VECS: Identifying Vetted, Educated, and Cold Buyers

Every buyer is unique, but they all want a great sales experience. The only way to consistently deliver these exceptional experiences is to know where they are in their journey and get on the right path as quickly as possible.

A problem in modern B2B sales is that all buyers are being pushed through the same journey. The reality is that buyers can reach you at step one, all the way to step six, or anywhere in between. Sellers must shift away from one-size-fits-all solutions and adopt strategies to adapt their processes to fit their buyers. 

When building a sales process that prioritizes customer experience, you first start with identifying your buyers’ education and intent levels. To do this, you must understand the difference between cold, educated, vetted, and self-service customers. Each will have different starting points and often go through the process at different speeds. However, with a system in place to identify their level, you can customize their sales journey to ensure a positive sales experience. VECS is that system.

The idea of creating customized sales journeys has gained momentum in recent years because of its effectiveness in optimizing sales processes for speed. We know it as one of the “4Cs of Innovative Selling” developed by Skaled CEO Jake Dunlap and broken down in his book The Innovative Seller. VECS is a concept introduced in the book as a way to help navigate and build out customized sales journeys for vetted, educated, cold, and self-service customers.

Operating under the assumption that everyone needs to start at step one is something that comes from traditional frameworks. These outdated methodologies hurt your customer experience if they’re too rigid and linear for the more educated modern buyers. As a result, sellers have unintentionally slowed their processes down and frustrated many of their buyers.

To build the ideal sales experience, you have to put yourself in that seat as the buyer. Map out the customer journey, and at each step, ask yourself three sets of questions:

1. 1. What would you need to see to want to engage with your company? Would you want to see a piece of content, social proof, or something else that would move you to engage?
   2. What would you want to see next? Once you have engaged with your company, what would be ideal to see next? What would help you before talking to someone once you have engaged?
   3. When would you want to talk to someone or have someone help guide you through the initial stages of the process? What about the next step? And so on?

Your sales process has to be efficient for your buyer to have a good experience. 77% of B2B buyers say that their last purchase was difficult or too complex. Sales leaders have expressed similar frustrations with their own buying experiences. 61% of buyers also say they feel like just another number. The simple fact is that every buyer wants speed and customization. Forcing everyone on the same journey will only work against you. 

In this article, we’ll outline how you can start building the ideal sales experience using VECS, a tool that helps you meet buyers where they are using four key identifiers: 

• • Vetted Customers 
  • Educated Customers 
  • Cold Customers 
  • Self-Service Customers 

Triage Your Vetted and Educated Customers

The first two identifiers in the VECS framework are vetted customers and educated customers. These customers have a strong level of education and intent, and they want speed and efficiency. They are active participants in the buying process. By the time they reach you, they’ve evaluated many of their options and have done a good amount of self-led research. 

Vetted and educated customers don’t want that first call to be a qualification call like it commonly is. Instead, make it a discovery call. Ask intent-based questions that help you understand where that person is in the actual buying process. 

If someone comes inbound, they’re not reaching you at the beginning of their journey. They’ve moved past the initial stages and likely meet you at least at the evaluation stage. Your process needs to have plays to triage these specific buyers. Just sending an email in advance of the first call can progress them to step three in your process. VECS helps you determine the pacing of that forward movement.

> For more insights on VECS, watch the exclusive episode with Jake and download the worksheets.

Vetted Customers

What is a vetted buyer? Vetted buyers have not only done their research on you and your product but have likely already spoken to your competition to weigh their options. They may have experience using your product in a past position or heard from a colleague about their experiences. Along with these characteristics, they check all of these additional boxes:  

✔️ Have an understanding of pricing

✔️ Have a clear business outcome they are looking to achieve

✔️ Have a clear timeline

✔️ Have already defined the evaluation process

When using VECS to map out your customer journey, you’ll want to think about your vetted buyers first. What would their journey through your process look like if they checked all of these boxes? What would the ideal customer experience be? You can then make decisions like what stages of the process you can move them through and who needs to be on the call on both sides. 

Educated Customers

If the buyer only checks a few of the boxes for vetted customers, they still shouldn’t be starting at step one in the journey. These are your educated buyers. Usually, when someone is educated, they are not in the heavy evaluation stage. They have, however, talked to a couple of people, narrowed it down, and now they want to talk. Keep in mind that by the time they reach you, educated buyers have done the following: 

✔️ Have researched your offering via a peer or online resource

✔️ Have a clear business outcome they are looking to achieve

✔️ Have a clear timeline

Your educated buyers may require deeper engagement than vetted buyers, but you should still maintain a streamlined approach. Offer valuable insights and more detailed information to help them progress through their evaluation stage. At least 10-20% of your buyers will reach you either vetted or educated. Think about the ideal experience for these customers and make sure your process has strategies in place to triage them efficiently. If you don’t, you’ll automatically be at a disadvantage and may just invite more frustration into your process than anything else. 

Nurture Your Cold Customers and Offer Self-Service Options

VECS has two additional customer identifiers that distinctly vary from the vetted and educated customers. These will be your cold customers and your self-service customers. Each requires a drastically different approach when it comes to engagement and communication.

Cold Customers

What is a cold customer? Cold customers have likely come down the outbound path. They may not have heard about you at all or are tired of their current partner and are exploring their options. For your cold customers, it’ll be important to be a resource and offer value to the process through customer-centric interactions. These are the types of customers you’ll be leading through the process from step one. There is only one box these customers check:

✔️ Have not completed the three criteria to be considered educated

The typical next step for a cold customer is an educational call to get them excited about becoming a partner. It is also a chance for you to gain a better understanding of their priorities. The goal should be to share information with them to help get them as up-to-speed as possible prior to the call. Sharing resources will allow them to self-guide, whether it’s an intro demo or a whitepaper. It will help to transition them to the educated stage, guiding them forward at the proper pace before you begin deeper engagements.

Self Service Customers

As a tool for building customized journeys to give modern buyers better sales experiences, VECS encourages offering self-service options. Self-service customers are among the 75% of buyers who prefer virtual interactions with salespeople, if any. It’s important to note the one key characteristic that will help you identify your self-service customers properly: 

✔️ Prefer to explore and purchase products on their own through digital steps/platforms.

Self-service customers want to have the ability to control their buying process without much direction from a salesperson. The only things they want from you are likely additional online resources and directions to the self-service options. Not every buyer is like this, but more and more are emerging in the B2B buying market. Their entire customer experience hinges on you not interrupting their buying journey and only acting when needed. Don’t worry, though. They’ll still need you to have a great onboarding experience. 

Meet Customers Where They’re at With VECS

VECS isn’t just about selling more. It’s about meeting customers where they are and providing them with better sales experiences. This is not purely a sales qualification method, but occasionally, there will be some that aren’t qualified.  However, with this more customer-centric approach, you can close deals faster with your qualified customers. 

Modern and innovative B2B companies are adopting customer-centric approaches because they see that it’s the only way we can start providing better customer experiences. They are reshaping their sales processes to better align with the buyer’s journey. Whether you’re dealing with vetted, educated, cold, or self-service customers, you have to be able to adapt your processes to fit their journey. 

Being adaptable does not mean creating infinite sales processes. Building the ideal sales experience with VECS means meeting buyers where they are to start them in the right place and lead them through their journey efficiently. Buyers don’t want a tedious and time-consuming process. By understanding and addressing the specific needs of vetted, educated, cold, and self-service buyers, you can significantly enhance the buying experience. Embrace VECS to create a more efficient, customer-centric sales process that helps close deals faster and enhances the overall buying experience.