Value-Based Selling in the Age of AI: A Conversation With Marianne Portmann

[00:00:10] RK Prasad: So our audience are essentially leaders, the learning leaders, but then we also have quite a number of sales and marketing people. So I thought we should draw upon your vast experience. in marketing and sales, which I think is a rarer background. Usually people either specialize in marketing or sales, whereas you have had both the hats as a Chief Marketing Officer as well as a Chief Sales Officer. So I thought that our audience will greatly benefit from your experience and knowledge. So I would like to give a small introduction of our speaker today. Welcome to this conversation with Marianne Portmann. I will. Give you a very short bio of hers. In many B2B organizations, sales, marketing, training, technology are still treated as separate functions. Sales owns revenues, marketing owns positioning, training owns capability, technology owns tools. But customers do not experience companies in silos. They experience them in one journey. How clearly we understand their needs, how well we educate them, how confidently we can guide them, and how consistently we deliver value. Today, we are speaking to Marianne Portmann, Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Sales Officer for Consulting and Services at IGP Powder Coating, and she's also a member of the Executive Board. Marianne brings a rare combination of strategic marketing, sales leadership. services growth, product lifecycle management, digital transformation, and customer education experience. As I said, it's a very, very interesting, broad as well as deep experience. Across her career, she worked on global product launches, business development, digital roadmaps, marketing, Marketing and sales automation. Service offerings, customer-facing competence programs. Her experience includes leadership roles at IGP Coating, Mathis, and Mettler Toledo, where she helped connect products, services, customers with business growth. So in this episode, we'll explore the central idea of sales, training, and AI must work together to build customer trust and business growth. Let us discuss strategic sales, the role of training as a business initiative, and how AI can help organizations become sharper, faster, and more customer-centric without losing the human judgment that complex B2B relations still require. Thank you, Marianne, for accepting our invitation and for your willingness to share your valuable knowledge. I also noticed that you have excellent, I would say outstanding academic credentials also, having studied in some of the top business schools in

[00:03:43] Marianne Portmann: Okay.

[00:03:47] RK Prasad: Europe. So it's a great pleasure and a privilege to speak with you today.

[00:03:53] Marianne Portmann: I'm happy to be here. Thank you. RK.

[00:03:57] RK Prasad: Okay, my first question is, from your experience, how has strategic sales changed in complex B2B industries?

[00:04:08] Marianne Portmann: Well, in my past roles or past companies I worked for, it... It became very transactional in that way that price was up first in any conversation. And if you let your let yourself go into a price spiral or price negotiation, you are sort of pushed into a corner. So what we have seen here and what I've seen before is that often, you know, you talk with maybe a buying group, decision-making unit within a company, and there's different interests, different goals that they pursue when you have a conversation. So if, of course, you talk to a category manager or A purchasing officer, yes, they are upfront, you know, what does it cost? If you talk to other people, like a production or plant manager, they see a more holistic approach of benefits, advantages, a solution partner. And this is where you know, I think where we can step in and where you gain the trust over time because you advise on the right solution, you don't just talk technical benefits and price. So you really understand the business of our customers and you know where the pain points are and you need to make field forces aware that that is also part of, you know, your conversation or interaction with a customer.

[00:05:45] RK Prasad: So it looks like, if I understood you correctly, even customers start at a price question.

[00:05:56] Marianne Portmann: Yes. They start with that, but I think the ability of the field force is to maybe park the price question at a later stage in the, you know, in the conversation. So, daring to ask relevant questions helps them to find out what is the actual situation.

[00:05:58] RK Prasad: Okay.

[00:06:19] Marianne Portmann: Is it really only the price? Or is there other aspects that is important for the customer? Like if we commit to a big project, can we really deliver on the amount? You know, in our case here, it's tons. And how is the quality? What are we, you know, talking to an architect, for example, what is his aesthetic fingerprint he wants to put on a building? And that should be with longevity, quality, color brightness, and so on. So these are the forefront questions you want to find out. And make those pain points important in the conversation, not only the price. And this is something you need to train the field forces on and also our consultants to not get too fast into this price discussion.

[00:07:18] RK Prasad: How do you, how do you propose that a person, a field force, field salesperson? to gently move the customer's frame of reference from that of a price to more of solving his problems. or towards value which you're giving. How do you advise your field force to do that?

[00:07:44] Marianne Portmann: Mm. Yeah. We have our sales DNA is really value-based selling. We work with this methodology. I don't know if you're familiar with the components of value-based selling. So we really split the conversation into different phases.

[00:07:54] RK Prasad: Yeah. Thanks.

[00:08:06] Marianne Portmann: you know, before you go to a customer, you really do the research, you sort of classify what could be possible pain points, you prepare relevant questions. So we use a RISE technique for that first visit. And then, you know, for the follow-up and, you know, we go

[00:08:11] RK Prasad: I.

[00:08:26] Marianne Portmann: Down the funnel. narrow it down. And it's often, you know, with big projects, it takes longer time. The sales process is longer. So you revisit, you make proposals, you talk to other stakeholders within a company. So, but we train our fleet forces really to be very aware of the value-based selling approach that we have established as our sales DNA here at IGP.

[00:08:56] RK Prasad: So it is your proprietary model?

[00:08:58] Marianne Portmann: No, it's a model of Mercury. It's an international... Yeah, you've heard of them, yeah.

[00:09:02] RK Prasad: Oh, I know Mercury. Yeah. Mercury Goldman, I think it is called in India.

[00:09:10] Marianne Portmann: Mm.

[00:09:11] RK Prasad: Right, so... Yeah, I actually attended a sales training way back in my career done by Mercury Goldman and they say, you know, you should never talk about price. Always come back to your benefits, come back to the value. So, you know, one of the guys asked, when will we ever...

[00:09:29] Marianne Portmann: Yeah.

[00:09:32] RK Prasad: Talk about price, you know one of the participants asked him.

[00:09:35] Marianne Portmann: Yeah.

[00:09:35] RK Prasad: So that fellow says never. So I still remember that. Yeah, okay. So Mercury is model you follow, but how do you make sure that your people are following that model?

[00:09:40] Marianne Portmann: Yeah, yeah. We are making a curricula for different sales roles at IGP. So we have actual value-based selling path for the sales office. We have it for the consultants. We have it for the key account managers, and they all address different customer groups, size of the company, complexity and so on. And we have it as a learning path set up within our LMS system. So we have like a basic course everybody should visit and then you increase your knowledge. Plus we are also working on a concept here

[00:10:14] RK Prasad: Yeah. Mhm.

[00:10:31] Marianne Portmann: with the different segments that we have, like divisions within the company, where we want to make like a license to sell for our field forces. So, and the underlying foundation is really the principles of value-based selling.

[00:10:51] RK Prasad: Okay.

[00:10:51] Marianne Portmann: And then they, we build up this learning path, yeah, this competence, yeah.

[00:10:54] RK Prasad: competence. Yeah. So you will actually certify them.

[00:11:00] Marianne Portmann: Yep.

[00:11:01] RK Prasad: At different levels. Great, that's wonderful. So, so coming back to the product itself.

[00:11:02] Marianne Portmann: Yes, yup.

[00:11:12] RK Prasad: Now, IGP is into powder coating and it has market segments in. architecture, construction, automobiles. Am I right?

[00:11:28] Marianne Portmann: Yes, not so, well, the parts that's easy codable for the photo for the automotive industry because they send such a thick, you know, guideline how you should be audited and how your quality management system. So this is not our primarily focus, but we have like transportation, we have self-quoters in for architecture, but also for industrial applications. Yeah.

[00:11:57] RK Prasad: So you are essentially into, should I say construction?

[00:12:02] Marianne Portmann: Also, yes, yeah.

Or... Yeah, construction, because last time when we spoke, you did tell me about, you know, residences or homes.

[00:12:14] Marianne Portmann: Yeah, everything that has an aluminum cladding on the facades, but...

[00:12:17] RK Prasad: Yes, yes. Yes, so, so you work closely with our architects.

[00:12:25] Marianne Portmann: Yeah, architects and planners.

[00:12:27] RK Prasad: Lanners.

[00:12:29] Marianne Portmann: Mm.

[00:12:29] RK Prasad: So, if I look at your earlier company, which is Maddela Toledo, it's a heavily feature-based product.

[00:12:38] Marianne Portmann: Yup.

[00:12:38] RK Prasad: I mean, their products are like highly feature-based, solid physical, you know, features and benefits and more tangible. But when I see IGP, it is, as you said, it comes in tons and it's a powder. Do you see some kind of challenge doing value-based selling in a product which is almost like a commodity?

[00:13:13] Marianne Portmann: In some parts, yes. But the, how should I say it, the finished product, I mean, you probably know the USM furnitures.

[00:13:26] RK Prasad: Mhm.

[00:13:27] Marianne Portmann: Yeah, these are powder coated with our powder. The gherkin in London is powder coated with our powder. The, you know, the cross at the top of La Sagrada de Familia in Barcelona is coated with our powder. So

[00:13:32] RK Prasad: Ohh. Ohh.

[00:13:46] Marianne Portmann: You need to, you know, imagine the finished product, you know, where is powder coating? And it's quite in a lot of places. So the advantage is, you know, you talk about the aesthetic that we can deliver.

[00:13:51] RK Prasad: Mm. Mm.

[00:14:03] Marianne Portmann: you know, really the variety in colors, in surfaces, you know, we have products that look like melted metal. And, you know, it's quite unique and the benefits is quite, you know, for architects, planners, they can really make an aesthetic impression. I mean, we made for really big Norman Foster architects. You know, we we have a good name for specialities, but the technical the technical aspects as well, you know, we have to be qualified according to GSB or Qualicode or ARMA. in the US. So there, the technical properties is the baseline. You know, we have to fulfill that. We have to make sure that we have something called Florida Class 5 or 10, meaning our product has been tested in Florida, hanging

[00:14:46] RK Prasad: Okay.

[00:15:02] Marianne Portmann: in salt, windy, sunny places where we can really prove we have a longevity in our materials and in our surfaces. So if you split it down, really, what is the product? Then you easily can derive the technical

[00:15:05] RK Prasad: Hello. And.

[00:15:20] Marianne Portmann: feature advantage benefits of it. But it's a mindset also for our technical sales because they have all these, you know, they know everything about the technical properties of a product. But going into conversation with, you know, a decision-making unit,

[00:15:35] RK Prasad: Ohh. Mm.

[00:15:41] Marianne Portmann: So talking to a production manager, he wants a stable product, easy to apply, no fuss. Maybe the marketing team wants something, you know, how they can position themselves, you know, where sustainability is a topic. And if you have the purchasing managers at the table, you want to make an ROI on, you know, what costs and benefits. So our field forces really have to play that piano, you know, knowing when do I bring what to the table.

[00:16:04] RK Prasad: Yeah. FedEx. That's very interesting. So you have a base must haves. which are the technical specs for longevity, safety, ease of application, etc, etc. And then you have that intangible.

[00:16:29] Marianne Portmann: Mm.

[00:16:34] RK Prasad: Imagery, imagery, I should say. It sounds very much like selling a cosmetic. Ha ha ha!

[00:16:44] Marianne Portmann: Yes, except then you are in a, what should I say, you are in a store like Sephora or others and you pick your thing and you have to be advised and get, you know, shelf space among the competitor. So

[00:16:59] RK Prasad: Bligh.

[00:17:01] Marianne Portmann: Our value chain is a little bit different. So we have like often for these big projects that I mentioned before, you know, the big building landmarks, there's a team of the architectural consultants who goes into the architectural offices, the big ones, and They have also smaller ones. We try to find out when is a project prone to be going into submission or into a tender business. And we advise because... For example, maybe a product that's for interior design has certain properties which an outdoor building or which a planner or an architect may not be aware of. So we would advise them on the right powder to be used. For example, Copenhagen, it's a lot of moisture and a lot of salt, wind that affects the building. So you have

[00:17:56] RK Prasad: Mhm.

[00:17:58] Marianne Portmann: other demands on robustness than maybe you would have in Switzerland in a valley. So you have to know that, and then you advise on the right product. You help the architect or the planner making a submission text, and it's being published. And then our direct customers often These are the powder coding companies, a self-coder or a job coder. They would then, you know, ask for a price. They would then offer what they think. You know, often it's something close, but not specific that. So we need to own the whole value chain, making sure

[00:18:37] RK Prasad: Mhm.

[00:18:39] Marianne Portmann: because the job coder or self coder, they are under pressure, margin pressure. And if we have specified maybe a powder that is more costly, we may lose the business at that stage if we don't follow through. So that we advise also the job coder and say, hey, you can

[00:18:45] RK Prasad: Mm. FedEx.

[00:18:58] Marianne Portmann: not take just, for example, your own product or something close from the competitor, because we need to have these specific technical criteria met. So we really hand them over to our field forces and making sure that they don't lose the business of what was specified in the beginning. And That goes down then to the next, you know, there's a handover to the field forces.

[00:19:26] RK Prasad: Right. So one great learning that I have gained from this conversation is that if we go deeper into a product, vis-a-vis the pain points and application or what the customer is looking for. Any product can be sold. via value selling or a strategic kind of selling. It doesn't need to be a heavy feature-based product like, you know, a weighing machine or something very, very complicated. Even here, there is a lot of complication and there is a hard. part of it and a soft aesthetic part of it. And you talk about that we should travel the whole journey of that value. So. I'm going to now move into the next section of our conversation, which is training. But before that, I would like to ask you a question that you mentioned earlier in your conversation, that there is a buying unit. Okay, all industrial or organizational buyers don't decide singly. They have many stakeholders. And each stakeholder has its own, you know, criteria. So when it comes to IGP, your field sales professionals, do they handle all the... Ohh. People in a buying unit, or do you also have a kind of team? Which? some of those buyer, you know, people in the buying unit may be very, very technically qualified. For example, architects or some other very deep specialized field. Do you expect your... build force to have a working knowledge about all these things.

[00:21:38] Marianne Portmann: This is where we are in a transition. We have... We have strategically sort of made a big change in our field forces. So we made a data analysis of the customers we had and how much they buy and what industry they are in. So

[00:21:50] RK Prasad: Okay.

[00:21:59] Marianne Portmann: The smaller customers who doesn't need, you know, much service, much technical advice, they would and could buy over our web shop. And this we are rolling out because it's our standard products that doesn't need much explanation. They are easy to apply. You know, we have

[00:22:11] RK Prasad: Oh.

[00:22:23] Marianne Portmann: We've seen what kind of customers buys what. So this is a no-frill sales channel. Yeah. And then we have looked at the other customers. And of course, we want, we've seen that, and this is normal in almost every business I've been to.

[00:22:29] RK Prasad: Straightfor.

[00:22:41] Marianne Portmann: There is a handful of customers, say. 20%, making 80% of the revenue. So you want to enlarge that base and you want to train and help support your field forces with these competences to how do I go into a new account? Because a lot of the time,

[00:22:52] RK Prasad: That bit.

[00:23:05] Marianne Portmann: they very much like to go and visit and talk and they have a coffee. And yes, it's customer maintenance in that way, but you don't enlarge sales. So we have become more strategic on that, that we really have allocated, analyzed, categorized maybe also the different customer into segments where we sort of say, okay, we see the potential, we want to develop that account, could go from one category to another. Then we want, we have strategic fields, not opportunistic sales, but really where we have our forte in our products. We have the knowledge, we have references. We want to enlarge that. And of course, this is always on cost of competitors who are in a site. So this is also new for our field forces to have that ability and not talk about the price. We don't go in and say, okay, we are cheaper than our competitor. We get the business. Now it's, you know, there's more topics involved. So

[00:23:52] RK Prasad: Brett. Brett.

[00:24:08] Marianne Portmann: We are training our field forces really to be sharper in their acquisition, to sort of say, okay, I cluster my customers in sizes, but also in similarity in pain points and in, you know, how could we use value-based selling approach to you know, maybe sell more to an existing customer where it's not, you know, a small customer that buys 40 kilos. So I want to put my effort and my love where it makes sense and to grow that business. And this is a big transformation with our field forces. Also,

[00:24:37] RK Prasad: Brett. Yeah.

[00:24:50] Marianne Portmann: For us, with product management and sales together, we have really crystallized personas.

[00:24:59] RK Prasad: Mhm.

[00:25:00] Marianne Portmann: decision making units and industries. And this will be part of all the training that we do. So that will always be a help for the field forces. Who am I talking to? What is a production manager's worst pain point? What motivates him? What is he being measured

[00:25:13] RK Prasad: Mm.

[00:25:20] Marianne Portmann: by? What is his responsibility or her responsibility? So we actually work with that. So it's part of our training material, our marketing material, our service offerings that we develop. So it's a little bit of holistic approach.

[00:25:35] RK Prasad: Correct, correct. But listening to you, I get a feeling that those high yield, you know, 80% sale from 20% of your customer segments. Do the sales force, I mean the field sales force require more training, more knowledge acquisition becoming, if they have to consult with the buyer, then they have to be superior in some way. So is there a lot of training for those people or how are you supporting them?

[00:26:11] Marianne Portmann: It is a lot of training for the people because there it's not about the technical product know-how that we build up. It's a lot more the soft skills. How do I go in? How should I position IGP when going in for the first time? I need to

[00:26:17] RK Prasad: In.

[00:26:30] Marianne Portmann: have a little bit of awareness of this customer who has he or she as own customers and what is driving them. And that requires a lot of.

[00:26:33] RK Prasad: Okay. Hey.

[00:26:43] Marianne Portmann: not call it empathy, but, you know, knowledge and competence and also being able to have that self-confidence and, you know, go in. Because before we see it, they have been very driven by, okay, kilo, Price, and this, so this is completely new for them to to do that, yeah, and and they've done it successfully in the past, so why change a winning horse, you know?

[00:27:04] RK Prasad: But. Different, yeah. Ohh. Yes, yes, that's what, but they are not able to see the vision of, yeah. So it is more holistic and a lot of training and the person has to become more like a consultant, advisor.

[00:27:18] Marianne Portmann: Nope. Yeah.

[00:27:33] RK Prasad: to solve his problems and the product is just one, you know, vehicle to solve his problem and it comes incidentally. He will buy a lot more than the product.

[00:27:48] Marianne Portmann: Yeah, he will buy a partnership, he will buy quality, he will buy reliability and stability and...

[00:27:48] RK Prasad: Correct. Correct. Yeah. More like he feels secure and comfortable

[00:28:02] Marianne Portmann: Yeah.

[00:28:02] RK Prasad: Like in any other good relationship, there is trust, there is, you know, you don't need to spell out everything. You customer understands and he also understands that you know him. He doesn't need to tell you all those things. That takes time, as you said earlier.

[00:28:05] Marianne Portmann: Yeah.

[00:28:23] RK Prasad: So as you're trying to make this shift, what kind of challenges are you finding when you train these people?

[00:28:36] Marianne Portmann: Um... The challenge is at one hand. To change habits.

[00:28:44] RK Prasad: Ohh.

[00:28:45] Marianne Portmann: So, one thing is to know everything about the technical features and, you know, the machine process or the powder process at customers. I mean, this is basics. And, but on top, then to suddenly go in and listen more than talk, you know, listen,

[00:28:51] RK Prasad: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:06] Marianne Portmann: and advising and push the price further down at a later stage to talk about that. And also the own habits of, oh, I've been selling powder coating for more than 15 years. Why should I change that? I know my customers. I know the business. So this is very hard. And even though they run through our value-based selling program, we, you know, we train them on the different phases. We train them on negotiation, we train them objection handling and so on. But in the actual situation afterwards, we see that they actually fall back a little bit in their habits. Yeah.

[00:29:48] RK Prasad: All happens. Okay, so there is sometimes there is some relapse.

[00:29:51] Marianne Portmann: Yeah. There's A relapse and this we are aware of. And so far we have done so-called fitness hours, meaning after the actual training sessions, we do three to four fitness hours following afterwards, meaning that they present the cases in a closed environment with their colleagues.

[00:30:03] RK Prasad: Mhm. Yeah. Ohh.

[00:30:37] Marianne Portmann: Mm.

[00:30:37] RK Prasad: Now we are coming to the main topic. So, so that is of great interest to CommLab also. And we have been one of the early adopters of AI in learning and training and design development.

[00:30:40] Marianne Portmann: Ah-ha.

[00:30:56] RK Prasad: So much so that, you know, I am now involved, I mean, Comm Lab is involved in doing research of how companies are adopting and what hindrances they have, along with Lancaster University UK. So Can you just expand on how are you using AI for sales training?

[00:31:22] Marianne Portmann: Yeah, well, there's of course, when we do the trainings itself, you know, the content and how we build it up with quiz and images and so on, there's AI involved to make us more efficient, faster. That is one part of it. But what we want to pilot and what we're working on now is that we will launch an AI role-based session with the field forces where we can choose what persona am I talking to in what industry. what is the job that I have to talk to this, I say, production manager about? So there is like a use case that we will ask the person and then the session starts. So you have an avatar, you have a persona, and the conversation

[00:32:18] RK Prasad: Nope.

33:23 is then being recorded and you will get an immediate feedback afterwards. It's quite amazing. So when I did it, of course, I saw my eyes going up to one corner all the time. I used a lot of, which is not good. And so you get an immediate feedback saying,

[00:32:36] RK Prasad: Okay.

[00:32:41] Marianne Portmann: Here you were too long, you jumped in too fast with this argument and I'm quite excited. We had like twice per year, we gather all our field forces and sales roles and we presented what we intend to use with AI in a role-based setting. So not the group fitness hours anymore, but maybe for recurring training one-to-one with an, you know, with an AI avatar. And they said, oh, this is cool. This is really great. But let's see how they use it, you know, in real life afterwards.

[00:33:08] RK Prasad: Not that. So this is a third-party application or is it developed in-house?

[00:33:21] Marianne Portmann: Yeah. No, it's actually with Mercury who does the value-based selling part. They have created, they work with a German company and they set up the user, the hosting, they know the stories that we have, the cases, because we prepare these cases for the value-based selling. So we will take what we have.

[00:33:23] RK Prasad: Yeah. Mhm. Mhm. What? Better

[00:33:44] Marianne Portmann: in a first step and then train them. And of course, for me, as being commercially responsible for the services, I want to have the field forces talk about service and how to sell a service because so far it has always been for free. And I hear a lot, yeah, but

[00:33:44] RK Prasad: Mhm. Mm. Mhm.

[00:34:05] Marianne Portmann: My customers, they use us. We are so expensive and we just say a service is included. So it's very hard for them now to start selling because you said powder is maybe not so tangible, like for example, a scale or a balance or a car.

[00:34:12] RK Prasad: Oh. Sell it.

[00:34:25] Marianne Portmann: But it's still something more tangible than a service. With service, you really go in and say, hey, we solved these problems. It's safety, security, quality, efficiency. And that is sort of closing, you know, the whole package as a solution partner. But it's not so trivial for them if they have been talking about tons and then talk about services.

[00:34:51] RK Prasad: Right. So Mercury is using its own expertise as well as your own, I mean, IGPs, cases, customers, data, and all that. And they're training the agent on that.

[00:35:06] Marianne Portmann: Yep.

[00:35:07] RK Prasad: So is it already done or is it in process?

[00:35:11] Marianne Portmann: It is in process, we have defined the cases, we have defined the personas and the segments, and now we go into programming it and feeding the, you know, the learning behind it with this knowledge. So it takes some time. We will have a next

[00:35:21] RK Prasad: Right. Mhm.

[00:35:31] Marianne Portmann: look at the status in June because for, yeah, and then, you know, we have a product project set up where we sort of will test it internally. How does it look like? Because also we have like 4 different company language. So it's English, German, French, and Polish. So it also have to make sense.

[00:35:34] RK Prasad: Uh-huh. Oh. Ohh.

[00:35:51] Marianne Portmann: what the avatar, how is pronouncing certain things and yeah.

[00:35:52] RK Prasad: Yeah. That's interesting. So I thank you very much, Maria. It was wonderful speaking with you. I'm sure my audience would love to learn this transition, value-based setting, application of AI, etc. from such a learned person as yourself.

[00:35:57] Marianne Portmann: Mhm.

[00:36:14] RK Prasad: So thank you once again and I'm looking forward to meeting you again in September.

[00:36:16] Marianne Portmann: You're welcome. Yeah, looking forward.

[00:36:21] RK Prasad: Thank you very much.

[00:36:22] Marianne Portmann: You're welcome. Bye.

[00:36:25] RK Prasad: Bye.