Business Case as a
Strategic Weapon
Without a Business Case
When your sellers don't take the time to do a business case or they don't know how to determine your solution's value to the prospect, deals are at risk of three bad outcomes:
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They stall out and become zombie deals on the forecast because your potential users failed to get budget approval due to their inability to articulate business value. The fact that your product is really "cool" just didn't cut it with the boss.
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Another possible scenario is that your competition did the business case, gained account control in the process and you lost the deal.
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Lastly, the customer did the business case themselves and refused to share any of the data with you as it would diminish their negotiating position and now you are negotiating on price vs. value.
There is a better way. A way in which gives you account control, credibility, trust and helps you get high and wide in your prospect's organization.
Business Case as a Strategic Weapon
A good ROI model will help your champion understand the value your solution will return so your deal can be effectively prioritized in the budget. If the value is interesting, it can add momentum to the sales process and help drive it more quickly too close.
A good value assessment process will help you get higher and wider in the account, building champions across all the stakeholders and gaining account control, even boxing out the competition.
When I ran the Business Value Consulting Team at BMC software we did a business case at Costco headquarters in Seattle. During the week we were on-site, we conducted 44 interviews with relevant stake holders including a kickoff and close out meeting with the CIO. Think about that. 44 sales calls at one prospect in just one week. That's over a years worth of sales calls! We knew the account better than any of our competitors, built more champions and established credibility high and wide in the account. The competition was absolutely boxed out of the account. A similar value study was performed by my team at Teledyne Ryan in San Diego. We won the deal. Upon interviewing the Economic Buyer we asked why they picked BMC? The answer, "Nobody knew our business better than BMC".
Helping your sellers learn how to think about and calculate business value can be one of the most important skills in their career. After teaching all 365 of BMC's sellers how to do this, a 20 year veteran enterprise seller told me about a deal he won after executing his first business case. He said, "Your teaching on how to sell business value, has been the most important skill I've learned in the last 10 years".
Give your sellers this tool and they will do larger deals, navigate the sales cycle more efficiently and enjoy a new potential in their careers.
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Deliverables:
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Training course 1/2 day
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Annotated training deck
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Electronic student workbooks
Pricing:
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$35,000 single ROI model
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Expenses billed at actuals