📚 Educate first, sell second
PJ Ricketson explains landing a mammoth deal running an education-led nurture campaign.
He overcame the fact that his internal champion worked at their biggest competitor & navigate the complex legal structures of a global company. Hear how!
Guest Feature
PJ started his career as a consultant in the non-profit space. Working with student organizations on college campuses across the country.
He then tried his hand in the recruiting space before ultimately joining Adobe as a sales rep.
During his Adobe tenure, PJ has climbed from a junior sales development rep to an enterprise account executive.
What problem does Adobe solve?
Aside from being the PDF king, Adobe empowers companies to engage with their customers in a 1-to-1 way while creating a scalable, consistent buyer’s journey.
Deal details
What are you selling?
- A creative cloud platform for an enterprise-level account
Where did the prospect come from?
- The prospect was on PJ’s target account list at an enterprise AE. He & his BDR
Company type
- A startup subsidiary under a global enterprise brand. Over 100,000 employees.
Prospecting method
- Invited prospect to attend a webinar. Nurtured through education until the timing was right.
Barriers to Overcome
- Highly competitive deal with decision makers across the globe.
- Legal & procurement were a nightmare to navigate
- End of the quarter. Had to rely on his champion relationship to squeeze the deal & hit quota.
Buyer types
- Users: Marketing department
- Decision Maker: VP of Marketing
Episode Highlights
Note: timestamps correlate with the full conversation
Account Research: BDR & AE Relationship (6:41)
Prospecting: Education-led nurture sequence (8:13)
Discovery: Gauge if a deal will close with one question (13:08)
3 Tips for Account Executives
1. Timing is everything.
No amount of 'cool features' can compete with not being top-of-mind for the prospect.
2. Don't sell them the farm right away.
Focus on what needs to be solved ASAP & allow them to grow as an account later.
3. Loop in the folks smarter than you in the deal early & often.
Stay at the helm of the deal, but allow other team members shine.
Watch the full conversation
Full transcript
Taylor Dahlem
Welcome back to How I Deal! We discuss past, closed, won, and lost deals, how they played out that way, and provide sales tips to use in your deals. Today, my name is Taylor Dahlem, full cycle Ae turn content guy, and always joined by my partner in crime, Junior. How's it going, man?
Junior Lartey
You know, great, actually, Taylor, I love our intro song. I might have to just bump to that at some point. But hey, it's episode seven, and I've been told that most podcasts die by episode seven. So we've officially made it.****
Taylor Dahlem
We're there, maybe. Or this is our last one.
Junior Lartey
We'll see.
Taylor Dahlem
Either way, brief refresher. As always, we want to make sure each conversation we're chatting through a past deal, we want to fictionalize or at least anonymize all names, all places to truly kind of get an even level view at every deal and make this as actionable as possible. But that means we want to dive deep from the first time you saw that prospect on your CRM, on your target account list, on LinkedIn, wherever, all the way to getting that final yes, via Zoom email, DocuSign, whatever that looks like. But today I'm honored to be joined by one of my great friends, PJ Ricketson. We started our careers together as consultants in the nonprofit world, and now he's gone on to do big and much better things. He has been climbing the ranks currently at Adobe, where he is currently positioned as an enterprise account executive. PJ, thanks for joining, man.
PJ Ricketson
Yeah, great to be here. Thank you, guys.
Junior Lartey
Very cool. PJ, tell us about your role and what problems Adobe solves.
PJ Ricketson
I'm an account executive in the enterprise growth section. And so essentially we work with companies that do over one hundred million and above in revenue. We're looking for those companies that are seeing a lot of growth but need to make that next step into the enterprise world. They're trying to become the next Fortune five hundred company. Now, a lot of people see Adobe, and they immediately think PDF, they think Photoshop that's there. You can go online, and you can buy that yourself. You don't have to talk to me. Right. The way that we interact with our customers is we I mean, I'm going to say this at the ten thousand-foot view, but we empower customers. We empower customers to power their business through a digital experience. Right. So that's kind of our ten thousand-foot view. What does that mean? We empower you to engage with your customers. We empower you to push them through, or I guess, guide them through a customer journey that leads to revenue.
Taylor Dahlem
More than a PDF. I know that's synonymous with Adobe, but you had to make your bread somewhere and expand from there. And it sounds like that's what you're thinking about every day, which is awesome, I guess. Let's just dive right in. PJ, what deal are you walking us through?
PJ Ricketson
Yeah. So this one was really exciting. One of my early deals that we picked up an opportunity right when I started this new role. And so we're going to keep the name anonymous, obviously. But with this one, they're a large company that has over one hundred thousand employees. They're a global enterprise. It's a name that I was extremely excited to have on my target list, something that I never truly thought we would even break into. And so it's something extremely exciting. Yeah.
Junior Lartey
It's fun to be talking about not just a whale, but a mammoth. The whale is like the big one that you have a chance at winning. This is like the full-blown mammoth. You're hunting this thing down.
Taylor Dahlem
You've seen whales before.
PJ Ricketson
But yeah, this is one of those ones. It's in the ice age. You're not even sure they exist anymore.
Taylor Dahlem
Great. Well, yes, PJ in past episodes, the account executives we've talked to, sales leaders we talked to, they became aware of their particular company and their particular prospect from a targeted list inbound and you kind of mention this, but how did you go about researching this deal and essentially how did you come across them outside of maybe just seeing them on that list?
PJ Ricketson
Yes. So a lot of the times, the way that we break into new accounts that we don't have an existing relationship with is by doing a lot of research through LinkedIn and finding out one who are our top prospects, who are the right folks to go after our ICP point of contacts. Right. The way that my BDR and I went about this is breaking down first, who's new to the company? The reason we like to go after them is that they're fresh on the boat. They're the folks that have experience from another company have started something new. Typically, when our customers are expanding roles within their marketing Department, who we sell to, they are doing so because they have a problem. They need more folks to be able to fix it. And typically that means there are inefficiencies or problems that we can help fix. So the way that we went after this one, I would say it's semi outbound, semi inbound because of the tactic that we used. We have partners that are hosting webinars educational webinars all the time. And so it's often sort of a soft in a nice foot in the door with anyone, especially new folks, to teams. And the way that we're trying to add value immediately without trying to sell something is, hey, come to this educational webinar. It's not even by Adobe. It's by one of our partners who are experts in this area. If they attend, that's when I'll say, how was it you want to talk? That's really when we make the ask. And so we know that they've shown some sort of interest. They've engaged with us in some way. This one, we were lucky to get the meeting with.
Junior Lartey
There's a few things that you mentioned in there that are already like gold Nuggets just to someone listening like myself, where you mentioned we, you kept saying we. And early on you mentioned me and my BDR looked at this. So I think for the traditional SaaS company where it is like a BDR or an SDR that's feeding to an Ae, you should never really feel alone is what I'm hearing. Because this wasn't just like PJ's, like, hey, I'm going to do this, but we are going to go after this talk about quickly because this isn't really traditional. But that relationship between you and your BDR.
PJ Ricketson
Yeah, this is something I have a ton of respect for. Bdrs. I was in the mud back in my day. That's how I started my career in sales. And when I was a BDR, I truly thought that I was only successful if my account executive actually closed the deal. Right. And so I always knew from then on that if I ever became an Ae, I would really want them to be a partner in my business because if they could not only get me the meeting or help set the meeting or prospect into the right accounts, I would have more success. And so the way we really broke this out is working together to understand who we should go after. What is the messaging that we should say? What is the messaging we should send them to them in our prospecting? And when should I come in versus when should it be an opener for our BDR to start it? Right. That's something that we'll never be able to perfect, but always learning from.
Junior Lartey
So you're doing research first, right? This is like, who at the company do we need to go after your workshop and messaging, bouncing ideas off each other and then it's prospecting. So you mentioned you pushed for this educational webinar that, hey, it's not even us. It's just experts about this thing that you should care about because it's got your role in the title. So How'd you go about even just asking them to attend or if they have interest?
PJ Ricketson
Yes, if we have their information, if we found their email on somewhere in the depths of the Internet, I'll go ahead and start with email. But we take a multi-channel approach for sure. I think a lot of the success that we've had is on LinkedIn being really transparent and that's why we try to add some value first before making any ass. It hit them up on LinkedIn saying, hey, I would love to invite you to Adobe's upcoming events, educational webinars, things that can help you out in your role. I'd like to be an advocate for you as a marketer. Right. Typically we utilize that as a foot in the door and then try to find ways to where our products can add value.
Junior Lartey
You're literally like creating a trade show almost where like the trade show. Two people just mutually show up. I have a booth, you're walking by. We talk. You're creating that opportunity where you're, like, pushing them to a webinar, pushing them to something where after the fact, you can then reach out and say, hey, how was it? What did you learn? Do you have a good experience, by the way? If you got value out of that, just imagine everything else we can get you. So I love that aspect because it's not your traditional I'm in your inbox, and I'm pitching you. It's like, let's provide value outside of who we are and what our company does. So that's really cool.
PJ Ricketson
Yeah, absolutely. It's funny you mentioned a trade show and having a booth. That's something Taylor Dahlem and I have a lot of experience with. And so I guess you're right. We just put that into a digital.
Junior Lartey
A little throw back for you guys.
Taylor Dahlem
Tabling always pays off. So, PJ, we're talking about the approach here. It's a trust you built up through these educational webinars, these back-and-forth conversations. At a certain point, you make that ask, and naturally, they say, yeah, sure, I'll hear you out because of that report you've built. So moves to that next most important part, in my opinion. So how did you go about that first meeting, that initial conversation, what most call the discovery? How did you approach that? And what did you learn throughout that process?
PJ Ricketson
Yeah, I definitely agree with you. Discovery is absolutely the most important part of my deals. I don't think any deal that I've been able to win or lose, for that matter, either succeeded or did not based on the discovery call. Right. I think in order to get the meeting, something I definitely want to mention is that timing is everything. And if they have a problem that is recent enough for them to care about, they're going to be a lot more willing to speak with you. If it's not recent or if the timing is not right. It doesn't matter how great your product is or how well you listen. They don't even want to talk to you if they don't have a problem. And so timing was right for this one. This person started fairly recently at the role. She was recognizing some issues that they had and was willing to hear us out. She knew our name, she knew our competitors, that's for sure. And she wanted to see what was up with this company. How can they solve our problems? So we got the discovery call. I looked in again. This is a team win over here. And so it wasn't just me, but my BDR hopped on, I hopped on. And then we also have a solutions consultant that can hop on as well. And so we took a stance from there to learn as much about what their role is, why they were hired onto this new role, and what that means for their success.
Junior Lartey
We chat about every deal before we actually jump onto the podcast. And there was one aspect that you mentioned and I love this. Like, I had never thought about this that you said. But you've got a few questions that you ask. And based on how they respond, you already know if they're up to speed on buying tech, if they're up to speed on the needs of the team or the company or in tune with potential impacts that you can have. You didn't mention that here. So I'm not really trying to out, but we wrote it down because I was like, Dang, there really are some questions that can expose more than just like the information they share, but what they know about what they're doing.
PJ Ricketson
Yeah. And I can touch on that for sure. Thanks for bringing that up, Junior. Essentially, we want to know things that help us, that help us sell our product. Right. But almost more importantly, just as you said, the way that they answer those questions can tell you a lot about whether the deal is going to close, what you should do next, how you should run that deal. And a lot of the times it can be as simple as, do they know how to answer that question? Is it something that they're even thinking about? Because if not, then that completely changes the trajectory of this deal. I'm now more about educating them on what best practices might be. I'm trying to not only utilize Adobe's brand as this Uber large marketing company that has a lot of customers that do things great. Right. But utilizing that to build credibility and saying these are some best practices that we've seen, these are some things that marketers who buy our products care about. Is that something you think you should care about? Right. That's the approach that I may take if they don't know how to answer my questions. Now, if they do, this could completely change it in the opposite direction. Right. We may get way more in the nitty-gritty of how our products can solve very specific issues that they're seeing across business. Orgs, across different use cases, across different pain points. And so it's really all about, should I build an educational foundation or are they already educated on what we do? And I just need to show them how we do it better.
Junior Lartey
Yes. This is perfect. Okay, so quick workshop for all the listeners. Go back to your most recent discovery. Look at all the questions that you were asking through those and see if any of those questions lead to any obvious buying-type responses. And if you feel like you're not getting enough loop in your VP of sales. Hey, VP of sales, I heard about this thing where based on how someone responds to a question, they can tell me a lot about the deal. Go workshop that I'm sure there will be some insights, a huge problem in sales demos is getting like that tailored experience so that your prospects feel like, wow, PJ really understands our problem, really understands the organization as compared to being like, well, you can do this and you can do this and you can do this. And not much applies. So was there anything through that demo stage that really stands out as far as experience and what you had to do?
PJ Ricketson
Definitely. And this was really another one of the pieces that showed we were listening to them and we understood their issues. And throughout our discovery, we discovered that this project didn't just impact their marketing team, but it impacted their sales team, it impacted their leadership, it impacted business units around the globe, and it impacted their customers. Right. And so the way that we needed to go about the demo was not to try to rush through everything and get the deal done as fast as possible. We really had to almost slow down. In order to keep the deal going forward. We really had to break down the demos into multiple segments and demo specifically to each business unit. So we started with our champion, how can we make your day-to-day easier and how can we make you successful? And once we understood that and built her Buyin, that's when we could ask, well, how are you impacting? How does your role and your success impact other roles? Let's demo them. Let's show them now how this first step makes them successful. Now, through that, we created buyers not only with the marketing team but with the sales team, with the leadership.
Taylor Dahlem
Yeah, I think demo-wise, Junior and I have talked about this before and talked to others about it, but splitting that up and really tailoring that experience makes all the difference, and it gives you a leg up to just say, hey, specifically, here's what you care about, even if it's just one feature, one aspect, one point of the problem that you solved or the pain that you're looking to fix, that's just going to go all make a world of difference and take the distance for the rest of the deal. But I guess throughout that demo process, probably a few things came up, a few conversations in terms of, hey, maybe this isn't going to work as well as we thought. Certain barriers, certain objections. I'm curious, how did you kind of go about handling those maybe? Did each one specifically have a different barrier you kind of had overcome? I'd love to kind of hear that breakdown.
PJ Ricketson
Yeah, definitely. And where we fit in the market, this is really where the first barrier came up. While they are a global entity, this specific business unit still functions as a startup which provides a challenge for Adobe because we can be a great fit for those SMB companies. But like I mentioned in the beginning, we're trying to get those companies who are on the cusp of becoming an enterprise and take them to that next level, which means we may not be the best fit for the small startups, the small SMBs. However, we can take you to that next level. So the first one was we knew we had competitors that are really good fits in that space. So we had to really educate them on, well, here's how we differ from them and here's why. You're already ready. You're already past that step. You've done this, and you've set up this foundation already. You may be further along than you think. So we had to show them exactly what that meant for their business and not just a few competitive BS on well, we can save you fifteen minutes if you do it this way. That's helpful, but that's not going to get the deal done. So that was really the first barrier is understanding where we fit in the market, whether that's from a capability standpoint or even a pricing standpoint. And coming to pricing, I think that's a barrier. Every account executive, every salesperson comes across. We really had to understand from a budget standpoint a balance of how I can grow this deal. Because I have a number to hit versus what is the best fit for my customer, and how can we establish a long-term relationship that they can grow into? And then the third one was extraneous factors that I didn't even know were really going to become issues working with global companies. There are a lot of legal factors. There are a lot of different use cases in different countries. And this is something where you almost had to tailor the legal conversation to each individual use case as well. Right. So those are areas where barriers came up that I needed to loop in experts in those fields. On my end, it's above my pay grade. It's above my knowledge. Let's let the experts talk about that and hash it out.
Junior Lartey
I get the legal aspect. Right. As you mentioned, it's above my pay grade. Like above my experience, maybe even legally. I'm not qualified to have this conversation. So to overcome that, I'm curious, how long did the legal aspect go back and forth and what did you do to make sure it was still moving along and not just like a total dead end here?
PJ Ricketson
You can never start the conversation early enough because it's going to take longer than you want it to. Right. The worst thing you want to do is feel like the deal is out of your hands and you no longer can be adding value to the customer. Right. So if you can start that conversation while you're still proving value, while you're still having other conversations that are really more, even more contract-based or pricing based. Right. But you can run those side by side. That's my recommendation. Start earlier. There's always a balance of whether or not your prospect wants to. If you're not the vendor-of-choice yet, maybe it's too early but maybe as soon as you get vendor-of-choice, say, okay, these are questions that I need to get answered. What can I be thinking of before it becomes a problem that makes this deal go past the deadline?
Junior Lartey
Yeah, that's a great thought. Like start that legal process earlier while you're still doing the sales motion and working with direct decision-makers who probably want the product at this point like they want it, you're still just working through. So at some point, after all this, we've got to ask for the pen to paper. So where did you get the final yes here.
PJ Ricketson
So this is really where my champion came in. And we built a rapport with her. We brought her on board. We know that she believes in this product and that it's the right one for her company. Now we need to convince her executives. With a global company, you don't always have access to every single executive that needs to say yes in order to sign off. So we got access to as many as we could. And then at some point, you have to empower your champion to start internally selling for you. Right. And there are conversations that are had behind the scenes that you just don't have access to. Even if you think you've met everyone, there's probably still someone that can say no and someone that needs to say yes. Right. So this is really what happened, where we tried to empower her to the best of our ability, and then we do send her off. That's where the internal conversations either teetered over the edge or not. So we allowed her to have that conversation. We set up a follow-up call immediately afterward. And this is where we got the vendor of choice. That was that step where I guess my most proud moment because we knew that she came from a competitor. We knew that the competition was extremely huge within this, from a pricing perspective, from a capabilities perspective. And so it was a huge win for us. I guess to answer your question, we set up that last step where we knew we needed to get the s, and then we set up a follow-up right after so we can discuss it. Yes or no. Can we move forward or not? And can we agree on a meeting before you even get that answer? So that way we can at least know the answer and where to move forward or where to backpedal.
Junior Lartey
Yeah. So you got the yes. It was a pretty clear win in this. You get the vendor of choice overall deal, one that's an incredible jury.
PJ Ricketson
My heart still races every time I talk about it because it's nerve-wracking trying to bring this one in. Every business needs revenue, right? So your managers are counting on you. It's the end of the quarter. The clock is ticking.
Taylor Dahlem
Always ticking, always ticking. But this is an awesome win, and I'm sure. A great start to what probably expanded from there. I guess. All that being said, this deal in scope as well as any other deal you're currently working. We'd love to hear from you on what are three things that any sales rep, any account executive listening today could take with them and an inch closer to that closed one.
PJ Ricketson
Yes. So I mentioned one of them earlier and its timing. You really have to respect the timing of your customers' or your prospects' problems. If that problem is not recent enough for them to care about what you solve, it doesn't matter how great your tool is, they may not even want to talk to you. However, if your tool solves those problems, eventually the timing is going to come. So you have to stay on top of it. And this is why prospecting matters. This is why being persistent matters. Because eventually, you may catch them with an email on the day that your competitor messed up and that's the time that they're willing to go to an event. That's the time when they're willing to learn more. That's the time when they're maybe curious. So timing is huge. The next thing is really understanding your customer's needs. And I know that's super simple to say, but it's really putting their needs before your need to grow this deal. And this is what really helped me in our deal because we listened to how they could get from that feeling of being a startup to feeling like they could actually take the steps to become an enterprise-level marketing team. And we didn't try to sell them the whole farm right away because we knew that we wanted a long-term relationship with them and we made them feel that they could have a long-term relationship with us and grow with us. And then the last thing is to loop in the folks that are smarter than you. That's the reason they're there. Try to anticipate as much as you can in terms of who you should loop in and when and get them in as early as possible and leverage your leadership to know what hasn't been crossed off yet. What are the risks of this deal and who are the people that can answer those questions to make sure we get past that hurdle?
Junior Lartey
PJ, it was great to have you very insightful conversation and the deal that you walked through today. So if you've tuned in today, go connect with PJ on LinkedIn. A lot was said today. Build a relationship with your BDR STR workshop questions and what they reveal in Discovery. PJs three things timing. Listen, bring smarter people. You might have to relisten to this one because it was pretty jam-packed.
PJ Ricketson
Awesome. Thank you, guys. I really appreciate it.
Taylor Dahlem
Yes, a ton of information. And just like that, episode seven is in the books, episode eight on the way. I think they pass the smell. But PJ, you're awesome to have on could have asked for a better conversation. But thanks for tuning in everybody that's listening at home today. We will see you next time.
