What questions should I ask my solution architect to help design my buyer enablement tool?
To build a buyer enablement tool that is truly valuable to your buyer you need to get beyond vague and meaningless questions: “how happy are you with your current solution on a scale of 1-10?”
You want to get into the detailed process of your best subject matter experts - the rockstars, gurus and ninjas that as a leader you know, if they get involved in a sales cycle early deals happen.
But how do you capture that goodness and learn how to productise their process so that you can scale it out through your outreach channels?
Subject Matter Expert interview template
I’ve pulled together a template that you can use to guide you through your conversation.
Make a copy and update any questions that aren’t relevant to your situation.
Who should I interview?
Select a set of your best subject matter experts.
These might be:
Solution Architects, sales engineers, pre-sales consultants - the experts aligned to your sales team that help define the solution, provide technical demos and POCs and generally build rapport with the technical members of your customer’s buying group.
Onboarding specialists, technical architects, project managers - the teams that take a freshly signed customer and walk them through the implementation and initial adoption of your product or service.
Customer Success Managers, technical account managers - the people that manage the ongoing relationship with the customer, driving further adoption, expansion and renewals.
Each of these groups will have a different set of questions, materials and processes that they follow.
Select individuals from different customer segments (SMB, Mid-Market, Enterprise), different countries, and if you have them, different product groups.
Each session should be 121 rather than a group where the the loudest voices take over.
Each session should be 60-90 minutes with a follow up where the individual can walk you through some of the processes or tools they use that were highlighted in session 1.
How do I use the template?
The template is a Google Doc, so create a copy and then fill in live as you meet with your subject matter expert.
Depending on your company and product offering you may wish to amend the questions to be more relevant to your situation.
Here are the questions
Which are the personas in our customers that you learn most from?
Who provides the most useful information regarding their current state and the challenges they face?
Which are the personas that you would like to get introduced to if you could?
The ‘hidden’ roles that hold the best information or face the true challenges of the status quo
Which are the personas that you believe are most influential in making recommendations and decisions about a solution like ours?
What are your most common opening questions to get an initial idea of the customer’s organization and current state?
Do you have a template or checklist of questions that you work through?
This might be an informal list in your mind or notebook
How do you personalize your questions for each customer?
Based on industry, customer size, country? Do you alter your questions based on previous responses? How?
What are the common challenges that you notice our customers have with their status quo?
Which of these are causing them the most pain?
Are there challenges they mention that we don’t feature in our marketing materials?
What questions do you ask that uncover the hidden needs or problems that our customers are not aware of?
What are the key indicators that a customer is a good fit for our solution?
What are the key indicators that a customer is not a good fit?
How do you help customers quantify the value of the problem they are facing in a way that resonates with the economic personas
What metrics do you use? Do you use any calculators or spreadsheets?
What types of internal documents do you see customers using to quantify the problem they are facing?
Internal checklists, calculators, project briefs, requirements lists?
Can you share the story of a successful engagement where you took the customer from problem identification through to defining a solution?
Are there call recordings, emails, documents or templates you used?
What objections do you normally face and how do you address them?
What role does competitive analysis have in your discussions?
Do you help compare the current solution or other potential solutions the customer could select?
What resources do you find most effective in building trust with your customers?
Checklists, templates, videos, calculators, process flows, architecture diagrams? What have you created yourself?
How do you tailor your approach when speaking to different stakeholders?
Technical, business, implementation, economic buyer?
What are the most common milestones you see in the buyer’s process from initial problem identification through to selecting a supplier?
Do you vary your support at different stages?
How do you communicate and maintain momentum with your prospects, especially early in their buying process?
Email, text, LinkedIn, shared folders, digital sales room, video, phone?
Do you have an example of when you turned around a skeptical prospect?
What was the turning point?
How do you use data or analytics in your discussions with prospects?
Our product data? Customer/industry research? Benchmarks?
What questions do you ask about their current tech stack?
How do their answers influence your recommendations?
How do you approach setting expectations about the implementation and onboarding process?
Do you use any process flows, timelines or roles and responsibilities assets?
What common fears or misconceptions do customers have about the likelihood of success with our solution?
How do you dispel them?
How do you measure the success of your conversations with prospects?
What metrics do you use? What would you like to track if you could?
How do I use these responses to build my buyer enablement tool?
After you have conducted 5-7 interviews you should start to have a good base of questions, typical responses, question routing (if they said this, then I would ask that), checklists and templates, and recommendations.
You can now build out a minimum viable product of your buyer enablement tool using something as simple as a Google Doc/Word (just like the template I provided with these questions) or a Google Sheet/Excel.
You want a simple format that could be tested with a few prospects guided by the subject matter experts (you aren’t asking your prospect to fill in a spreadsheet).
We’ll cover the process of testing and validating your outputs in another article, but I hope this gives you enough to capture the goodness from your best people!
Get started
Whenever you are ready, there are three ways that I can help you accelerate your revenue.
Buyer Enablement Assessment - Answer nine questions in five minutes and receive your free personalised report to help you SDRs and AEs generate pipeline.
Revenue 360 Assessments - inspire and lead your revenue teams with revenue specific 360 reports designed for marketing, sales and customer success teams.
Buyer Enablement Platform - We’ll design, build and manage your buyer enablement platform on your behalf - generating quality pipeline in under 90 days.