High Velocity

by Guest Author Bob Tobey w/ Sales Improvement Zone

What does your company do to Verify The Value that you promised to deliver to your customers?

Somehow, most companies miss this critical step in their sales cycle. Think about it for a minute. You and your company make sales call after sales call, presentation after presentation, proposal after proposal. You finally get an order and then move on to the next deal.

Yes, there’s normally an implementation team that takes over to make sure the customer is “happy”. After implementation, you make some service calls to determine whether the client is happy with your product and service and to see if there’s anything else you can sell them.

And for some of you, recurring sales calls turn into other orders … BUT… Do you really know the amount of value you delivered to the customer?

Do you know if the value you delivered was equal to or more than the value you promised? For most of us, the answer to these two questions is NO, because we don’t measure value and return on investement. We measure “happiness”. Is the client “happy”, “really happy” or “really, really happy”?

Most of us are really, really happy when our customers are really, really happy. Heck most of us are really, really happy when our customers are only really happy or just happy. The problem with this is you can’t put a dollar amount on “happy”, “really happy” or “really, really happy”. Why should we even be worried about it? By not measuring the value that you and your company deliver to your customers, you actually make your job of selling harder.

Let’s say you’ve got an interested prospective customer who would like to talk to some of your current customer references. Which of your current customers are you going to give to your prospective customer — someone who is happy, really happy or really, really happy? “Really, really happy” is the best answer, so now your prospective customer calls your customer and finds out that they are really, really happy with your products and services. Next, your prospective customer goes to his/her boss to sell your company with the potential of being really, really happy. How is his/her boss going to measure really, really happy potential?

Now, one can say that you’re not calling high enough in the account. But even if you were calling on his/her boss, you’re not going to get very far selling really, really happy potential either. Eventually, someone in your prospective account is going to want to know about Return On Investment. If you can find a way to measure the value that you and your company deliver to customers in hard dollars and Return On Investment, it will go a long way toward helping you sell.

Don’t Just Take My Word For It . . .

Value-Added Selling by Tom Reilly, Competing on Value by Mack Hanan and Peter Karp, Solution Selling by Brian Bosworth and Selling to the C Suite by Nicholas Reid and Stephen Bistritz all mention the need to measure — post sale — the value that you deliver your customers. Nicholas Reid and Stephen Bistritz have taken this discussion to a new level. Their client research indicates that C Level Executives want salespeople to present how their products and services have performed. Knowing the C Level wants the report, this makes getting the information needed to compile it a lot easier than it used to be.

I had the pleasure of seeing Tom Reilly make a Value-Added Selling presentation to a medium sized player in the construction industry. As a matter of fact, this construction industry silo that he was presenting to is a much needed part of the construction business. It’s safe to say that construction can’t happen without this industry…but the industry is littered with competition and they all use and sell the same products and service — making it a commodity market place. In other words, “I can get the same product from any of 5 other guys down the street, so what makes you any different?”

All the salespeople are selling “Service” — which is NOT a differentiator. (Not too many salespeople say they have the worst service. They always say they have the best, and hope they have the lowest price.) Yet only one company in the audience had actually been Verifying and Measuring their Value. They were measuring their service; on-time delivery, billing accuracy, product failure, down time, emergency delivery time, telephone response time, etc. . . . and making darn sure the client knew about it.

Now, when competitors call on these large construction companies, they are asked if they can beat 98% up time, 96% on time deliveries, 90% billing accuracy and 90 minute emergency service and delivery. By measuring the value that they deliver everyday to their customers, their peers can only compete on price. And as we all know, price is not that hard to out sell.

If you and your company are not taking the time or making the effort to Measure the Value and the Return On Investment you deliver, do yourself a favor and start. Start today! The benefits are too great to ignore. Measuring your value will get you access to higher executive levels, prove your ROI to potential customers, fend off competitors, improve your negotiating power, and make the job of selling a lot easier.

Popularity: 6% [?]