Show some emotion to differentiate your business from other partners
- Robin Seidner
- Feb 5
- 3 min read
Updated: Feb 19
I worked at Salesforce for 10 years, where as a Director in the Alliances organization, we always focused on partner metrics we could measure—co-sell pipeline attach rates, ACV, certification growth, etc. These were always great internal measurements for success. From the outside, Salesforce is known as a wide-reaching branding and marketing company and a trusted name. The metrics we tracked were the direct result of a lot of those sales and marketing messages. But why?
People who buy Salesforce (or Braze, Hubspot, Snowflake, Google) solutions have feelings associated with aligning their firm with the brand, and those feelings and emotions are often the basis for their purchase.
Emotion drives sales
All the research into buying decisions indicates that purchasing decisions are based on emotion, not logic. In fact, emotions account for buying decisions 92% of the time (people use logical stuff to justify their emotional purchase just 8% of the time). This is a super important thing to consider when you are creating a compelling go-to-market.
Even in B2B, buyers are still driven by their emotions. They want to feel good about the products and services they buy, and they want to work with companies they trust. This also applies if you are trying to help sellers at the tech partner you work with—no matter if it’s Salesforce, Braze, Hubspot, Snowflake, Google—decide they want to work with you together on deals. That's where showing some emotion can help you differentiate your business.
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When I was a professional copywriter years ago, working with technology companies that spent the majority of their messaging on feature/functionality, I’d always ask them, “How does your product/service/solution help make your client more beautiful, stronger, skinnier, happier?” Sometimes I’d get funny looks, but since people make emotional buying decisions, you have to frame your GTM messaging in that way. It can help change how you think about a B2B go-to-market message if you wrap it in a consumer framework.
If your consulting practice sounds just like everyone else, you give a prospect—or a seller at your technology partner—no compelling reason to want to work with you. So how do you create compelling go-to-market messaging that creates an emotional response?
Here are a couple of ideas that I see work to differentiate your business:
Comparing your service to a necessary personal service: My friends at MediaVault, a company that provides media fund management for companies to safeguard their ad spends, has smartly compared what they do to real estate escrow—a way to safeguard your good faith deposit on a home purchase without risking losing that money to an unscrupulous seller. This technique—comparing to a personal buying decision—is particularly good when you’re creating a new product or service category—something that companies need, but don’t necessarily know they need, or are unsure of the credibility of the solution since it’s so new.
Find the emotional connection to your service: The emotion vs logic issue is the reason why being a jack of all trades or using weak value (“We implement all X company’s products,” “We’re a Platinum tier partner,” “We get 10 stars on all our customer SATs”) doesn’t compel a prospect to work with your firm (or a seller to throw you a deal).
Build trust with sellers: Don’t call a tech vendor rep for a handout. Build trusted relationships by helping them, just as you would a friend or colleague. This is not by buying the team dinner or taking them to TopGolf. Help them make their work lives less stressful and more successful.
Some possibilities:
Bring them a deal and make it super easy for them to get it through close
Provide them intel on their client (without alienating the client)
Create compelling outcomes for clients that are repeatable—whether that be
Turning around red accounts (from mad, to feeling better)
Having a corporate cheerleader (think reference account and/or good speaker at a customer event)
Promising SLAs on SOW turnarounds
Your GTM must have compelling emotion—whether it’s the feeling customers and/or reps get from working with you, the compelling risks you save them from by working with you, or the feel-good emotions they get when the deal is over the finish line or the implementation is complete (more beautiful, skinnier, faster, etc).
Are you an MSP, digital agency or other services firm looking to enhance messaging or strategy for your business in 2025? Let’s connect. I can help you and/or your executive team include emotion in your story as part of a GTM Strategy service package.
Visit the sign up page to get started with a free 30 minute GTM review.