Sean Sheppard, Sales Influencer and the Founder and CEO of GrowthX, joins me again on this episode.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• GrowthX is a Silicon Valley venture capital partnership with an accelerator focused on sales and an academy that trains people in sales, marketing, design thinking, and data science and aims at developing markets.
• Sean describes the ‘lasting-mover advantage’ for companies that own the customer use case. Sean reminds his clients to go slow so they can go fast later. Look first for the customer profile of ‘Mr. Right Now.’
• The first into a market is not the last in the market. Apple was not the first GUI; Google was not the first search engine. Sean gives examples. The first company to the market can rarely sustain its position.
• Sean teaches three keys to build a lasting-mover advantage. The first is to own the use case by earning it through value. The use case is changing at a faster rate than ever.
• Andy Grove wrote that only the paranoid survive and that we constantly have to be staying out in front of everyone and everything. Sean’s partner, Andrew Goldner, asks people where their focus is.
• The second key to build a lasting-mover advantage is to figure out, once you own the use case for the customer, how do you own their thoughts and actions around it?
• Think about what you’ll do next based on what you’ve learned from what you did for your customers yesterday. They will guide you to where you need to go.
• Sales organizations are wholly focused on acquisition — closing the deal. They invest in marketing, sales support, Sales Executives and technology but forget about customer onboarding, adoption, retention, and growth.
• The third key to lasting-mover advantage is to design an organization around the knowledge, skills, and behaviors needed for learning, defining, solving for, and owning the use case as it evolves, with the proper roles in place.
• Who drives the functional data-driven learning loop? Sean suggests it is not an individual contributor but a person with market development responsibility and with certain skills and knowledge — the commercialization leader.
• ‘Stage relevance’ refers both to the product within the market, and to the qualities of the person that proactively develops and maintains the evolving use case. Andy says you have to keep learning and developing to be prepared.
• Sean reads biographies, histories, self-help and personal development books — no fiction. Always have a mindset to learn, grow, and do better. Your life will start to change positively. Turn off the TV and read.

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Formerly the Accelerate! Your Sales podcast with Andy Paul