Introduction
This is the second in a series of articles
brought to you by Robert White - CEO of Lucidus Ltd
dealing with the subject of 'Value'
in the sales process.
In the previous article, we discussed some of the problems surrounding
selling that Value Based Selling tries to address. In this section, we will concentrate on spotting the symptoms that show you have the selling problem.
Symptoms and Causes
The symptoms themselves and their costs are easy to spot and
calculate. Everyone suffers from the sales forecast. The question
is, can it become predictable through an improved closure rate?
We very often see single products being sold when an opportunity
exists to sell the whole suite across the enterprise. Quite
often we will see a customer come out for an enterprise-wide
solution, only to end up doing nothing because the confidence
to invest was not created - or worse they failed to understand
the value of the solution and simply bought on price.
Ever lost an order to a competitor that you know has inferior
products or services? Some vendors will buy the business through
untenable discounting, which can also have the effect of causing
you to discount.
Do you ever feel there's far more customer value in your products
and services than you can quantify - or communicate convincingly to
your potential customers?
We come across many vendors who recognise these symptoms and have
put improvement programmes in place but then rather frustratingly, they
seem not to be getting the results that they expected at the
pace they expected to get them.
Causes - Three Hurdles
Okay, you have some symptoms. Let's try for a diagnosis. What could be some
of the underlying causes? There are three basic hurdles to be overcome;
Next
So that's our view of the symptoms and the causes.
In the next part we will
deal with one of those hurdles, unidentified value and
how we might go about identifying it.
Next >>>
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