The B2B Innovator's Map: Let Customer Champions Do Selling for You with Daniel Elizalde

Daniel Elizalde was an IoT Product Manager Instructor at Stanford University. He used to work as the VP Head of IoT at Ericsson, but he has now narrowed his focus from IoT to climate tech firms. Daniel now helps climate tech product teams accelerate their product's time to the market.

In this episode, Daniel talks about his book, The B2B Innovator's Map, as he explains why delivering value to your champion is a huge game-changer in the business world.

Why you have to check out today's podcast:

• Discover what the book The B2B Innovator's Map is all about;
• Understand why you, as a vendor, should understand what value means both to your company and to your customers; and
• Find out why you should look for champions and not for buyers, especially when you're still starting in doing business

"When you are testing a potential solution, pricing has to be one of those things that you have to prototype. You have to prototype the packaging and the offering and how you actually present it to the customer."

– Daniel Elizalde

Topics Covered:

01:55 – A Narrower Focus: Daniel shares the backstory on how he's decided to shift his focus from IoT to climate tech firms

04:11 – Daniel talks about the benefits of running his own consulting practice

06:18 – Helping other people, still, in the space of IoT

07:41 – Why Daniel wrote his book, The B2B Innovator's Map

09:46 – The difference between B2B and B2C in terms of the way people do innovation + the content of Daniel's book

14:35 – Relating Mark's Selling Value book to Daniel's B2B Innovator's Map

18:51 – Understanding the strongest problems that your customers have as one of the main points in the book

21:50 – Looking for a champion, not a buyer persona + the goal of innovation

28:36 – Daniel's piece of pricing advice for the listeners

Key Takeaways:

"For an actual advisory project where I'm involved at the strategic level, I'm going to give priority to the climate tech companies, but that doesn't mean that there are no other avenues where people can get access to some of my experience." – Daniel Elizalde

"In my experience, a lot of the B2B products fail because they don't deliver value to their customers, like, customers don't see the benefit, they don't want to buy it, so they've failed. Value has to be delivered throughout, and so, therefore, value plays an immense part throughout the journey." – Daniel Elizalde

"Granted, as a vendor, your own solution is not going to be the fix for the whole problem, and you're part of the whole puzzle. But as a vendor, you have to understand what are those pains, what are those problems that your customers are having, because that's where the opportunity to deliver value lies." – Daniel Elizalde

"The value needs to be big for a big problem so that you can get a solution in the door." – Daniel Elizalde

"It's not about the users at this point. It's about delivering value to the champion because ultimately, that's the person that's going to open the door for you." – Daniel Elizalde

People / Resources Mentioned:

• The B2B Innovator's Map: https://danielelizalde.com/b2b-innovators-map/
• Ericsson: https://www.ericsson.com/
• Selling Value: https://www.amazon.com/Selling-Value-Deals-Higher-Prices/dp/1737655217/
• Crossing the Chasm: https://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-3rd-Disruptive-Mainstream/dp/0062292986

Connect with Daniel Elizalde:

• LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielelizalde/
• Website:https://danielelizalde.com/

Connect with Mark Stiving:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/
• Email: mark@impactpricing.com