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The secret sauce to your sales success? It’s what happens before the sale. It’s the planning, the strategy, the leadership. And it’s more than demo automation. It’s the thoughtful work that connects people, processes, and performance. If you want strong revenue, high retention, and shorter sales cycles, the pre-work—centered around the human—still makes the dream work. But you already know that.
The Unexpected Lever is your partner in growing revenue by doing what great sales leaders do best. Combining vision with execution. Brought to you by Vivun, this show highlights the people and peers behind the brands who understand what it takes to build and lead high-performing sales teams. You’re not just preparing for the sale—you’re unlocking potential.
Join us as we share stories of sales leaders who make a difference, their challenges, their wins, and the human connections that drive results, one solution at a time.
Jarod Greene (00:00):
Hey everybody. Welcome to V5 where we spend about five minutes getting on our soapbox. Some of the hottest takes, some of the hottest topics in all of B2B sales, B2B go-to-market, and all things in between. I have the pleasure today of being joined by Daryl Weldon. She's the Vice President of Sales at Verisys and she has a hot take. Daryl, what do you got?
Daryl Weldon (00:25):
So today I thought we'd talk about ROI as a nice-to-have, whereas risk mitigation is a budget unlock.
Jarod Greene (00:32):
Let's get it. What do you got?
Daryl Weldon (00:33):
Yeah, so thinking, if you don't know how to position your solution in terms of regulatory protection, compliance assurance, or brand safety, you're not selling, you're storytelling. Storytelling's got a place in the sales process. But if you're hitting procurement and legal and that's where you're losing your deals, you're missing something. And really it's about tying to risk. ROI sounds like hope, whereas risk mitigation, it's control. That's really where it's at. CFOs don't need another hockey stick graph. They really need a firewall and you got to give it to 'em. You got to insulate them from the penalties, from the audit findings, the reputational exposure. That's where your hope lives is on the ROI slide. Urgency lives in the risk mitigation story.
Jarod Greene (01:20):
Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. We could spend days on this one. Where do you think the tendency to lean more into ROI versus risk comes from?
Daryl Weldon (01:32):
I think 2021, everybody was growth, growth, growth. And it really was around the value prop and it's just a natural glide right into value prop and the ROI, and of course. Let me tell you about how we can grow you. Lemme tell you how everything can just evolve, right? But it's, you forget to talk about the pain, right? So it's that whole "show me you know me". Shout out to Sam McKenna, right? It's all about, let me talk about your risk, let me talk about what you're going to lose, where the pitfalls are, where the hole is and what the problem is going to be. Like I said earlier, nobody wants to, wants to show up on the six o'clock news for all the wrong reasons. That's where the challenges are. And it's like that whole "show me you know me" thing. Like I said, CFOs, they don't want that problem. Everybody wants growth of course, but what they really don't want is problems. And so you've got to show them how to avoid that. And so yeah, growth, but clutch is staying away from the problems.
Jarod Greene (02:36):
Yeah, problems over profit, we don't want that, right? Profit's great, but we really don't want problems. I think you touched on something that's really important and our audience typically comes from, call it the middle of the funnel. And you touched on the notion if your deals are getting stuck in procurement, if your deals are getting stuck in review, if your deals are getting stuck at the close to the goal line, it's because you haven't included risk in your value case or you haven't enabled your buyer to talk about risk on your behalf. How do you think sellers can improve their abilities to do this immediately? Again, I couldn't agree with you more that this is a problem, but for the folks listening, what are some practical steps they can take to close this gap?
Daryl Weldon (03:17):
Well, the nice thing is, is that risk mitigation resonates across all functions. So it's really, it's not just finance. So it's really being able to talk across the different functions. I mean we're always talking about spreading across, right? And multithreading. This is a perfect example of being able to do that. You can talk about exciting more than one stakeholder with all of this. So legal teams, downstream liability, sanctions, all of that. Compliance leaders, CMS, audit readiness, market and branding. If the story breaks, you hired a sanction provider. Nobody wants that. And so you want to make sure that you have checked yourself. Did we quantify the cost with inaction? Are we making sure that we're checking ourselves before you are getting to the goal line? Are you checking to make sure that who owns compliance and legal and brand safety, that you've covered your bases on all of these things? Checking in on what's the worst case scenario that we are preventing, making sure that you're answering those questions for yourself and then covering that within your sales process and checking that you've covered that with each of the leaders that would cover that internally. In healthcare sales today that do nothing, risk is your biggest competitor, so you got to make sure you've quantified it.
Jarod Greene (04:32):
Quantified it, that element of risk. We hear it over and over again. This is fascinating conversation. I think we could have it for a few days. It's one I think the audience would respond really well to. And if folks wanted to talk to you specifically about it or reach out to you, where would they do that?
Daryl Weldon (04:48):
Yeah, so they can find me on LinkedIn. Pretty easy to find. Daryl Weldon is, I mean, I'm there. I think I'm the only one in LinkedIn.
Jarod Greene (04:57):
You're out here.
Daryl Weldon (04:57):
Yeah, that'd be the easiest way to find me.
Jarod Greene (05:00):
Okay, awesome. Well, thank you for spending some time with us today and we'll do a much better job communicating the value of risk management in the sales process.
Daryl Weldon (05:08):
Thanks so much. It was a pleasure.
Jarod Greene (05:10):
Alright.