The LeadG2 Podcast
The LeadG2 Podcast is dedicated to helping sales organizations grow. Each week host Dani Buckley (VP/GM at LeadG2) discusses proven sales enablement strategies and real-life examples with experts and thought leaders from across industries.
The LeadG2 Podcast
Crafting Powerful VBR's with Emily Estey
In this episode, we’re exploring how to go about creating valid business reason’s (AKA, VBR’s) that are truly compelling, that clearly convey the reason why people should want to meet with YOU!
We ask questions like: what are some top tips to think about when crafting a VBR? What are some common mistakes to avoid? And how should sales leaders go about coaching their sellers in the process of developing VBR’s?
Joining me to help break it all down is Emily Estey, VP/Senior Consultant at The Center for Sales Strategy.
Emily brings up some great points from her years of experience, like:
- Why a solid VBR should communicate 3 aspects: empathy, expertise, and problem-solving ability.
- How a solid VBR is not about you, it’s about the product.
- And finally, why thinking like a consumer can provide some of the greatest insights when creating a valid business reason.
Welcome to Sell Smarter Sell Faster, a podcast dedicated to helping sales organizations grow. Each week, we discuss proven sales enablement strategies and real life examples with experts and thought leaders from across industries. I'm your host, Dani Buckley, Vice President and General Manager at LeadG 2, a sales performance agency. In this episode, we're exploring how to go about creating valid business reasons, aka VBRs that are truly compelling, that clearly convey the reason why people should want to meet with you. We ask questions like what are some top tips to think about when crafting a VBR, What are some common mistakes to avoid, And how should sales leaders go about coaching their sellers in the process of developing VBRs?
Dani Buckley:Joining me to help break it all down is Emily Estey, VP, Senior Consultant at The Center for Sales Strategy. Emily brings up some great points from her years of experience, like why a solid VBR should communicate three aspects empathy, expertise and problem-solving ability. How a solid VBR is not about you. It's about the prospect. And, finally, why thinking like a consumer can provide some of the greatest insights when creating a valid business reason. All right, Emily, I am so excited to have you here today. Thank you for joining us. How are you?
Emily Estey:I'm good. Thank you for having me.
Dani Buckley:Yeah, we've worked together for over 10 years and you're one of my favorite people to chat with, and so I'm excited to talk about this topic. It's one that I think a lot of people in the sales industry across leadership or sales people, whatever it might be might think they know all about this, but I think they're going to get some really good nuggets from this, things that maybe they've forgotten or maybe aren't using, and so I'm excited to talk about valid business reasons. Yeah, absolutely So. Let's start with the basics. Let's get everybody on the same page. What is a valid business reason? How are they used and why are they important?
Emily Estey:Yeah, i mean, it's simply stated. It's the reason why people would want to meet with you, right? I mean, it's just that's it. It's. What reason are we giving that people would want to meet with us?
Dani Buckley:Yeah, simply stated, got it, and they're used in the typically we're talking here in this reference of the sales process, right When we're talking to.
Emily Estey:I mean typically used to get an initial appointment. That's really where they're used And they're. We want to set the stage, even before we actually meet with someone, that we are, that we can be a trusted and valued partner. So I think a lot of people assume that when they're trying to reach out to somebody and trying to connect with somebody, that that's not an opportunity to show that they offer insights, that they can be a trusted partner, that they add value to the conversation, and a valid business reason helps us do that even before we've had the opportunity to meet with someone. So that's why it's important.
Dani Buckley:Got it Great, okay, so let's talk about tips. What tips do you have for salespeople that are creating valid business reasons? How can they like best research? What steps or best practices should they be following?
Emily Estey:I think one of the. You know there's a really fine balance between writing a great VBR and brevity, right? I always say there's three things we really want to accomplish with the VBR We want to express empathy, we want to express expertise And the last thing is problem solving capability. And so I always tell people to try to do those three things in like two sentences, one or two, two to three, one to three sentences. So it's really just kind of it's fairly short. And you know, researching there's just all kinds of places to research, right, and I think that's the piece. You can use category briefs on our website. I'm going to give that pitch because we do have tons of insights within those And the reason we created those was to make writing VBRs easier. But you know, researching on Google, all of that sort of stuff like researching the person that you're trying to get in touch with the decision maker.
Emily Estey:You're trying to reach, kind of figuring out the target persona for that person. But it's, we don't want to go too deep, but we want to go deep enough that we are bringing value to the conversation.
Dani Buckley:Yeah. And it's not like it doesn't feel generic, but it doesn't. It feels like they. This is a unique email to this person, right? That's right, exactly.
Emily Estey:That's right, yep.
Dani Buckley:Great. Can you give us an example of a?
Emily Estey:good one. I can give you an example. I have one right here Great. Right here it's handy, right here Perfect Somebody in the banking industry and it's going to. It is actually a couple of sentences per you know expertise, problem solving and empathy. So I'm going to go ahead and start. I'm reading right now from script. It says hi there, as a leader in the banking industry. It seems, from what I'm reading, you've got a lot on your plate. You're probably thinking that's an understatement. That's the empathy piece.
Emily Estey:Recently I saw an article that stated that transformation is the key to the banking industry's future. It went on to say that, to be most effective, banks and financial institutions should redefine themselves as agile technology companies in the financial services industry, not the other way around. I found that to be eye-opening and I'm interested in your thinking as it pertains to that. That's the expertise piece. I have worked with several similar sized banks and finance financial institutions to help them create campaigns to help the end user understand and maximize the technologies they're investing in. One of the banks I work with was focused on mobile app downloads for a new product they were taking to market. They saw an 83% increase in those downloads by the end of the campaign.
Emily Estey:That's the problem-solving piece, of course, always asking for the meeting. I'd like to sit a meeting with you, either face-to-face or virtually. Give them a couple choices Does Monday or Thursday work better for you? Give them something to say yes or no to. But those are the three ways that we want to do that. So in that framework, that's what we want you to do is use that framework to write the VBR.
Dani Buckley:Love it, love it, and it has me thinking. I can't take off my inbound marketing hat because it's always on for me, which is I love that you're referencing a piece of content, and so this was a third-party piece of content, an article that they read on the industry, probably from a trusted source. Great Love that. And also, sometimes, if your company is blogging and creating really valuable content, that could be the VBR. Hey, we recently did this research study on this, or we recently wrote about this topic that I thought you might like, about a customer similar to you, or whatever it might be.
Emily Estey:Absolutely. Yeah, i think, relevant content. We want to make sure We don't want to be telling people things they already know. Mobile app downloads are important to banks. I think they know that. We want to make sure that we have an insight that's insightful, right? Yeah, yeah.
Dani Buckley:Yeah, great, love it. Okay. So we talked about what to do. What about what not to do? What are some common mistakes that you see people making when they're trying to develop VBRs, and how can they avoid them?
Emily Estey:I mean talking about themselves, talking about their product, talking about, i mean, what I see most of all is them selling before they've proved any value. Right, yeah, if they've earned the opportunity to sell, they're already selling. So if we you know, i work for, you know such and such company we have this product. It's amazing. I think you'd really like it. We also have this product too. This is why we do what we do, like it's just people just tune out. So what I always tell people to do is, like, would you respond to what you're writing, you know? like, be the filter, or have your colleague be the filter. Like, would you actually respond to that initial VBR, to that initial email? And if you wouldn't, then you probably should go back to the drawing board. But I think that is the talking about ourselves, or our product or our company. That's just not insightful. It doesn't. it's not expertise, it's not everything.
Dani Buckley:Yeah.
Emily Estey:We're talking about ourselves. So, that's the number one thing that I see, and I see it a lot, and I think we do that because that's what we know, right, we reference what we know And so you know, digging in and referencing something that that client may not know, that's really what we're looking for.
Dani Buckley:Got it. Yeah, makes sense. Okay, so I apparently can't have an episode on this season without talking about AI. That's what we're doing right now. Right? So how do you think AI can help with creating VBRs? Are you seeing anything there?
Emily Estey:I sure am. I did a presentation for one of the companies that I work with And, on the subject, on VBRs, then, prior to the meeting, i had typed in like you know, letter from a marketing professional to a bank, or something like that. And then I just got more and more specific. I said you know right of VBR that expresses empathy, expertise and problem solving capability to a bank coming from a marketing professional Unbelievable, i mean really amazing. Obviously, that's always the caveat with AI. You got the little asterisks. Like you read through it, make it shorter because generally they're there, they can be fairly long. The other thing, too, is when we're talking about problem solving capability, you don't want to say something like this is off subject of AI. But I just thought of this. You don't want to probably goes back to the last question we had. We don't want to. If we're talking about a success story, we want to be specific about the success. So AI is not going to do that for you.
Dani Buckley:So if you do?
Emily Estey:I mentioned that we, you know, increase downloads by 83%. You don't want to say we work with lots of people and they get great success, Like that's what AI will say.
Dani Buckley:Yeah.
Emily Estey:You don't want to be more specific there, but I think it's a great tool. We'll see how it all plays out, but certainly a starting point, okay.
Dani Buckley:Yeah, i love that you mentioned that too. The general one I feel like I see that so often, where people are like just like a lot of people do, just good enough VBRs, and I think that's the one thing I see the most is like a little too general about stuff like that. Yeah, like, yeah, just missing either a data point or at least a link to something, a case study or whatever, something that like backs this up. Right, exactly.
Emily Estey:Right, so being specific, having a real story. And then I also see people with you know that are writing VBRs and, like I'm new, i don't have a VBR And I'm always like, well, the VBR isn't about you, it's about the product and whether the product works.
Dani Buckley:Yeah.
Emily Estey:It works right. We know it works, so you steal those success stories from wherever you can get them right.
Dani Buckley:Totally, Totally. And we talk a lot about sales enablement. So I'm just going to like plug in here for those listening I mean that's another piece. of sales enablement is making sure salespeople have those things right, That they have these metrics, these numbers. They're not having to come up with this stuff. Like how wonderful if there was this arsenal of here's little snippets that you can use for VBRs, that back up, you know, for different industries or different types of problems we solve. And I just think that's a thing for people to be thinking of when you're thinking about sales enablement. content It's not always like some big piece of content. Sometimes it's just a sentence or two that they can have, or hear the word doc with a bunch of testimonials or whatever. it is right That people can pull from easily.
Emily Estey:Yep. Yep, i love that, Yeah, To have that kind of stuff at hand. You know, generally our salespeople are fast moving. They're not, you know, naturally some of them are natural researchers, but they're also like I want the information and I want to go with the information. So, anytime we can offer any sales enablement to our AEs to help them move faster, to get in front of people faster, all of those things super important.
Dani Buckley:Wait, you mean to help themselves smarter and sell faster? That's a touchy right, tani, great, okay. So let's talk to sales leaders now. What tips do you have for them on kind of coaching and helping salespeople with this process of developing VBRs, because I know that matters a lot, and so what are some proven ways you've seen? I know this is what you do is help them a lot with this.
Emily Estey:Yeah, i think they need to know the framework, they need to know what we're going for, and they do. They generally managers that I work with. They generally do know what a great VBR sounds like, but we often don't, as managers, get involved this early in the process, and I think that that's really important that we do right.
Emily Estey:We've always said for years at CSS that the end depends on the beginning, and I think that's really true. I think one of the things that I think is a really great exercise is to do a VBR audit, and so what that looks like is you do you know there's not a manager out there that can watch every VBR that goes out? Yeah, that's an impossible ask, but they can take like a window of time, like over the next two weeks. Show me every VBR that's going out the door, just so that I can kind of get a snapshot of what we're saying and how I can help improve what we're talking about. Even if it's just a week, i mean doesn't really matter, but send me your VBRs through this time or just put them all in a Word document.
Dani Buckley:Yeah.
Emily Estey:Come over to me. I think that is a really great idea because that's how you can really obviously know what's going out the door, who needs help with what, and how to insert yourself into making those consistent and engaging, making sure that we're saying the right things right at the beginning.
Dani Buckley:Yeah, With an emphasis on like this is to help you. This is so I can find where to support you. You know, i think I could see managers doing that and then it feeling like Mike, what are you doing? You know, and it's like no this is really you have to own that. This is to support them, not like catch them doing something wrong.
Emily Estey:And I think that's all about normalizing that kind of coaching.
Dani Buckley:Yes, you're right.
Emily Estey:So it's about you know we do a VBR audit every quarter. I'm going to ask for VBR because if you can't do it just one time, because then you don't know if you have improvement. So and same with other parts of the process as well. But you know a VBR audit every quarter telling people it's going to happen. Here's why it's happening. I'm here to help that sort of conversation.
Dani Buckley:Yeah, love it Great. So people always love to hear kind of like like real life success stories. Do you have any that you can share of like when someone just got it really right, did anything come?
Emily Estey:to mind. I think one of the things that the people that I have that are really really good at this and there are, there are quite a few that are really good at this It's taken them a ton of practice and it takes a ton of practice and it takes their people that don't write VBRs in a vacuum, right, they don't. Yeah, they bounce ideas off other people. I have somebody in coaching right now with me that that is the focus of our coaching is to get him better at writing VBRs.
Emily Estey:And he's a season seller, yeah, but what it takes, practice, practice, practice. And I think if you don't have a framework, i think working without the framework is makes it really really hard. So you know we have tons of stuff to download about VBRs that you can look at, but I think, using the framework, people that are using the framework and people that are practicing and bouncing their VBRs off other people- Yeah, and the ultimate metric of success folks is Prospects.
Dani Buckley:Respond to your email, right? I mean, that's the thing It's like. If you think you have great VBRs and you're not getting any appointments, then something's wrong. Right Yeah, you need to go back to the drawing board, right?
Emily Estey:For sure, Yeah, And the other thing too. I think also one of the pieces of advice that I tell people all the time is we couple a great VBR with the don't give up process, with the process of connecting, And I always say use the same VBR throughout. Like you want consistent messaging, right? Yeah, So consistent messaging throughout. You can respond back to it. You can say again this is why I'm reaching out. I've seen this insight, So going back to that same one, I think sometimes people think they need to write a different VBR every time. They touch every touch point, And I don't actually advise that at all.
Dani Buckley:Yeah, i think they use the same one. That's really good advice because I can imagine people would feel that way. And then also just to reiterate what you said I think that's a really big one is a mistake people make is they think I have crafted this amazing VBR. I sent the perfect email at the right time at the right subject line to the right person. Nobody responded. It's over right. Like we know better, they may not see that email. They may see the 50 value send. So that's why that consistent messaging but also a frequency of contact, like we can't forget the basics, exactly, exactly, ok. so to close us out any parting thoughts, anything we didn't touch on, that you want to be sure we pass along related to this topic to our listeners.
Emily Estey:I think, just using one piece of advice that I always say to people too is think like a consumer. Those can be some of the most powerful VBRs. I remember I was working and I've said this, told this story so many times, but it's just so powerful to me. Years ago I was working with a seller in Richmond, virginia, and she was talking about some restaurant she went frequented And she's like my husband and I go there all the time and we can bring the kids. They have a grape wine list, but they also have crayons and things to color on for my kids And it's a great menu And I just can't think of a VBR. I was like you kind of just said one right.
Emily Estey:So make sure that it's kind of that wallet marketing idea. You have, as a salesperson, a vast array of experiences outside your job And use those experiences to help you craft your insight. Like, maybe you are going to a restaurant and you notice that the dinner crowd's really busy but the lunch crowd isn't. I mean those kinds of things. Use your own consumer behavior to help you as you craft VBRs. I think those can be some of the most powerful ones.
Emily Estey:In fact a lot of people I know that have a personal experience with something, with some business or experience. Those are some of the best VBRs we have out there.
Dani Buckley:Awesome.
Emily Estey:Awesome.
Dani Buckley:Thank you, Emily. You're welcome. Always a pleasure chatting with you. I appreciate your time Absolutely. And yeah, and for those listening, you can connect with me or Emily. Our contact information is in the show notes. I know Emily and I are both available if you have a follow-up when I connect on LinkedIn, whatever that is.
Dani Buckley:We're here and happy to chat more, And we'll also include some links to some VBR resources as well, because we have a wealth of those at the Center for Sales Strategy. So we'll include that in the show notes too. And thanks for listening. We look forward to seeing you all in the next episode of Sell Smart or Sell Faster. Until then, happy selling. Thanks for joining us on Sell Smart or Sell Faster. If you like what you hear, click that Subscribe button so you never miss an episode. Be sure to visit our website sellsmartersellfastercom, where you can find even more helpful sales enablement and inbound marketing content.
