Jeff Koser joined me on the Conquer Local podcast to break down the buyer’s journey and why every seller needs to find their Zebra ideal customer.
Every seller I have ever coached has opinions on the buying process. Very few have a system for it. Jeff Koser does. He is the CEO of Zebrafi, award-winning co-author of Selling to Zebras, and after 30 plus years in sales he has built what he calls the science of selling. When he joined me on the Conquer Local Podcast, he reframed the whole conversation from sales cycle to buyers journey.
Find Your Zebra
The premise of Jeff’s book is that every company has an ideal prospect profile, their zebra. It mirrors their best customers. When you do the work upfront to verify that a prospect actually has the problem you solve, and when you can quantify the value of solving it, selling stops feeling like selling.
Jeff put it beautifully:
“If everyone called on a zebra, the profile of that perfect prospect, and approached them with a verification that they have the problem you solve, and you were able to quantify the value of solving that problem for them, the world would just be a better place. People would feel better about sales. They would feel better about granting everyone an appointment.”
That is the entire pitch for ICP discipline in one paragraph.
Buyers Want a Buying Cycle, Not a Sales Cycle
This was the sentence that reframed my own thinking. Your prospect does not want to experience your sales cycle. They want to experience their own buying cycle. That means collaborative next steps, painted into a picture that fits their world and feels good to them.
The modern buyer is more educated than any generation before them. They want to:
- Read the white paper
- Attend the webinar
- Do due diligence on their own timeline
- Opt in or out of each stage
Your content strategy has to support that. If your only motion is “book a demo,” you are out of step with how buyers actually buy.
Value Does Not End at the Close
Jeff called out a trap that nearly every organization falls into. A seller pitches a value proposition to win the deal. Then, the moment the signature happens, the value proposition disappears until it is time to save the account or pitch an upsell. That is backwards.
You have to revisit the value conversation throughout the relationship. Marketing needs to stay involved after the close. Customer success needs to reinforce the original promise. This is the same argument I made in my piece on the benefits of marketing to your existing customers.
The Science of Selling
What I respect most about Jeff is that he does not sell charisma. He sells a repeatable system. Every step is measurable. Every next action is collaboratively agreed. Every deal gets qualified against a clear zebra profile, not a seller’s gut feeling.
If you want to pair this with more on how great teams operationalize the fundamentals, read my post on what makes a great sales team.
What I Took Away From Jeff
- Define your zebra and only hunt that profile
- Quantify the value of solving the problem before you pitch
- Design a buying cycle, not a sales cycle
- Keep the value conversation alive after the close
Jeff Koser and the team at Zebrafi are doing some of the most disciplined work in the sales enablement space. If you are rebuilding how your organization qualifies, pitches, and retains, start with the zebra question.
Who is your zebra, and what percentage of your current pipeline actually matches that profile?