Aligning Business and Tech Audiences: The VST Framework for Complex Technology Sales

How to Create a Unified Sales Approach that Appeals to Every Stakeholder

18 min readFeb 28, 2024

In today’s complex sales environment, selling technology solutions requires more than just explaining product features and capabilities; it involves creating a message that resonates across a diverse range of stakeholders. Your audience is made up of two primary groups:

Business leaders and senior decision-makers: Focused on driving strategic growth, aligning technology investments with long-term business goals, and delivering measurable outcomes.
Technical experts and end-users: Prioritize the solution’s functionality, integration, compatibility, and practical fit within existing systems to ensure it enhances day-to-day operations.

These groups often have different — and sometimes opposing — priorities, which can lead to friction in the decision-making process. This divide makes it challenging to create a unified sales narrative that satisfies both perspectives.

To bridge this gap, it’s crucial to craft a message that not only highlights the overarching business benefits but also addresses the specific technical requirements.

A sales approach that resonates with both groups can help align these diverse interests, reduce resistance, and pave the way for smoother adoption and stronger buy-in across the organization.

The Middle-Out Approach: Empowering Champions to Bridge the Gap

Traditional sales strategies that focus solely on a top-down or bottom-up approach often fall short in addressing the diverse needs within an organization.

A middle-out approach — centered on engaging influential “Champions” — offers a more balanced and effective path. These Champions are mid-level leaders who understand the organization’s strategic goals while also being closely connected to operational realities. They are uniquely positioned to communicate the solution’s value upwards to senior leaders and downwards to end-users, effectively aligning diverse interests around a unified vision.

Why the Middle-Out Approach Works

The middle-out strategy leverages Champions to create buy-in across all levels of the organization by addressing the specific concerns of different stakeholders:

Navigating Complex Decision-Making: Champions serve as a bridge between executive priorities and operational needs. They understand both the high-level strategic goals and the detailed requirements necessary to achieve them, making it easier to bring different perspectives together.
Driving Internal Advocacy: Champions can advocate effectively for the solution because they have firsthand knowledge of organizational pain points and are trusted within their teams. Their influence helps build momentum, rallying support from all parts of the company.
Ensuring Practical Solutions and Alignment: Because Champions are involved in both strategic initiatives and day-to-day operations, they can ensure that the product fits within the broader business objectives and meets practical requirements. This helps craft a narrative that resonates across different levels of the organization, leading to smoother adoption.

The VST Framework: A Tool for Champions

To effectively convey the solution’s value across the organization, Champions need a structured approach that engages a wide range of stakeholders.

The Vision-Solutions-Technology (VST) Framework provides this structure by addressing three essential steps:

Start with the Vision: Begin by presenting a compelling business vision that aligns with the organization’s strategic goals. This establishes a shared purpose and demonstrates how your product will drive the company forward.
Show the Solutions: Next, illustrate the practical solutions that make the vision achievable. Focus on solving specific business problems and delivering measurable benefits that resonate with various departments.
Explain the Technology: Finally, provide details on the technology that powers these solutions. This step ensures your product meets technical requirements and integrates seamlessly into existing systems, satisfying the concerns of technical experts.

This framework (based on the brilliant work of Brian Kracik, Product Marketing leader at Oracle and Google) ensures that the pitch captures the attention of all buyer personas, resonating with each of their unique interests and concerns.

The VST Framework’s systematic structure helps align all stakeholders and gain their support for the technology implementation. This comprehensive buy-in is essential for smooth adoption and maximizing the technology’s benefits throughout the organization.

Here’s how to connect each of these pieces together into a coherent and impactful narrative:

Presenting the Vision: Tease the Outcome

The first step is to paint a vivid picture of a future where the customer achieves their desired outcomes, overcoming challenges with the help of your product. Here, your product plays a crucial supporting role in the customer’s journey to success.

This approach captures attention by answering the question, “Where are we going?” For business leaders, it’s about visualizing a clear and compelling destination. The vision should depict the customer’s ideal end-state — a “happily ever after” scenario where their goals are met, problems are solved, and new opportunities are realized.

By crafting a vision that is distinctive and unmatched by competitors, you set the stage for why your product stands out. The goal is for the customer to see themselves reaching their objectives and experiencing the satisfaction of overcoming obstacles with your solution by their side.

I particularly like Andy Raskin’s “Strategic Narrative” approach to conveying the vision:

“The reason strategic narrative matters so much in B2B (enterprise) selling is because unlike B2C, you’re selling to groups of people, which include diverse individuals (personas) with diverse problems that you solve, as well as some individuals (i.e., C-level budget owners) who don’t directly experience any problems that you solve.
The only way to close a deal, therefore, is by first uniting all individuals in the buying org in a common cause, a new joint mission that (a) resonates with all of them and (b) turns all of their problems (or at a higher level, jobs to be done) into shared obstacles to winning.
In other words if, as I define it, leadership is the art of inspiring others to make a story come true, B2B CEOs have a double leadership burden: They have to inspire their own people to make a story come true, but also have to inspire all the people in all the orgs they sell to, to make the story come true.”

The vision serves as the “why” behind your product, giving the audience a compelling reason to take action. It’s about highlighting a “big change” — a significant shift in the market, changing customer expectations, new industry standards, regulatory changes, or technological advancements that make it essential for them to adapt. This urgency compels the customer not just to consider your product, but to commit to it as a way to stay competitive and thrive in a rapidly evolving environment.

To strengthen this vision, it’s crucial to contrast your approach with the ‘old way vs. new way.’ By doing so, you demonstrate how current approaches fall short and position your product as a forward-looking choice that meets today’s demands. This comparison is not about criticizing other offerings; it’s about clearly showing why your product is uniquely equipped to address the evolving challenges customers face.

In this strategic narrative, your product isn’t just a tool — it’s a catalyst for meaningful transformation. It empowers customers to reach a better version of their business. By framing the product as an essential partner in their journey, you position the customer as the hero of their own story, with your company as the indispensable ally helping them achieve success.

This is the first and most critical step in engaging your audience, providing a relatable and emotionally compelling context that aligns with their most important business goals.

Provide Solutions to Make the Vision Believable

Once the destination is clear, we need to show how to get there.

Now that the audience is hooked with a “why”, they need the “how”. After setting the stage with a vision that captivates both the business executives and technical experts, it’s essential to pivot to discussing specific solutions that make the vision a reality. These solutions should address the tangible business problems faced by the audience.

Solution selling pivots away from the features of the product itself and instead focuses on the benefits and outcomes that the product can deliver.

“Centering the conversation on the outcomes of technology helps bridge the gap between technical and non-technical executives, which ultimately drives better results for both the customer and the overall business”.
— Teodora Siman, research manager for the C-suite tech agenda at IDC

It’s about identifying and understanding the customer’s pain points and presenting a solution that addresses those specific issues, ideally tailored to the specific use cases of their unique industry, department, and/or role. This method is particularly effective because it aligns the product’s capabilities directly with the customer’s needs.

For instance, if the vision portrays a future where the customer’s organization is leading its industry due to superior data-driven decision-making, the solutions presented should directly link to how this can be achieved. This might include talking about dashboards, reporting, or AI/machine learning capabilities. Each solution should be a stepping stone that leads the customer closer to the realization of their envisioned future state.

Explain the Underlying Technology that Makes Solutions Possible

When the stage has been set with an inspiring vision and a suite of solutions, it’s time to bring the audience into the world where these possibilities become realities through technology. This last part of the sales presentation is critical, as it’s where you present the “what”; the products, services, and technologies that make the earlier discussed solutions possible.

While business leaders might not be enthralled by technical specifications, they need to understand that the technology is sound, secure, and scalable. For the technical experts, this is the part where they get the assurances needed to trust in the product’s capability to deliver.

It’s important to introduce the technology in a way that connects directly back to the solutions and the vision. This means not just listing product features or technical specifications, but explaining how these features power the solutions that deliver the vision.

The technology should be presented as robust and secure, providing a strong foundation for the business’s future. It’s about illustrating how the technology not only meets current needs but is also flexible and scalable, ready to evolve with the business. This is where you reassure the technical experts that the product will integrate seamlessly into their current systems, and you confirm to the business executives that the technology is a sound investment that will drive future growth.

Furthermore, in this age of rapid technological advancement, it’s essential to emphasize that the technology is future-proof. This means it won’t become obsolete and can adapt to new trends and changes in the industry. The underlying message is that investing in this technology is not just a solution for today but a strategic move for tomorrow.

Finally, contrasting your technology with other products on the market is crucial. You must clearly articulate how and why your technology is superior, not by diminishing others, but by showcasing your unique value proposition. Whether it’s through automation, integration capabilities, or the simplicity of use, it must be clear why your technology is the best choice to make the vision a reality.

By presenting the technology in this way, you transform it from a set of features into a powerful tool that will carry the customer towards their goals. It’s not just about what the technology does; it’s about what it allows them to accomplish, and how it will continue to serve their evolving needs.

This is the key to not just capturing the audience’s interest, but securing their commitment as well.

How to Implement the VST Framework in Your Sales Organization

Implementing the VST Framework involves using a strategic mix of marketing and sales assets tailored to different audience segments. Here’s a detailed breakdown of how to apply the VST Framework using various assets:

Vision

To effectively implement the Vision aspect of the VST Framework within your sales organization, it’s essential to focus on crafting a compelling narrative that resonates with your audience’s aspirations and challenges. This narrative should serve as a guiding star for all your sales and marketing efforts, ensuring that every communication and interaction supports a cohesive and inspiring message. Here’s how you can do this:

Key Sales Assets for Vision:

Sales Deck: A succinct sales deck should be the cornerstone of the Vision stage. It should not exceed 10–15 slides and must be designed to grab and retain the attention of C-suite executives. Each slide should focus on how the product will enable the business to achieve its strategic objectives, overcome current challenges, and capitalize on market opportunities. The deck should begin with a powerful narrative that outlines a vision of the future where the company has realized significant benefits due to the adoption of the product.
ROI Calculator: Develop an interactive tool that allows the prospect to input their own data and see a customized projection of the ROI they can expect from your product. This helps the C-suite visualize the financial impact and lends credibility to your claims.
Executive Letters: A personalized letter to key decision-makers, such as the CFO or CIO, can add a direct and personal touch to the sales process. The letter should be concise and articulate the value proposition in a way that resonates with the executive’s goals and concerns. It should also serve as a call to action, prompting the executive to engage in a deeper conversation about the product.

Key Marketing Assets for Vision:

Narrative-Driven Content: Storytelling is an essential marketing asset at the Vision stage. It should be used to craft a narrative around the product that paints a picture of success and progress. Stories can be built around ‘Old Way vs New Way’ scenarios, showcasing the transformation that the business could undergo with the product.
Thought Leadership Pieces: Thought leadership content, such as whitepapers, industry reports, and strategic blog posts, positions your company as an expert and a visionary. This content should provide insights into industry trends, market shifts, and emerging business models, linking back to how your product is poised to address these changes.

The Vision stage assets should work cohesively to paint a compelling picture of a future made better by your product. They should evoke a sense of urgency and inevitability, leading the customer to see the adoption of your prouct as a critical step in their evolution. The goal is to leave the C-suite not just interested but inspired to act.

Solutions

For the Solutions component of the VST framework, different assets are needed for sales and marketing, each tailored to illustrate the practical benefits and applications of the solutions your product offers. These assets must translate the vision into tangible results that appeal to a broad professional audience.

Key Sales Assets for Solutions:

Solution Selling Toolkit: Equip your sales team with materials that help them focus on solving customer problems. This toolkit should include case studies, industry-specific scenarios, and a database of use cases that show how your product provides solutions to real-world problems.
Discovery Call Guides: Develop guides and checklists for sales reps to use during discovery calls to unearth the prospect’s specific challenges and pain points. This ensures that the conversation is always centered on the client’s needs and how your product can meet them.
Personalized Demos: Create a suite of demo scripts and templates that salespeople can personalize for each prospect, industry, and/or role. These should highlight how your product’s features translate into solutions for the prospect’s particular problems, showing the product in action in scenarios that the client cares about.

Key Marketing Assets for Solutions:

Use Case Catalog: Compile a comprehensive catalog of use cases that demonstrate your product in various scenarios. This catalog should be easily accessible to potential clients and include a range of problems and industries to show versatility.
Success Stories: Develop a series of customer success stories that detail how your product has provided solutions for other companies. These stories should be specific, highlighting measurable outcomes and the difference your product made.
Testimonial Videos: Produce video testimonials featuring real clients discussing how your product solved their problems. These testimonials are powerful because they show potential customers that peers in their industry endorse your product.
Educational Content: Offer webinars, eBooks, and white papers that educate potential clients about how your product provides solutions. Focus on imparting knowledge that prospects can use to improve their operations, positioning your product as the tool that can make it happen.

Each sales and marketing asset should be developed with the goal of making the solutions your product offers as tangible and relatable as possible. They should bridge the gap between the client’s vision and the practical application of your product, showing not just what the product can do, but how it can make a real difference in the client’s business.

Technology

For the Technology part of the VST Framework, it’s essential to showcase the capabilities and functionalities of the product or service in a way that technical experts can appreciate, while also providing enough context for the business decision-makers to understand its strategic value. Here’s a detailed look at the assets required:

Key Sales Assets for Technology:

Proofs of Concept (POCs): Offer hands-on experiences with the technology through POCs that demonstrate the product’s capabilities within the client’s environment. This allows technical stakeholders to see how the technology operates in real-world scenarios and assess its compatibility with existing systems.
Free Trials: Provide free trials to give potential customers a risk-free way to evaluate the technology. It gives them the opportunity to test the features and functionalities themselves and determine the technology’s ease of use and impact on their current processes.
Live Product Demos: Arrange live demonstrations where the product’s technology is shown in action. This should be tailored to highlight the unique features that make your solution stand out from competitors and solve specific technical challenges.
Technical Specification Documents: Produce detailed specifications that describe the technology’s capabilities, system requirements, integration options, and performance metrics. This can help technical buyers to understand the robustness and scalability of the solution.

Key Marketing Assets for Technology:

Feature Sheets: Create concise documents that summarize the key technological features of the product, focusing on how each feature addresses specific technical needs or business problems.
Comparison Charts: Provide clear, comparative analyses that place your technology against competitors, highlighting superior features, better performance, or greater value for money.
Technical Whitepapers: Develop in-depth whitepapers that delve into the technology behind the product, explaining how it works, its innovative aspects, and its benefits from a technical standpoint.
Tutorials, Guides, and How-To Content: Step-by-step instructional content that educates users on how to leverage the technology for their specific needs. This could include video tutorials, user manuals, and walkthrough guides that make technology adoption easier.
Q&A/FAQ Sections: Easily accessible online resources that address common questions and concerns, providing clear, concise answers that help in decision-making and reduce the perceived risk of adopting new technology.

Each technical sales and marketing asset should be crafted to not only inform but also reassure both technical and business audiences that the technology is reliable, secure, and future-proof. They should provide a deep dive into the product’s capabilities while tying back to the solutions and overall vision it supports, ensuring a cohesive narrative throughout the VST Framework.

Aligning with Channel Partners

“If partners continue selling to traditional IT buyers, they’re missing another set of opportunities within an existing client company or new customer, and they are going to see their sales closing ratios impacted because they’re not taking into consideration these new IT buyers. This is important to partners because they need to evolve. They need to be speaking to not just to the traditional IT buyer but the hidden buyers who are line-of-business executives who are making IT decision or influencing decisions.” — Hardland Ross, founder and president of eBridge Marketing Solutions

Aligning with your channel partners is vital for success in today’s interconnected business environment. By sharing and implementing a strategic framework like the Vision > Solutions > Technology (VST) Framework together, you ensure that everyone is speaking the same language and driving towards the same goals. Here’s how you can achieve this alignment:

Co-create Sales Narratives: Collaborate with your partners to craft narratives that resonate across both business and technical audiences. This means integrating your strategic narrative with your partners’ expertise and solutions to present a unified vision of success that appeals to a wide range of stakeholders.
Harmonize Solution Offerings: Make sure that the solutions you present are in sync with your partners’ offerings. Highlighting the collective power of your offerings is essential for making the envisioned solutions a reality.
Joint Training and Enablement: Engage in mutual training sessions to gain a deep understanding of each other’s solutions, technologies, and value propositions. This ensures that both you and your partners are well-equipped to articulate the full scope of your combined offerings to customers.
Develop Shared Marketing Materials: Work together to create co-marketing assets that reflect the VST Framework. This collaborative effort should ensure that all communications, from pitch decks to blog posts to case studies, are aligned with the shared narrative.
Regular Strategy Sessions: Conduct frequent meetings to align strategies, share insights, and address challenges. These sessions are vital for maintaining alignment and adapting your approach to meet evolving market demands and customer needs.

Channel Partner Implementation Roadmap

To initiate this process, consider the following practical roadmap:

Audit Existing Content and Strategies: Start by auditing your current co-marketing and sales assets to assess how well they align with the VST Framework. Identify areas where the vision may not be clearly articulated, where solutions may not be directly tied to customer pain points, or where the technology’s enabling role might be underrepresented.
Strengthen Partner Collaboration: Schedule workshops or meetings with your partners to align on the VST Framework. Use these sessions to agree on a unified strategic narrative, clarify how your combined solutions address market needs, and co-develop materials that showcase your joint offerings.
Customization and Localization: Recognize the need for customization and localization in partner collaborations. Offer guidance on how partners can tailor the VST Framework to address the unique needs and preferences of their target markets, including cultural nuances, industry-specific language, and regulatory considerations.
Train Sales and Marketing Teams: Conduct training sessions for your sales and marketing teams to ensure they understand how to effectively use the VST Framework. Focus on storytelling techniques that weave together vision, solutions, and technology into a coherent narrative that appeals to both business and technical audiences.
Partner Incentive Programs: Consider developing incentive programs that reward partners for successfully implementing the VST Framework in their sales and marketing strategies. Incentives could be tied to the achievement of specific KPIs or milestones, such as the number of joint sales initiatives, co-marketing campaigns aligned with the VST narrative, or successful customer case studies developed.
Success Stories and Best Practices: Share success stories and best practices from within your partner network. Highlighting examples of effective VST Framework implementation can serve as inspiration and provide valuable insights for other partners. Consider creating a repository of case studies, testimonials, and strategy playbooks accessible to all partners.

By following these steps and fostering a close collaboration with your partners, you can create a powerful, unified approach to sales and marketing that leverages the strengths of all parties involved. This not only enhances your ability to meet customer needs but also strengthens your competitive position in the market.

Implementing the VST Framework

It’s essential to recognize that the journey of aligning business and technical audiences is ongoing and dynamic. The VST Framework is not just a methodology but a mindset that, when embraced fully, can become the heartbeat of your sales strategy.

Here are some closing tips to ensure successful implementation:

Align Your Team: Ensure your team fully grasps the ‘why’ behind the VST Framework. It’s not just a sales technique; it’s a holistic approach to aligning customer needs with your solutions, powered by the right technology.
Clear, Consistent Message: Encourage teams across departments to collaborate. Sales should work closely with marketing, product development, and customer service to ensure a unified message that resonates at every touchpoint of the customer journey.
Customer-Centric Approach: Always keep the customer’s perspective at the forefront. The VST Framework should not be a rigid script but a flexible guide that adapts to each customer’s unique situation and needs.
Invest in Training: Ensure your sales and marketing teams are well-versed in the VST framework. Regular training sessions can help maintain alignment and foster an environment where every team member is a strong advocate for your holistic approach.
Foster Thought Leadership: Position your company as a thought leader by sharing insights, industry trends, and success stories. This not only builds trust but also educates your audience, aligning with the ‘Vision’ component of the VST framework.
Simplify Complex Information: Use simple language to explain complex technical details. Visual aids, analogies, and customer stories can make the technology more accessible to non-technical decision-makers.
Demystify Technology: When discussing technology, avoid jargon that confuses rather than clarifies. Instead, focus on how the technology empowers the solutions and brings the vision to life. Remember, it’s about making technology accessible and relevant to all stakeholders.
Highlight Customer Success: Use case studies, testimonials, and quotes to illustrate how your technology has helped others. Success stories are powerful tools for showcasing the practical implementation of solutions and technology.
Feedback Loops: Create channels for customer feedback to understand how well the VST framework is resonating and where it can be improved. Use this feedback to refine your approach continually.
Continuous Learning: Encourage your team to stay informed about industry trends, customer challenges, and technological advancements. A well-informed team can better tailor the VST Framework to address the dynamic landscape of customer needs.
Measure and Iterate: Use analytics to measure the success of the VST Framework in your sales process. Look at conversion rates, sales cycle lengths, and customer satisfaction scores to gauge effectiveness and areas for improvement.

Final Thoughts

The VST Framework is a powerful approach to aligning business and technical audiences, creating a unified sales message that resonates with every stakeholder. This approach addresses the unique interests of both business leaders focused on strategic goals and technical experts concerned with functionality.

By following the VST Framework, sales teams can create a coherent narrative that builds consensus and secures buy-in across all levels of the organization. As each step unfolds, it connects the dots between business objectives and technical capabilities, ensuring smooth adoption and maximizing the solution’s benefits throughout the company.

The framework empowers mid-level Champions to effectively advocate for the solution by bridging the gap between executive priorities and operational realities. By adopting a flexible, customer-centric mindset and continuously refining the strategy, businesses can drive successful technology adoption and achieve long-term growth in an ever-changing market landscape.