super timely.

 

And here’s what I mean by that. Like there, there could probably be, and I don’t think I’m overstating this, but I’ll ask Jeff for his opinion here in just a second. I don’t think I’m overstating this Onward Nation by saying there is no more critical time in business history that you need to be focused on who you can truly be helpful to.

 

Jeff defines those companies as zebras, and we’ll talk a lot about that. But no more critical time to not be wasting time trying to help prospects where you’re not really a great match, or helping clients where we’ve all been in those situations before, where it feels like we’re just pushing a boulder up a hill because it’s not an exact match.

 

He has a solution for that. We’re going to talk about that. So when I say zebra, we’re going to get all that context from Jeff so that you can really dial that in in truly. Most people think about, well, gee, Stephen, if I niche down, I’m saying goodbye to all of this other opportunity over here when the reality is, when you truly focus on zebras, an abundance of opportunities starts coming your way because you’re speaking the right dialect.

 

And we’ll talk about that. And then we’re also going to get Jeff’s guidance and insight and wisdom around the three metrics that he and his team really guide their clients and customers to focus on. And that is pipeline close rate, average deal size and length of the sales cycle. So Onward Nation, this is absolutely the perfect expert for you to be paying attention to and listening and learning from, because we all need to have better pipelines, increasing our average deal size, and we need shorter sales cycles.

 

So this is exactly the conversation that I was so excited for us to have. So with that said, my friend Jeff, welcome back to Onward Nation. 

 

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How to Find The Right Clients: What “Zebra” Is All About

 

Stephen, I’m excited to be here and thank you for that introduction. And I don’t know, my work is done. I think you said it perfectly. You’re so funny. Well well well good.

 

Okay. Well let’s start with this term, zebras. And I know that obviously ties into your book because you’re a bestselling author and really great book, Selling the Zebras. Give us some foundational context. Either pull a nugget out of the book or whatever your preferences, but just give us some foundational context around zebra and and the strategy.

 

Well, zebras originally the term was coined, when I was with a company that was competing against very large competitors who were much more well known in the marketplace and we did it just to survive, we had to figure out where would we be compelling enough that somebody would take a risk on us because they’d never heard of us.

 

We were, in fact, foreign owned, and we didn’t have any customers here. So that’s not a lot of strength behind you as a salesperson. As you go to try to build a customer file, even even a pipeline for that, for that matter, but close deals on top of it with a solution that was big and complex and was an important decision for a decision maker.

 

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How to Find The Right Clients: Taking A Big Risk for The Company

 

Okay. So let me give that back to you and make sure I’m tracking you. So because of that situation and maybe you’re going to get fewer bats, then you really needed to know. And in each at bat was super important both for you and the decision maker. You need to make sure that if you’re going to step in and take a pitch that you’ve got the right at bat at the right time, am I tracking you perfectly.

 

And in fact, when one of the things we used to say, Stephen, is that we worked harder at the barn, which is where I was born to get an appointment, then SAP worked to close the ERP deal. Wow. Yeah. Okay, so then why? Why was that the case? Was that because it was so hard to find the right fit?

 

It was because, So what made that so challenging? Good. Good questions for. So for one thing, SAP was already 50 million in the US. They were already a, whatever they were outside the US, but they were already 50 million here we were zero sales in the US. SAP was already a household name with global recognition, and we were not known by anyone outside of the Netherlands, which is where our headquarters was.

 

And SAP sells, as did ERP enterprise resource planning, which means it’s everything that runs your business. So it’s the backbone of your back office. It’s the backbone of your order taking and if you’re a manufacturer, your production, inventory control and supply chain. So obviously these are critical processes, all of which support your business’s ability to do business.

 

So it was a huge decision. And to get an appointment for someone to talk to you when they’ve never heard of you and the competitor is, it has got a great reputation. And by the way, making a decision to buy from us could ruin your career or tank your company. It becomes a pretty big deal, right? Because there’s as you just we’re talking about there’s risk involved, like getting, installing the making the decision to onboard and implement in ERP into a company, whether it’s manufacturing, operation, whatever is a huge decision.

 

And if that doesn’t go well, the procurement team, the whoever made that decision could be in a world of hurt from, like the C-suite. What or why do we select this vendor and they might be out. Right. So there’s a big risk. That’s exactly right in fact, when we were building bonds, there were stories in following earnings announcements where executives, CEOs, in fact, were blaming a faulty ERP implementation for the reason they didn’t make their numbers.

 

So, yeah. So, to kind of add drama to the backdrop, that was becoming a popular maybe not a popular excuse, but it was certainly starting to weave its way into some of the earnings calls that were out there at the time. 

 

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How to Find The Right Clients: The Reason It Was Called A “Zebra”

 

Okay. So, let me make sure I’m tracking with you.

 

So it was because of all of this context of the environment and how important these decisions, purchasing decisions, the due diligence and everything that goes along with that, that you guys at Bain that the team said, okay, we’re going to have a limited number of at bats. We’re going to have to get 000 like focused in and laser in on the exact right prospect, because of this limited number of bats.

 

And if we get in at bat, we’re going to have to do really, really well. And so is that where what one is that is correct. And or so is that where the term zebras then came from, that is a 100% on target. And yes, that is where the term zebras came from. And the reason we called it a zebra, is because we wanted to portray to everybody that we hired. We should be able to identify characteristics that make it a bond zebra should be, should be visible to us, to the level that we know we’ve got one.

 

It should be just as easy as spotting a zebra. You’re never confused when you look at a zebra that you might be looking at a different animal. I mean, even a three year old can tell you that it’s a zebra, right? So that was the analogy. And that’s why we chose a zebra, because they’re so distinctive that they just stand out and we distilled it down to the seven things that make up every deal.

 

And by doing that, any one of those seven could be red, yellow or green. And if and if some of the important ones were red, we would have conversations about do we engage or do we continue to engage? As we uncovered more and more information that gave us a clearer picture of whether or not it really was a zebra for us or not?

 

Okay, I love this because it is interesting to get your perspective here, because that tells me that, yes, we may have had fewer at bats because there are fewer zebras, but each at bat was more meaningful. And because of that, yes, we may have been pitching less or we may have been putting fewer proposals essentially out into the marketplace.

 

But we knew that our close rate was probably going to be higher because it was on target. This was not a volume game. This was definitely precision, right? No question about it. And it’s the reason that we make the audacity claim that we do other book covers, which, you know, we call selling zebras. But then we say how to close 90% of the business you pursue faster, more easily and more profitably.

 

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How to Find The Right Clients: The Right Methodology That Businesses Need to Follow

 

So who have you ever met that said, you can close 90% of what you pursue? I mean, most of the people even listening to this today probably don’t believe it. And yet we did it as a business with a highly complex solution. And we’ve taught others to do it. And we’ve got, we’ve got case study after case study and most of our clients, even when they buy from us, see 

 

But we have videos of CFOs even saying it. And as you know, they don’t go on video and put themselves out there very easily. Well, so let’s go back to something that I mentioned in the introduction here, becauseI would love for you to correct me if you think I’m wrong. If you think I’ve overstated something because I’m in the trenches every single day, your perspective is valuable.

 

So correct me here if you think I’ve overstated this. Do you think I’m overstating it by saying that there isn’t? There’s never been a time in history of business where it’s because of everything that is going on right now. Name the crisis. There are several that the business owners need to get super focused on zebras. This is the right methodology as far as going narrow and niching down.

 

Am I overstating that? I want again, I violently agree that is the way I would. I would say it because we’ve had social unrest. We’ve had a global pandemic, and the economy will take its time and recover from that. So the only decisions, the only purchases companies are going to make today are ones that they believe are compelling and solve the, compelling problem for the business or create exceptional value for the business.

 

And then when you layer that on top of the fact that for years now, companies have been making it harder to penetrate them. I would say that today it is more challenging than it ever has been. However, someone is going to close business out, their businesses are going to continue to run. They still have to solve critical business problems.

 

And if you figure out what those are and who has them and which executive within a prospect company has them, you’ll still do very well. 

 

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How to Find The Right Clients: The Seven Attributes

 

Okay. So great exercise that you just gave Onward Nation business owners like you just walked through a multi-step exercise that they themselves if they’re in charge of revenue, like, you know, most owners are in charge of their own business have or they tend to be running point on bestow, or if they happen to have a sales team, if they have built that out, then that sales team needs to be doing that and probably alongside the owner and whoever might be in charge of marketing, but building out or answering the questions that you just shared with us and then developing onward and developing a content strategy around that so you can teach to those points just like Jeff does. Right? Jeff? Correct. Yes. And in fact, what we’re trying to do is make it even easier. So we devote quite a few pages in our book.

 

It’s a story, so it’s easy to read, but we still try to build it out in terms of the how and why of a zebra and why it works and how you use it. And but it’s still you still have to come up with content, around the seven attributes. And I’ll just list them real quickly and then I’ll tell you why and where I’m taking you.

 

But the first one is the type of company where you do. Well, the second is operationally, what do they look like? Third is who’s the real decision maker. We call that person power. That’s the person that can buy even without a budget. As long as you present a compelling business case. Fourth is funding, fifth is value or ROI.

 

Sixth is the technology that you bring to the solution and that you have superiority with your competition over. So in other words, technology is usually a double edged sword. You have things that make you more compelling, and your competition might have some that make them more compelling. And then seventh is service. What level of service do your best customers require in order for them to achieve the value slash ROI that you positioned that caused them to buy from you?

 

So if you think about those seven and you and you try to do that, cross functionally within your company, meaning you get input not just from sales and marketing, but you also get input from your delivery. Whoever delivers the solution, maybe you get input from finance, maybe you get input from R&D. You get that cross-functional perspective.

 

That’s the right way to build a zebra. But that takes work. And one of our advisors years ago challenged us and they said, Zebrafi. You guys, you guys teach zebras. You have a process for selling to them. You provide software, you have all this stuff, but you kind of make it easier. Can you automatically create a zebra for a company?

 

And when I first heard that question I thought, no, you know, you can’t. So we did. We have it. And what I want to say is we accidentally did, so how is that possible? Well, what we’ve been working on, and this is something we’re offering free to your listeners. And you said this before we even started recording, and you said it in your intro.

 

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How to Find The Right Clients: Answering The Questions with Technology

 

You’re offering all kinds of free materials to help your listeners and your customers. Well, I think that’s what you have to do today to be a thought leader, to be an expert in your space and to be welcomed into prospect companies, you have to give them things of value that help them raise their hand and say, we would like some help or what would your help look like if we did ask for it?

 

So what we did was we’ve developed an ability and this is our beta version and it’s inside our software. But we’ve also put it inside of Salesforce. So if anybody has Salesforce we put a button in there and it’s called find Similares. And the way it works is let’s say you’ve got a great customer. You just go to that customer inside Salesforce, you go to an opportunity and you click on the Find Similares button, and we’ll go find you up to five companies that look and feel.

 

So not just demographic, but feel like that company. So those are probably zebra’s. So we’re starting you in a much better place and you don’t even have to, you know, even the salesperson that sold it sometimes can’t tell you. They can tell you they’re a great customer. But sometimes they cannot articulate why they were a great fit in the sales cycle.

 

What caused them to know they were going to buy? What caused them to know that they were going to use your company and your solution in a best practice way? In essence, we’re sort of answering that question with technology and giving you a place to start without even spending the time to go through and define the seven attributes that make up your zebra.

 

I just love that and that is just so fantastic. So now will that only work with Salesforce today? Yes. And we’re actually working we’re talking with another company right now that has tons of customers. They have a CRM as part of their solution. So there might be a way for us to make them the second one.

 

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How to Find The Right Clients: Making Better Decisions by Using Your Tools

 

But the reason we did this with Salesforce is because we already had tight integration between our software and Salesforce. We already update Salesforce from our software. So our software does not turn this into a commercial that would turn anybody off. But it’s software guided selling that helps you actually sell the way our process teaches you to sell, which is to zebras like you we’ve been talking about and then because you’re interacting with our software with a prospect, you get all kinds of information that you gather just just because you’re collaboratively working with them, like, you know, when would it close?

 

How big would it be, what stage you’re at. Because you agree on that. Well, we then push all that to Salesforce and update Salesforce so the salesperson doesn’t have to go backwards and enter. You know, I call it sales exhaust because anything that happens after you’re in front of the prospect just slows you down.

 

And it is a sales exhaust. So we take the exhaust from your tailpipe and update Salesforce with it. How’s that for an analogy? Well I think it is great. I mean, as an owner, just like you, when I think about, okay, well, what are we going to invest in the latter part of this year?

 

And obviously there’s a lot of ambiguity as to what’s going on in the market, which is being able to have solid forecasting tools that, you know, are really dialed in on the exact right prospect, the exact right niche where you could be helpful in this case, using your terminology. Zebras, it is wonderful because then you can make more decisions or excuse me, better decisions and feel less like you’re aimlessly wandering through the wilderness, right?

 

That’s right. It gives you a place to start, an intelligent, informed place to start where, you know, by default, these companies have the problem you solve. You don’t know whether or not they’ve prioritized it. So there’s still sales work to be done, but you’re starting in a good place. Well, I also like the accountability part of this too, from the standpoint that, you know, there’s just a lot of transparency over who is being pursued, where are we trying to open what the door is or open the door, excuse me, what the opportunity is.

 

And that kind of is all there. We’re not having to chase down the sales team to try and get little scraps of paper or whatever. And, you know, making decisions based on hunches or what we think is going to come in, you know, this month or next quarter or whatever. And it just holds everybody accountable to a standard.

 

You know, you mentioned the seven attributes. It holds people accountable, right? It does. It’s very visible. And it informs your strategy also. It allows you to take an honest look at, you know, do we fit well enough and or have we executed on the steps that we need to to put us in a position to earn the right to ask that prospect for the business?

 

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How to Find The Right Clients: The Three Metrics

 

Yeah. This is so great. Let’s go back to the three metrics that you and I were talking about in the green room that I know are super important. And you shared pipeline close rate, being the first one, average deal size, length of sales cycle. And what I love about this, like, when you share this with me, I’m like, three.

 

It’s not 17. It’s right, it’s three. And there’s no ambiguity. It’s three. And I love the fact that it’s simple, but. So why do you think it is just these three? Because that’s all. As a former sales guy that I could remember.

 

That we do tend to keep it simple. It does affect other parts of your business. But these are the three that we’ve measured since day one. And we have formulas around them. So we know and we know how we unpacked it. And we know what tools we bring to each sales situation that do impact these three.

 

So, that’s why it’s okay. Well so great rationale. So let me ask you to put your mentor hat on here for a second. Although I know you’ve been doing that for the entire conversation, which is great and which is why this conversation is super helpful. So, you’re the mentor of all Onward Nation business owners here.

 

And it sounds like what you’re saying is, look, there are a lot of different data points that you can be pulling from and asking your sales team to chase down and put into aggregate reports and all of this other kind of stuff. You can visualize that data, that or not, but really, these are the three. These are the three that matter.

 

If you get these three dialed in and perform well, everything else flows from it and you’ll be in good shape. Is that what I’m hearing from you? You are, you are. Because if you focus on these three and you have processes and tools to support that process, and then you measure that on a consistent basis, you have the makings of some very effective and powerful sales meetings.

 

You have the, you’ll gain the reputation out there in the marketplace that you will only pursue customers where you can bring great value, which is that that becomes part of your sales differentiation that because if once you gain that reputation, whether you’re marketplaces, local, national or global, it doesn’t matter. That’s hard for competitors to emulate.

 

So it puts you in a position to win that takes you a notch above even what you offer in terms of the actual product you sell or your ability to execute on the implementation of that product. Okay. Got it. That’s awesome. So let me take a data point from what you had said earlier and tied into the three metrics here.

 

And then I’ve got a couple of questions on metric, two and three. But I think I heard you say but here again, correct me if I’ve got this in my notes wrong, that, when when a company really dials in this process and gets truly focused on selling to zebras and essentially puts a blinders on and they’re no longer aimlessly wandering through the wilderness, they’re just focused on zebras.

 

And if they do that, well, they should see their pipeline close rate, because you guys have seen this in your data beat about 90%. Is that where the 90% fits into that metric? It is, the worst we’ve ever seen with somebody that dedicated themselves to doing this is 60% close rate, which was still a ten x improvement from where they started.

 

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How to Find The Right Clients: What Business Owners Usually Tolerate in Sales

 

Oh my gosh. Well, like you, I grew up in the sales side of the business as well. You know, I’m a salesperson, at heart. I mean, that’s how I started in the agency business as a new business development person. And when I think about it, 90% is a staggering number, of course. And when I think about it, geez, what?

 

I like to have a situation where I know that I’m going to win 90% of the time. Yes, please. I mean, that’s awesome. And you can even say that in your radio voice, which makes it even more impressive. But all joking aside, I mean, I’ve worked with, you know, so many colleagues in either sales teams and so forth as I know that you have to and I’ve seen their scorecards and so forth and they’re like, you know, 30% close rate.

 

And I’ve even had some, you know, sales colleagues of mine over the years, you know, let’s call that 15, 20 years ago, say to me, you know, before I was running my own business and they’ve said to me, well, yeah, but, look at the volume of proposals. And I always had that was always a head scratcher for me, Jeff, because I’m thinking, wait a minute.

 

So the volume of proposals is somehow a justification for a low close rate. I don’t think we’re not in the volume game. Right. And not only are we not, but I think that’s detrimental to almost every business’s success. Okay. So take that deeper. Why do you? That’s a pretty strong statement. I don’t disagree, but I’d love to know the nugget behind that.

 

Well, because what happens is you get lulled into feeling like you’re in a good position because you’re pumping out a lot of activity. But it’s wasting company resources. So, if you have, I’ll give you a couple statistics and hopefully listeners will stay with me. 

 

So statistically Salesforce and Microsoft in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, they’ve looked at their data and they have thousands and thousands of companies with probably millions of salespeople in their databases and their CRM and the closure rate of deals in pipelines across all of their customers.

 

For Salesforce, it’s actually 15%. Wow. Yeah. And for dynamics, it’s 13%. That is awful. It’s unconscionable. And most of your listeners will go, well, I’m way better than that. But when they say that in their mind, what they’re really saying is, I close a much higher percentage of that of the business that actually closes that I’m pursuing. But there’s a flaw.

 

Most of the business that doesn’t close doesn’t close for anybody that we call that non decision. You lose most of the business to apathy. Somebody that doesn’t buy anything. So you spend your time. You create proposals. You strategize. You spend time updating Salesforce. You spend time with your sales manager or your VP of sales or your chief revenue officer.

 

The management team spends time strategizing these deals. How are we going to get to our number? R&D waste money pursuing products and solutions that aren’t designed for your zebra. So that’s 85% organizational waste, which any other portion of your business would not tolerate. And yet that’s what we tolerate from sales. Brilliantly said. I mean, truly not not trying to blow smoke it.

 

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How to Find The Right Clients: The Average Deal Size

 

You brilliantly said. And when we think about how precious time and resources are on the Onward Nation, can any of us afford 85% inefficiency? I mean, the staggering that is a staggering number, Jeff. In lean they call that muda, which is Japanese for waste. That’s a whole lot of muda, isn’t it? It sure is.

 

Well, and I don’t mean to be laughing, I just just the way you said that was funny. Okay, so let’s go to the second metric. Average deal size. And so, and maybe, my assumption is this has been quantified just because of how, you know. Well, you guys tracked numbers. So I guess my question is that when somebody focuses on their zebra and I don’t mean dollars because everybody’s selling a different thing, I get that.

 

But, like on a percentage basis, what do you see? Do you see the average deal size go up or down? And what’s the percentage basis? So the metrics that we use when we talk to prospects in what we teach is we show them range, we show them, you know, if someone sticks with this process for X period of time, the least amount of benefit you will get is X and the most you’ll get is y.

 

So let me tell you about industry types. So for manufacturers it goes from 13% increase to 50% increase. And for high tech it goes from 43% to 800% increase in your average deal size. And that’s our metric. And then when we build a business case and this is what we teach our clients to do as well, you use the low end of what you’ve ever done for that particular metric.

 

So we’re talking about average deal size for us. So if it was, it was a metric for one of our clients. And let’s say they reduced the length of the supply chain. They were able to shorten the supply chain. Well, you could give a metric with a range and you’d say, now let’s calculate your benefit. If you were at least as successful as the least of our customers.

 

And that’s what this allows you to do. And it brings a lot of credibility. And when you sell that way, you’re in essence, you’re creating a business case. You get that verified with them because you’ve got lots of proof with customers and you get their agreement. And when you sell that way, you’re also able to analyze them as a company, the people that they’re going to be involved in using, whatever it is that you sell or implementing whatever it is that you sell, it allows you to more deeply analyze their ability to do that and get achieve the business case.

 

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How to Find The Right Clients: Assessing a Business How Much Help They Need from You

 

In essence. And then it allows you to assess also how much help they are going to need from you in order to get this value that you’ve agreed they want. And therefore you can put in your proposal, the additional product, the additional services, the additional education, consulting, insight driven capability they need, whatever it is they need that you are capable of providing and that also increases your average deal size.

 

Because when you’re working with a decision maker and you’ve assessed their team and you’ve built a business case, and you say, now this is what we both know, we need to achieve this. And you need a little extra help over here. They’re not going to pull that out of your proposal when they negotiate, because they know they need it because and they want it because they want to achieve that business case.

 

See if you agree with this, the proof points, the business case is stronger because when that one zebra is evaluating your proposal and evaluating, you know what you can do for them across the things that you just mentioned. And then when you show how you’ve been able to help other zebras. Zebra 123 dozens of other zebras who look and feel like the zebra who’s considering the proposal on his or her desk right now, you’re easier to say yes to because you’ve helped other zebras that look like them.

 

Would you agree? Absolutely that’s exactly the way it plays out. And it empowers your sales team with more confidence? Because that’s exactly what you’re saying. You know, look, I’ve done it here, here and here. They had the same problem you had. And here’s the results I have. And here’s the proof I have. Yeah. That is awesome.

 

Okay. So, manufacturers, you know, three or excuse me, 13 to 50%, impressive. High tech, 43 to 800%. Obviously impressive. So let’s think of the length of the sales cycle. Here again, during crisis and challenge right now, every single dollar revenue is precious. The time to acquire or to take in those dollars is also time sensitive and super precious.

 

So hopefully the days of, you know, having super long sales cycles like, you know, being able to follow the strategy of zebras onward again. So Jeff, what have you and your team seen as far as increases or decreases on a percentage basis, on the length of the sales cycle? When somebody follows the zebra strategy. So our metrics for the sales cycle are 21 to 45%.

 

They go 21% faster on the low end to 45% faster, on the upper end of the metric. And the reason that happens is because you engage with far fewer prospects who are never going to buy from anybody. That’s number one. That’s that non-decision piece we’re talking about that makes up such a large portion of everybody’s pipeline.

 

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How to Find The Right Clients: Building a Good Relationship With Clients

 

But the other thing that affects the length of the sales cycle is that you have you now have the ammunition to call on the relevant individual, the person we call power, because you’ve done your homework, you know, he or she has the business problem that you solve, you know, from your other customers approximately how much value you can create for them by solving those problems.

 

And you can tee up a decision for them exactly the way they want to make it. You can say, here’s the problem. I don’t know if it’s a priority for you. If it is, here’s approximately how much value I can create. And the reason I can say that with pretty good confidence is because I’ve done it here. Here and here.

 

So the real question is, is this compelling enough? And is it urgent enough that you would be willing to engage with my company? And if the answer is no and you really add power, well, either you look for another individual who might be power with for the same problem inside that company, or you find a different prospect.

 

With a larger company, there might be 4 or 5 or more people that have the problem you solve. Depending on what it is you sell. And if you exhaust those five, for example, if there are five, then you’d move on. Maybe you put them back in the tickler for marketing automation, if you know that, if you know they’re a zebra, for example, meaning they have the problem you solve and you know that the value of solving it is pretty compelling.

 

But maybe it’s just not a priority. Well, you put them back in marketing automation and you continue to nurture them, but you don’t waste any time forecasting them, strategizing them, calling on them. Right. Yeah. This is so great and really illustrates the point of Onward Nation of not only being focused zebras. So you’re getting the right At-Bats with the right people, the right to just point, attribute number three power.

 

And then if for whatever reason, the timing isn’t right, there’s a global pandemic, there’s a something that the timing just isn’t right, doesn’t mean that they’re no longer, you know, a zebra for you just means that the timing is not right for a variety of different factors. And so putting them into automation, putting them into your authority content strategy so that you can continue to sell with authority is the right move.

 

That is awesome because and they might be there for a day or a decade until the timing is right and when the timing is right, you’re probably going to be on a very, very short list of people to reconsider, because every time they turned around there, you were being helpful in teaching and sharing your expertise, right, Jeff?

 

Right. Well said. Yeah. You continued to bring them value and you were developing a relationship with them, even if it was passive. Right? Yeah. This has been so great. You were so very helpful. If I knew that you would be. But thank you for over delivering, as you always do. I am very, very grateful. I know we covered a bunch.

 

But before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, anything you think we might have missed and anything else you want to share? And then please do tell us the best way to connect with you, my friend. 

 

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How to Find The Right Clients: Final Advice and How to Connect with Jeff

 

So I think being respectful is so important right now. Givin people an out.

 

You know, I think that, letting someone know that if they have other priorities right now, that that’s okay and you’ll still be around, you know, you letting them know though also that, you know, if they do have the business problem that you solved, if you were right, and if it is important that you would like to engage.

 

But giving them that out, I think it’s, all I think that will, it’s a strategy that will always work. But I think that it’s even more important right now. Awesome. Best way to connect with you, Jeff. So [email protected]. It’s that simple. Jeff Koser on LinkedIn. You can find us at zebrafi.com.

 

And then if anybody’s interested in our free offer to put the zebra it’s a sales bot. We called it to find a similar button inside Salesforce. We will give you that in the notes that you can publish with this episode Stephen. So they can learn more about it and they can decide if they want to contact us.

 

That is phenomenal. Thank you, sir, very, very much. And Onward Nation, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and re-listen to Jeff’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do. The key is to take the seven attributes, to take the metrics, to take all of this mentorship that he shared with you in the perfect blueprint, and really underscored and reiterated the importance of being super focused on your ideal prospect, the zebra, and having the confidence to really zero in and focus on the right prospect zebras. 

 

You have to put it into action though. You have to take action on the smart things that Jeff just shared with you, put it into practice and accelerate results. And Jeff, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. And I am super grateful that you said yes to take your time out of your compressed schedule.

 

To come on to the show, to be our mentor and guide yet again, to help us move our businesses onward to that next level. Thank you so much, my friend. I feel grateful for the opportunity, Stephen. 

 

This episode is complete, so head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

 

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