Copyright © 2012, Alinean Inc. All rights reserved.

2

Let Me Tell you a StoryIn a land not too far away, in a time not so long ago, a sales team learned that three prospects were in immediate need of tools for a critical building project.

It’s been some time since such an oppor-tunity has been available, and the sales team springs into action.

Meet Joe, Sally and Gary, the intrepid sales team.

3

Joe Springs Into Action … Joe, one of the more forward sales reps, is able to quickly get a meeting with the first prospect. After nice introductions, knowing the prospect needs tools for his building project, Joe doesn’t waste time and immediately takes the tools from his sample bag and with a cacophony of action, begins demonstrating how his tools are superior:

his hammer at hammering nails

his saw at cutting wood his wire cutters at cutting wire

his trowel at spreading concrete

4

… To Hammer a Deal HomeThe prospect likes the demonstration, and immediately wants to purchase the wire cutters, but demands a discount, as wire cutters can certainly be purchased for less at the hardware store.

Salesperson Joe doesn’t have much argu-ment for that, so acquiesces, providing a 20% discount to get the deal. Without haste, the customer starts building and Joe returns to the office to do the “I got deal dance”.

5

Sally Takes Her Turn …Sally, the next salesperson, gets an appointment with the second prospect soon after. Rather than jumping right into the demonstration, Sally knows she needs more info rmation about the building project in order to recommend the right set of tools.

6

… Asks the Right Questions …

Instead of just selling one tool, Sally follows marketing’s advice and bundles the tools together into a building solution so that the prospect has all of what they need. The buyer sees the benefit of not having to piece together the toolkit to serve his needs.

She asks the prospect what they need to build, and the prospect describes their need for shelter.

7

… And Nails A Solution Sale

Sally gets the deal, and hardly has to discount to get there. The customer gets busy with building his shelter, and upon returning to the office, Joe’s reception is rather cold know-ing he has been bested by Sally and her solutions approach.

8

Gary Moves Beyond What to Why … Gary, the last salesperson, meets with the final prospect. Like Sally, Gary is eager to learn about the prospect’s building project. Upon hearing they need to build a shelter, however, Gary doesn’t stop there with his questions. He doesn’t just want to know what the buyer wants to build, but why he wants to build it.

Does he need shelter from the rain, from the cold, or something more? He knows that sometimes buyers might have issues, but don’t understand the priority / urgency of various factors, or worse, have not real-ized they have other issues that might be even more urgent to address.

The prospect tells Gary that indeed, he needs to build a sturdy structure to pro-tect from the cold temps just around the corner.

9

… Challenges the Buyer

But Gary, with provocative research facts from marketing, politely challenges that a house often means much more. Gary communicates the latest security figures, and how build-ing a lesser home might leave the buyer vulnerable. Gary compares and contrasts the costs of various shelters, and how often the more expensive approach yields lower total cost of ownership and better value in the long term.

10

… Plays to Left (Logical) and Right (Emotional) Brain

Tugging on the buyer’s heartstrings Gary implores that this house must be built right, for it will remain in the family now, and for generations to come.

And the story Gary weaves is not all facts and figures, because he knows buyers use their entire minds to make a purchase, relying not just on the logical, but the emotional.

11

… And Sells the Desired Outcome

The prospect lights up with the vision Gary painted, the fiscal sense it all makes, and the urgency the better alternative commands. Gary is not just able to sell the tools, but much needed design-build services, so the prospect is not just enabled to address the shelter opportunity, but on a turnkey basis can get the house they really need. Gary returns to the office with a deal 30 times larger than Sally and Joe, and a trip to winner’s circle in the bag. Better yet, the customer gets just the right house to provide the protection they need.

12

Value Selling – Everyone WinsGrabbing coffee in the office a month later, the sales team is startled by the front page of the local paper.

There on the cover are the three customers. A picture of the first in front of a house of straw, a picture of the second with a house of sticks, and a picture of the third, with his design-build house of bricks. The head-line: Big Bad Wolf Rampage Destroys Two Homes, Two Pigs Narrowly Escape Death.

A product, solution or value selling approach– the three little pigs teach us that the latter is not only better for your sales revenue, but better for your customers as well!

13

Value Selling & Marketing

14

Buyers Have Fundamentally & Permanently ChangedMeet Buyer FrugalnomicusThe methods of five years ago won’t work any longer because your buyers have fundamentally and perma-nently changed.

Frugalnomics is in full effect, with your buyers:• More EMPOWERED with information about op-

portunities, solutions, products / pricing and the competition … as a result, your buyers are firmly in control of the buying lifecycle, and inviting sales later into the decision making

• More OVERLOADED, forced to do more with less as a result of cutbacks, with less time than ever to uncover issues, explore opportunities and drive towards purchasing your solution

• More SKEPTICAL of your claims and traditional sales and marketing pitches

• More FRUGAL, demanding quantifiable proof of bottom-line impact on your proposals; want-ing to be sure each decision is delivering the lowest price / best value possible

15

Evolve to Value Focus to Fight FrugalnomicsYour buyers require a new more value-focused sales and marketing approach.

Product SellingBack in the day, when the vendor was in control, you could walk in with a traditional product approach – presenting on the lat-est features and functions of your solution. It was up to the buyer to figure out how to best apply your product to solve their busi-ness problem, and determine the outcome / value that could be derived.

Solution SellingThis advanced from a product to a more solutions-oriented approach, where prod-ucts were bundled into solution sets and aimed at solving a specific set of customer problems. The sales person engaged by asking the buyer what their pain was; what was keeping them up at night.

Value SellingBut with today’s buyer, these approaches are not effective. In many cases your over-loaded buyer might not be aware that the pain you are addressing exists. For these buyers, diagnosis is key – to uncover the issues your buyer didn’t know about, and help them prioritize the pains they already knew they had.

And if they know the pain, your buyer of-ten has already researched the solutions and competitors and is beyond the tradi-tional product / solution approach, instead needing more consultative information on potential outcomes, risks, investment re-quirements, and a business case.

16

Value Focus a Requirement, But Gaps ExistWhen we look to see how many salespeople have advanced to a value-focused approach, we find that a serious gap exists.

✔ They are gunuinely interested in partnering with us to make sure our initiative is successfull 6% Outcome

✔ They try to understand our challenges and offer suggestions, even if they don’t sell the product/solution 6% Consultative

– They are legitimately interested in trying to help us understand how their solutions can help 20% True Solution

✘ They only want to tell me about their products/services 27% Transactional

✘ They listen for a keyword or two so they can give me a prepared pitch 41% Buzz Word Solution

According to Forrester, 68% still use an outdated product selling approach, focus-ing right away on a traditional products / services pitch, or paying lip service to the buyer by asking a few questions before launching into a standard canned presen-tation.

A mere 20% have advanced to a true so-lution selling approach, while a scant 6% have actually advanced to the most effec-tive value (outcome) focused approach.

More is needed to help evolve your sales and marketing to meet the new buyer chal-lenge and fight Frugalnomics.

17

Your Buyer’s Journey is Complex

Discovery

Understand the Issues & Commit to Changing the Status-Quo

Why Change?

Consideration

Prioritize Possible Solutions & Commit to an Approach

Why Now?

Decision

Justify the Decision & Make the Solution Selection

Why Your Solution?

Your buyers need to be convinced that the status-quo should change, and that the change is worth it. In today’s do-more-with-less environment, most organizations are doing all they can to keep the lights on. In such a stressed environment, your buy-ers might be feeling pain, but not have the resources to address the issues. After all, for most organizations it is easier and less risky to do nothing, than to change.

Your OpportunityThe opportunity for your sales and market-ing teams during the Discovery phase is to spark innovation and change, and help with issue diagnosis and prioritization.

Your buyers need to commit to change and prioritize the project. Once the buyer has committed to the change, the decision makers need to research possible solu-tion approaches and create a short-list of specific providers. During this phase it is difficult for your buyers to wade through the copious amounts of research and mar-keting materials to understand the various advantages that each solution approach might provide.

Your OpportunityThe opportunity for your sales and market-ing teams during the Consideration phase is to help your buyers understand the value of specific solution sets and compare and contrast different competitive approaches.

Your buyers’ procurement teams must reach consensus on a particular proposal, and gain selection approval from the many stakeholders involved in the decision mak-ing process. Finance in particular now demands economic justification and is heavily involved in the final vendor selec-tion process, providing more price pres-sure and financial diligence requirements.

Your OpportunityThe opportunity for your sales and market-ing teams during the Decision phase is to provide a detailed ROI analysis, CFO ready business case, and competitive total cost of ownership / value comparison.

Your buyer follows a series of steps to arrive at a “YES” decision. The journey represents a complex change management process, which just won’t happen unless it’s facilitated.

18

Engage Earlier & Consistently to Facilitate Your Buyer’s Journey

Examining the first phase of your buyer’s journey, during Discov-ery when the vision for the project is defined, most buyers are researching options on their own, and do not involve sales in the process. However, it is during this early phase that your buyers establish strong provider preferences, with Forrester indicating that 65% of vendors who create the buying vision during these early phases of the journey, end up getting the deal. For many solution providers, lack of engagement means a “failure to launch”, miss-ing out on the deal entirely, or playing catch-up the entire way.

In the later bake-off phases, during Consideration and Decision, Forrester indicates that 35% of vendor selection decisions are made, making it more important to get connected and engaged in earlier phases. However, many of your deals get stalled by a failure to overcome objections and drive consensus during this phase, making it vital to effectively address.

All Phases of The Journey are ImportantSo in the end, all phases of the journey are important. However, we find that most marketing and sales efforts are aimed at later stages, with gaps in early engagement methods and tools.

65%Of Decisions Won / Lost Based on Who Helped Establish Need

35%Of Decisions Won / Lost on Bake-Off

Discovery

Understand the Issues & Commit to Changing the Status-Quo

Why Change?

Consideration

Prioritize Possible Solutions & Commit to an Approach

Why Now?

Decision

Justify the Decision & Make the Solution Selection

Why Your Solution?

19

Interactive Sales & Marketing Tools to Facilitate Tools map across your buyer’s journey to facilitate each stage

Interactive White PapersHelp your buyers get a personalized assessment of their opportunities

Benefit EstimatorsEstimate for your buyers the cost of doing nothing and the value of change

Diagnostic AssessmentsGet into more detail with your buyers about what ails them, conducting a diagnosis to help identify new issues, prioritize opportunities and recommend relevant solutions

ROI AnalysisCreate the business case justification for your proposed solutions

TCO ComparisonDon’t lose the deal on price, instead you can elevate the discussion to differenti-ate total cost of ownership (TCO) and incremental value

These tools can be used by your sales professionals, in interactive workshops, to provide diagnosis, analysis, justification, differentiation and consultative advice – helping to drive a value-focused approach.

As well, the tools can be made customer facing, to help provide your prospects with direct access to completely personalized decision making analysis and guidance.

20

Next Steps

The Overview Optimize your Content to Fight Frugalnomics

The Solutions Value MarketingValue Selling

The Proof The ROI of Alinean Value Sales and Marketing Tools

Resources & Insight

Fight Frugalnomics Resource CenterAsk the ROI Guy Resource Center