Please join us Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 11:30 AM EDT | 8:30 AM PDT | 16:30 PM BST | 17:30 CET for the next complimentary webinar in our Buyer’s Perspective Webinar series.  Register Today!

Few sales professionals consistently manage this situation in their favor. Fewer still appreciate the full, hidden costs of extending discounts.

With all the pricing information available to buyers, sales strategies should seek to preempt the ‘discount’ question. Focusing the conversation on business outcomes – throughout the sales cycle – positions you to compete on value.

When customers don’t see value, the consequences extend from your commission all the way to your firm’s market value.

Delivered by Executive Conversation Chairman, James Melillo, this executive-led session will address:

• Recognizing the full impact of even modest discounting
• Helping customers economically value your solutions
• Ideas for quantifying business outcomes
• Using right conversation, right person strategies

Register Today!

Please join us Tuesday, May 17, 2011, at 11:30 AM EDT | 8:30 AM PDT | 3:30 PM GMT for the next complimentary webinar in our Buyer’s Perspective Webinar series.  Register Today!

We welcome special guest Randall Yim , previous Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for US military installations where he managed a $30 billion annual capital budget. Mr. Yim will share an inside view on how buying decisions are made within public sector accounts, and reveal actionable strategies for aligning with decision drivers, risk considerations and approval processes.

Winning business with public sector decision-makers – elected/appointed officials, agency heads, school administrators – is anything but intuitive.  Competition emerges from surprise sources. Common financial metrics lose meaning. Traditional sales strategies can lead nowhere.

Learning to play by different rules

This webinar will focus on ways to capitalize on the shifting circumstances within public sector accounts. You’ll learn how to shape investment priorities and requirements to competitive advantage by:

• Recognizing the trade-offs inherent in public sector decision making
• Working with accounts to internally prioritize, justify and sell decisions
• Understanding how risk disproportionally impacts resource allocation
• Identifying appropriate account and decision-maker metrics
• Knowing what to look for in budgets to spot opportunities – and obstacles

Leading. Scalable. Unique. Streamlined. And of course, optimized. Ever use these terms to a) sound businesslike, b) impress customers or, c) explain your solution?

If so, the good news is you are not alone. Of course, the bad news is also that you’re not alone.

Business decision-makers hear this messaging too often. It’s ineffective. It won’t advance your sales campaign. Here’s a challenge, and a few approaches, to start transitioning from using the typical sales professional’s useless jargon to more compelling executive conversation.

The Routine

Consider what routinely happens:

Sales professional starts: “Our XYZ product can help drive revenue”.

This statement lacks impact and worse, any recent college graduate without business experience can say it. Again and again, terms like “reduce costs” or “grow revenue” are thrown out as if that’s enough to convince.

When asked how so, sales professionals employ weapons of mass distraction like visibility, virtualize, streamline and optimize. These terms are not only overused, they’re meaningless.

Painting a Clearer Picture

To make the leap to clarity, first paint the picture of the customer’s current situation. In other words, how are they operating today? Do so as specifically as you can.

Most sales professionals cannot adequately, accurately or affirmatively describe what is happening within their account’s business. If you don’t know what the current situation looks like, you lack credibility when saying “we can improve it”.

Describe in simple, non-biased terms exactly how the current process works. Don’t purport to claim whether it’s good or bad; just state the facts and the decision-maker will reach their own conclusion. If you say it is poor, deficient, or ineffective, you may not be believed and you may even offend. Describe it so they can visualize it, and then believe it.

Next, paint the picture of how the customer will operate after your solution is in place. It doesn’t matter what your solution is, customers care about results. Because you earned credibility by demonstrating an understanding of their current situation, the customer is still listening when you describe what will be different.

Again, buyers are not impressed when you tell them their performance will be faster, more efficient or less expensive. Buyers value specifics describing the actual business change you can enable.

Examples

Let’s look at an example of a company that has grown through acquisition. As a result, they now have multiple data centers. You’re selling a consolidation solution.

Bad Example:

Alan, we can help improve the performance of your data centers. Your existing infrastructure is very costly, challenging to manage and inefficient. It uses old, outdated technology that requires expensive maintenance. You have experienced problems in keeping the data centers up and running. In addition, they are ineffective in meeting governmental regulations and protecting your data.

By implementing our server virtualization we will be able to streamline your operations and enhance the effectiveness of your data centers. By investing in our solution you will have state of the art, highly efficient data centers that deploy the latest security technology and which optimize server utilization. With this approach, data integrity is improved and your governmental compliance is better. In addition, we will reduce costs and improve the productivity of the data center operations.

What did that description tell the customer? Not much other than they’re mismanaged. Unfortunately, that is how many sales professionals come across to business decision-makers.

Good Example:

Alan, we can reduce costs approximately 7% per year through consolidating data centers. Currently, you have 8 data centers, each running a different mix of systems. Each requires dedicated, specially trained staff to maintain and monitor. Last year, you had two instances of data loss and four governmental reporting compliance penalties.

We can reduce your number of data centers from 8 to 3. As a result, you can free up people, eliminate space, reduce utilities and reduce maintenance costs. By standardizing on a single platform across those 3 centers, you will be able to prevent data loss and meet reporting requirements by reducing consolidation time from three weeks to five days. Finally, the projected ROI of 22% exceeds your hurdle rate.

What did that description tell the customer? A whole lot more in fewer words.

Why?

· You demonstrated a clear understanding of the current situation

· You specifically explained how your solution can enable business change (improvement)

· You quantified investment impact and provided an ROI parameter

Better yet, you did it without passing judgment on the customer’s operations.

Bottom line, illustrate and quantify the improvement from your solution: don’t just say “we can make it better”.

Where have you changed a customer’s business?

How successful have you been creating demand with today’s new breed of CIO?

Join us for this 30 minute complimentary webinar to gain an executive perspective on where – and how – you can offer value relevant to today’s CIOs.

Register Today

Date:  February 18, 2010 
Time:  11:30am ET | 8:30am PT | 16:30 GMT

About the Webinar

Today, CIOs are commonly members of their organization’s executive committee. They’re expected to be a driving force behind growth strategies. They’re challenged to address business issues such as:

• How well are we anticipating customer and market shifts?
• What new product opportunities does our customer data suggest?

This session will equip you to initiate CIO selling opportunities around:

• The new metrics by which today’s CIOs are compensated 
• 5 surprising trends that too few sellers play to their advantage 
• How to capitalize on the emerging partnerships between CIOs and other executives 
• What to do – and not do – around cloud computing and mobile capability initiatives 
• Positioning your value in sync with the 3 key roles successful CIOs must execute

About the Series

The popular series is led by acclaimed speaker James Melillo, this fast-paced, information-packed webinar series is designed to provide sales professionals with timely, actionable insights to sell to financial decision makers and executives. Each live session of this complimentary webinar series runs approximately 30 minutes followed by audience Q&A.

Receive notification of upcoming events and resources

View upcoming events in the Buyer’s Perspective Series

Sample recorded excerpts from previous webinars

Opportunity Mining: The 5-Minute Guide to Income Statements, the next session in our complimentary webinar will take place Thursday, August 20th at 8:30AM PDT/11:30AM EDT.

Register Today!

ABOUT THIS SESSION
The customer executives you want to engage are intimately familiar with their company’s most recent results, are you? For customers large or small, for profit or non-profit, their income statement clearly signals where you can help them improve performance. As new income statements are issued regularly, developing a practice to analyze this information is an ideal means to keep both you and your account plan current. Join us for this non-technical webinar where you’ll learn how to read the story behind your customer’s numbers through:

· The 4 key focus points within an income statement
· Trends relative to historical performance
· Trends relative to peer group performance
· Avoiding areas where you should not spend time

ABOUT THE SERIES
The popular series is led by acclaimed speaker James Melillo, this fast-paced, information-packed webinar series is designed to provide sales professionals with timely, actionable insights to sell to financial decision makers and executives. Each live session of this complimentary webinar series runs approximately 30 minutes followed by audience Q&A.

Receive notification of upcoming events and resources

View upcoming events in the Buyer’s Perspective Series

Sample recorded excerpts from previous webinars