May 31, 2025 • 47 mins
Unlock the secrets to winning executive buy-in and selling on value (not price) in tough economic times. In this episode, host Bruce Scheer sits down with value selling authority Todd Snelgrove (author, "Value First Then Price" and creator of "Total Profit Added"), procurement expert Dean Edwards, stakeholder David, and ROI-selling leader Darren Fleming, to break down how business cases can drive premium deals—without discounting.
👉 Skip ahead to what matters most with these timestamps:
00:00 - Welcome & Introductions: Setting the stage for value selling mastery [Bruce Scheer, David, Dean Edwards]
04:45 - Meet Todd Snelgrove: Lessons from decades of value-focused selling
09:08 - Why Business Cases Win: Procurement, psychology, and profit impact
13:32 - Ability to Pay vs. Willingness to Pay: Insights from the field
20:27 - Inside Procurement: Sales tips from the other side of the table
22:44 - Timing Your Value Message: Why the early bird catches the deal
23:14 - Common Mistakes with Value Selling Tools: Avoid the Excel trap!
31:01 - Proof Points: Academic research, industry stats, and procurement testimonials
36:40 - The Power of Visualization: Why execs need one-page business cases
37:06 - Unveiling Value Navigator: Darren Fleming demos an AI-powered value case builder
42:09 - Adding Trust & Credibility: Referencing real research in business cases
44:48 - Customizing Your Story: Real-time adjustments for believable proposals
45:55 - What’s Next: Adding value in every buyer conversation
Don’t miss:
Why buyers pick suppliers who co-build business cases—in 80% of deals!
How to leverage AI for rapid, tailored, data-backed business cases (demo included)
Insider tips from both procurement and sales sides to elevate your deal performance in 2025
Subscribe & leave a review for more value-selling mastery!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to the ValuePro Show, where value pros get value
ready.
Hi. My name is Bruce Scheer, the host of the ValuePro Show. In this
webinar, we are talking with Todd Snellgrove, a globally
recognized authority on value selling and the former global
head of value at SKF. Todd has spent over two
(00:24):
decades helping companies shift from competing on measurable defensible
value, working with Fortune 1,000 organizations to build
business cases that win over procurement and finance leaders.
He's also coauthor of the best selling book Value First Then
Price and creator of the frameworks like Total
Profit Added used across industries to justify premium
(00:45):
pricing in risk averse markets. He's also one of our
affiliates at valuepros.io. So the focus of
this webinar is how to win executive buy in without cutting your
price using a powerful business case that speaks procurement's
language. Todd breaks down exactly how sales teams
can collaborate with buyers to frame value early, overcome price
(01:08):
objections, and close deals with higher margins
even in a tough economy. He's then joined by me, Dean
Edwards, former head of procurement at Levi Strauss, Ingram Micro, and
Yahoo, and then Darren Fleming, who introduces
our sexy new AI powered value navigator tool to
help business stakeholders with their business cases. Welcome to this
(01:30):
webinar, and, we're really excited to, for you
to be here with us. The focus on this
overall series is revenue mastery in
2025, and we've been thrown so far
so many curve balls in 2025 with tariffs and
other types of economic influences that we we weren't
(01:52):
expecting, and it's gonna make our our selling climate, and
it already has, much harder. So that was kind of the genesis
for us to create this, webinar series, revenue mastery
2025, outselling an uncertain, economy.
We started off with that with our absolute procurement
expert Dean Edwards, and he'll do an introduction just in a minute. But
(02:15):
we focused on inside the buyers' minds, what drives
decisions in an uncertain economy. And that particular
episode can be, watched off of the Value
Pros website. If you just go to
valuepros.io, And then
once you're in there, just go to show, and then you'll see Dean
(02:36):
talking about with us about, gosh, how do we partner with
procurement in these, economic uncertain times? So that
was the first webinar. The second one here is with Todd
Snelgrove, and this one is the business case advantage. How to win
executive buy in without price cuts. You know? How do we get to
yes? You know, through the power of a business
(02:57):
case. Todd, will do a beautiful job in talking
about that. And then our third webinar series is coming up next
week. Third webinar in the series is where I'll lead off, but
it'll be a full panel of us talking about how do we elevate the
buying experience. And, we all saw a statistic at
the end of twenty twenty four. '50 '9 percent of the influence on
(03:20):
a bold buying decision, you know, with a high consideration
solution is influenced by the buying experience. Not
the solution, but the experience. And we'll all talk about how do we
drive a better buying experience so you can improve your deal performance
toward you know, as as we move deeper into 2025.
So that's kind of our format. Why don't we do just
(03:43):
a quick, round of introductions, and then, Todd, we'll let you get rolling
on that. I'm Bruce Shearer. I'm one of the cofounders at
ValuePros.io. Lately, I've been calling myself the
ValueVitalizer. You'll see that on my LinkedIn profile.
And then, David, do you wanna introduce yourself? Yeah.
Sure. I'm a stakeholder at Value Pros, and my primary
(04:04):
goal is to help clients identify the value
drivers for their solutions and then translate that in
meaningful ways, in personal ways to each customer's
status quo environments and KPIs. Dean?
Awesome. Dean Edwards, I've got
decades of experience in procurement, Fortune 500 size
(04:26):
organizations, such as Kaiser Permanente, Levi's, Yahoo,
Ingram Micro. And now I run a company working with
sales teams, teaching them how to engage more
effectively with procurement to drive better results.
Thank you, Dean. And then Todd. So I spent
twenty something plus years in the b two b market,
(04:49):
industrial market, but, most of those years was as
the first to my knowledge is a VP of value. And it was
because the company said, we spend all this money and time and effort
creating something that is a value. But the technical buyer
was starting to have to involve the financial buyer
procurement. And finance was saying, I'm not willing to pay that much for
(05:12):
that. Is it really worth that? What is the value? So the
CEO said, guess what? We really need to equip our teams with a business
case, the confidence, and all these other things we'll talk about today so they can
get to the market and have a value conversation, not a price
or discount discussion. I consult on this
area right now. I'll I'll close with that. Some of the examples
(05:34):
will come from this book. What I like about it, you know, we should always
talk about the value first because then price becomes part of that.
But if you ever lead with price, they're never gonna hear the word value. They're
always gonna be anchored on that number. What I think is interesting about this book
is I think it was 12 companies in the B2B marketplace that wrote
about their best practices. They all come back to a thesis that you
(05:55):
need a good business case and a bunch of other things.
But there were four or five procurement people that also wrote saying, I'm willing to
pay more if there's a business case that's clear, concise, believable,
maybe even guaranteed. But it's, you know, not this. Here's how we
should sell versus this is how we should buy. So with
that, just to give you a flavor, you know, a lot
(06:18):
of capital equipment industrial, but you'll see things in there of medtech. The
total cost of care is a term. Renewable energy,
you know, levelized cost of energy. The terms might change by
industry, but the logic is the same. If you're selling something that's not the lowest
price, you better have a business case, and it's our job to put
that together for the customer. I start with a variation of this
(06:39):
slide with my own team, but also with customers to make sure we're
using the right term. I mean, price, cost, value, they're
all five letter terms. I believe everybody that's watching is North
America. But, you know, they mean completely different
things, and the sales team needs to be confident when the
customer uses a term to challenge them. And I don't mean be
(07:01):
arrogant, but to challenge them. So if a customer
says your price is too high, I'd say, might be higher, but my costs are
lower. Well, how would you measure that? What are those costs?
Where have you done it before? Do I believe you? I
mean, procurement people, I spend 20% of my
time at procurement events, and they say it's funny. We'll send out
(07:23):
the annual email. You know? We need to get our cost center control.
It's 2,025. These are the reasons. It depends who you
talk to, but they say, you know, a lot of suppliers will come back with
price cuts or terms that are associated with that. They don't come
back with, we're gonna come in with an efficiency program. We're gonna walk the
line. We're gonna enumerate 10 problem areas. We can reduce other costs.
(07:45):
And value's on the upside. And when I mean value, I mean, there's the emotional
value, but you could also put some numbers on value.
I don't have the slide here, but I use a term called total profit
added. I want my clients to be more profitable.
Cost reductions is only one side of that. You know? The shipping, the receiving,
the, you know, the operating cost, the energy, the water, the downtime.
(08:08):
But if I can help a customer get to market faster, in some industries, that's
worth a lot. I think you get a patent for ten years. If you spend
six months trying to get it to market because of the mark whatever
reason, that's lost revenue. In the high-tech industry technology,
I mean, you've got a short window of differentiation. You know? If
I could help that client get to market faster, it's worth something.
(08:31):
Variations of my signature have basically said, I can be the highest price
with the lowest cost or and or the best value. And
then really have a structured methodology, a tool to say, let me show
you how. Here are the 400 drivers we have. Here are the
impacts. We'll get to that stuff. But, again, hopefully,
most sales teams are equipped and have role played that. Let me put this in
(08:53):
because I think it's an interesting piece of research, with the professor that's
done value management for thirty years,
professor Jim Anderson. And he said, what I find a lot of
people doing is saying, I'm just gonna create a value based sales tool. I'll put
somebody in a corner, and I'll say, grab Excel and make up a
model. And then we go to market, and it doesn't work. We'll talk to
(09:16):
you later why Excel or ad hoc homegrown
systems don't work. I just got 10 examples of things I've seen, and I'm talking
from Fortune 100 companies. But real quickly, you're
gonna get snippets of this as we go through. If anybody wants a chapter or
two, just send me a note. But, you know, if you put the value methodology
and mindset when you create a new product or service, if you challenge, what will
(09:38):
this be worth for the customer in this industry versus the alternatives?
Because a lot of companies get to the end, they launch it, and they go,
why aren't people buying it? Is it part of your selling
process, or is it just, okay. We put the offer into the
customer. We didn't do proper discovery. We didn't find the value drivers,
but they're pushing back the prices too high. Hey, Todd. Create a
(10:00):
case and hit send. Probably too late. You need to frame it
early. Has the team been trained on how to sell value? How to talk
financial? How to challenge? How to use these terminologies? Is it
ongoing? So he says that's the ability to sell. What
I find a lot, though, is companies don't spend any time on getting the sales
team to want to sell. So sales compensation.
(10:22):
You know, I was just at a school and a professor was talking about quality
of sales. And my old CEO would say, we probably have 400 ways to
discount. But, you know, publicly traded company, this gross margins are
all these nice numbers. But if I cut 5%, that's half the profit.
But the sales team would laugh. I could cut the 55% today, be
at the golf course this afternoon, and it barely would affect any sort of
(10:45):
compensation for me. So look at your compensation. Is it driving
the behaviors you want? Are you giving customers value buying
options? I have created a bunch of performance or outcome
based contracts. They're not near as confusing or risky as people
think. It doesn't need to be a % at risk. But you
wanna know what? I'm higher priced than the alternative. Let me guarantee you that
(11:06):
you're gonna get value. We just gotta agree on what is value, how would we
measure it, how do we define it, how do we implement it. But I
signed a 80 of those agreements with fortune somethings around the world.
But, you know, if you're saying you're more expensive, maybe you should put some
money where your mouth is. And, again, what's funny is a
lot of companies will say again, I I make up numbers as examples. You
(11:29):
know, the threshold for that level is to cut 10%. If you can cut the
price 10%, how come you can't guarantee 10% value and not cut the
price? My job would then to get the customer to nod and go, you're
right. 10% value is better than 10% price. More
internal, do you have the right business culture? I mentioned that we're very lucky to
get to a CEO that said, we've gotta do something.
(11:51):
The world is commoditizing what we do. There's a lack of differentiation.
There's new competitors popping up every day. If we're not better in
really getting this message out there, but it can't be just a, you know,
for the moment. It has to be a commitment. And then I spent a lot
of time on customer culture. And what I mean by that is getting to the
market and getting people to rethink. When I buy this,
(12:13):
should I spend a time, effort, or energy to really even think anything besides lowest
price that's landed cost? It's a bearing. It's
a this. It's a that. So I would spend a lot of time on stage,
articles, this type of stuff going you know, there's a lot of money to be
found or made by really rethinking how you buy this type
of stuff. Because, you know, if the perception says it's a commodity, there's a
(12:35):
bunch of suppliers, it'll be leveraged price. The
purpose of the business case is amazing and it allows the
customer to change how they buy. So I'm not a pricing
expert, but there's two pricing terms I'll share with you very quickly.
ATP, the ability to pay. So whatever
year it is, I'm in front of the boss, and he goes, you know,
(12:56):
market's really bad. I mean, you know, we had all these really value added solutions,
and he goes, that portfolio is really you know, it's
doing better than the rest of the business, but, you know, they said, boss,
nobody has money to pay. And he looked at me. He was Scottish, so he
had a little bit of an accent. He said, yes. They do. I will
change my ability to pay based on the business case. Because
(13:18):
I can understand my my my sales team saying there's no the customer
doesn't have the money. He goes, yeah. If there's the right business case, they will
find the money. They will move it from another budget over right
away. You know, we thought we were gonna do this. We thought we'd cut these
costs here, there, and everywhere. Wait. There's a business case that shows me if I
do this within this year or this budget, I'm gonna save that,
(13:40):
and it's believable, I'll find the money. I'll go to the bank and get the
money if I have to. So their ability to change
changes. I mean, someone came to my door right now and said, I wanna sell
you something for a thousand dollars. I probably said, I have a thousand dollars lying
around. If there was a believable business case, I would take it from another account.
I would borrow them. I would do something. I would find the money. Similar but
(14:02):
different is the willingness to pay. And I thought this is
hilarious, and I think somebody stole this example, but it's a true story.
You know, companies will line up their major goals for the year. Their focus
is we're gonna buy this system or that. We're gonna upgrade here. And I
did a consulting, three day workshop for a medical
company to make the big MRI or cat scan
(14:24):
machines. I always confuse those two. And they talked about a deal they had
in Australia. It was done. They got the deal. And, do a
follow-up a few weeks later, and the vice president of Asian sales
or whatever says, well, guess what? We didn't get the deal. And I'm
like, what happened? Great. You you know, we just spent three days. And
he goes, you wanna know what? We thought we had the deal, so we didn't
(14:45):
write the business case. The technical buyer says you got it. You're better. Whatever
the better was. I go, so what happened? We lost to a
parking lot. Pardon? Yeah. Well, somehow
the board looked at and said incremental revenue
for a parking lot. It's newer revenue. It's better, whatever, blah,
blah, blah, Sweat the assets on the existing machines. So
(15:08):
the takeaway from his was, I think I'm number one on the company's priority
that changes based on my competitor. My competitor is not the other
medical machine company. It could be something completely different. So
a business case allows people to find the money and prioritize the
money. You have to have some marketing that helps
the customer rethink. I love the price per because everybody
(15:30):
can say, yeah. I see the price. It's whatever percent, But all those
things, it's different by every industry, the terminology, but I'll show you, I
think, one slide with some numbers on it. It's amazing how the bottom stuff is
bigger than the top stuff, but it's our job to bring that information
that's reasonable, researched, has some background to it and
say, you know, I don't care where the price is. I used to say you
(15:52):
want a smaller price per that's how you'll be more profitable.
So it's amazing how much research you can find. And you'll
see later, when we play with this tool, how
much better it is today than it used to be. But finding these numbers, one,
you could ask your people internally, but there's research out there.
So if somebody had the money and wanted to go buy an airplane from Boeing
(16:15):
tomorrow, that would and they wrote the check for whatever, a hundred million, that
would represent 8% of the total cost of that airplane
over its life. The depreciation, the tires, the maintenance,
the fuel, the labor on it, these the upgrades,
etcetera. Class eight trucks for those that are interested are, like, the big
18 motors you see. Industrial equipment is 12%.
(16:38):
So everybody's focusing on that little red line, and they're missing the big
gold color. So I was involved in our procurement team
eventually because the boss said, you know, we have a structured methodology
in our sales side. Maybe we should take that and just do it with our
suppliers. Value is value whether it's on the buy side or the sell side,
but he goes, I don't think we have a good structure when we're buying. So
(16:59):
we are involved, and, we had three companies come to us. It was capital equipment
machinery, very important to the business. And the vice president of procurement said to
me, which one do you think we should choose? I said, well, I like that
one. He goes, yeah. Yeah. Of course. Imagine that. You're choosing the one that's
10% more expensive. And we were buying a bunch of like, it was a big
dollar amount. I was, yeah. But he showed us how he's gonna
(17:20):
save 2% on the operating cost. And Bo
Inge, we're now friends, good friends actually, said, I don't know what math they
taught you in Canada, but 10% is better than 2%. They said,
no. It's not. You need the denominator. 10% of
12 is 1.2, but 2% of
88 is 1.76. It's it's about 40 to 50% more
(17:42):
impactful. The problem is nobody thinks for these or we thought they
were all the same. They're all gonna use the same energy. They're all gonna have
the same cost to repair them. They're all gonna fail the same. That's a lot
of if. One supplier did a good job of showing why their stuff
could be different. But you can find the stuff out there. I was at, The
UK Years ago. Hathaway International is a sales company, Spin Selling.
(18:04):
But this lady who used to be the head of procurement for the r and
d business for AstraZeneca Pharma, who was just
becoming the chartered Institute of Procurement CEO, said this on stage.
We were together. Suppliers don't come to us with a business gauge. Sell your
value using our numbers. You don't need their numbers, but you need to put a
number out that's reasonable, not a billion. But, you know, in this
(18:25):
industry, we think downtime is this. Well, that's for that type. We're more
eight or 12 or something. But my favorite
line because most of not most. A lot of companies would say, we can't
quantify our value. And her point was, if you can't quantify, don't expect me
to do your job. I'm in the middle of buying companies, setting up new
plants, and you want me to sit down and do a value analysis
(18:47):
on that. That's your full time job company. You better
bring it to me. It better be believable. I think this is really
interesting. A procurement gentleman put this together. They do some work with Rob
McGuire on the bottom left there, but we were somewhere he goes, you
salespeople better learn the buying process. And I laugh
because, you know, we've all got our CRM systems and we have our sales process.
(19:09):
He goes, this is how people buy and how companies
buy, how people buy in general for considered purchases, where this
thinking is very similar. And because we all come from different industries,
let's assume we're gonna buy a car and walk through the logic. And then
afterwards, insert office supplies, insert
electrical motors. It's the same process. A need has been
(19:31):
identified. The businesses said we need this. At home,
I need a new car. The lease has gone out. The kids got older. The
other one got in an accident. I don't know. I need a car. Now you
can change need, but I want a car. I need a car.
Then I will sit back and, in general, establish the specifications. So
based on my assumption, my knowledge at that point in time, I want a
(19:53):
gas car. I want a four door car. Okay? Doesn't mean
that's logical, but I've sat home and said, I I don't want electric, and I
don't want the diesel. Dad had a diesel car. My mom and dad had one
a hundred years ago in Canada. It was a little more work than a normal
car. So I've made some assumptions. So with that, Tesla's out. It's electric. And
so I kinda narrow down a little bit. And then I say, you wanna know
(20:14):
what? I've had bad experience with that company. I don't trust that company, and I
don't like that one, but I like these three or four. And my old role
is always three to four bids. So I list whoever those four
people would be that make what I'm looking for. And now I'm
gonna chop around. RFQ, RFI, and then, you
know, who's got this vehicle? What's your, you know,
(20:35):
value proposition? What's your delivery? You know? They're
going to do some work and give me a price negotiation delivery
type of number. We might do some negotiation, then I eventually will
buy a car from one person. What you need to understand is your ability to
get me to focus on value versus lowest cost that beats the
minimum criteria dramatically changes over time.
(20:58):
So a lot of the stuff needs to be early in the sales cycle, even
before the sales or the buying cycle starts. You know,
this is what I was saying about the thought leadership. Oh, the next time I
buy, I should think about this. I should think about I didn't know that. Oh,
okay. I'm framing it earlier. Everyone says, you know, help the customer
write their, RFQ. Better is to get them to even think of it on their
(21:19):
own and then help them. So a piece of research that follows
us, there's so many pieces of research, but they all are
close enough to call it even. So this is Gartner Group
from b two b buying, interviews of
750. The question was, where do you spend your time
in this buying cycle? 27%
(21:41):
is, researching independently. Show me car
companies. Who is the best supplier? Tell me you know, that type of
stuff. Or trade associations, maybe. I don't know.
Only 22% is with an internal group, the people that will probably
use the product or service. 18 is researching
independently offline. That's where I'm thinking colleagues, other people within
(22:02):
industry, you know, thought leadership groups that they're involved with. Hey. We
gotta buy an ERP system. What works? What doesn't work? Who should we be careful
of? What should I know? You know? I'll buy you dinner and tell me something.
16% is other, and 17% is spent with,
suppliers. If there are four suppliers, you're getting less
than 5% of their time. 5% of their time to try to get them to
(22:26):
say, oh, we shouldn't care about price. It's all about value is very tough. And
I used to get that from colleagues worth the RFQ stage, get in the plane,
and come here and help us. It worked. I'm just suggesting you really need to
have value in the messaging and the framing very early
to have higher success rates. Now some things I
see some companies do when they become to try to get paid for value that
(22:49):
actually caused more problems. So it's called the jam
study, and they gave customers two choices. We'll say
Whole Foods as an example. You know, people love
choice. So you come in, there's different sizes, mixtures, flavors.
And what the study found is giving customers too much choice
actually causes them to buy less. It confuses them.
(23:11):
Buyer's remorse sets in right away, and they can also unbundle. This is where procurement
will say, well, if the strawberry is this and the blueberry is that and the
strawberry blueberry is this, I can start figuring out cost structures and
unbundling structures and the like. So my old team
was notorious for sending you offers that had 20 tabs at the
bottom, showing how smart they were. We can bundle this and bundle
(23:32):
that. The point here is give customers options, limit options.
And it turns out based on research, you should give customers
three options. So with that, I was talking to the team at
Value Pros, and it's, like, amazing how many people I mean, you know, starting the
value journey by just trying to write down value drivers is great. We think we
can affect this here and here, but a lot of people then end up with
(23:54):
an Excel tool. And I'm quickly just gonna go through, you
know, what to be careful for for anybody that does do
that. Inaccurate formulas. And I'm talking Fortune
100 companies going, that's wrong, or it was a mistake. One person had a
currency table that wasn't working properly. One person, you
know, fat fingered a number somewhere. So, you know, if everybody's
(24:16):
creating their own tool and putting on a where database somewhere that they're
downloading and then modifying, you get a lot of mistakes. Right
formulas. I see, you know, technically inaccurate formulas.
Some companies are notorious for taking cash flow and calling it free
cash. I was just saying to Bruce, if I don't pay my Visa bill this
month for a thousand dollars, I don't have a thousand dollars. I just pushed off
(24:37):
paying it, so it's time value of money.
I still owe it. Depends on the customer. Customer's right. But if
you try to claim increased revenue as a hundred percent
cash, most customers will say that's not how it works.
Most of the time, we're able to get customers agree to contribution margin. You've been
running your business this way. The CEO's being paid. The buildings are being
(25:00):
paid. You know, every widget you you sell has
variable costs. If I help, you know, increase this.
So it's a more accurate formula. You know,
a lot of these one off tools don't have any impact ranges.
They just say, if I could do this by 1% or 10%, it's not where
have we done this before? Here's some industry research. Here's a link to
(25:23):
a report from somewhere that says here's best practice. Here's where
you are. It's just a bunch of what if. Most customers are saying, you know,
I've heard somebody what ifs. I don't believe them anymore. With the idea of, hey.
Just do this. It'll be worth that. You know? And, again, because I started before
tools existed, I mean, spelling mistakes, currency mistakes,
units. You know? Is it number of tons of papers or
(25:44):
number of feet of papers? Number I mean, you
need to have disclaimers. It's not a legal thing. The output.
You know? It's important to have output in the way the customer thinks, and that's
different by industry. Sometimes you need more high level
IRR and PV. Sometimes you're confusing the
customer. You know? For that level of purchase, they don't need to overcomplicate
(26:07):
it. And my favorite calculation is this minimum improvement. I mean, it'd
be great if we could get to here, but I only need to get that
much improvement to pay for all this. Some references or links to
justifications, whether those are internal success stories, benchmark data, third
party. I don't care. But some meet around it, not somebody sat at home and
just did their we think. I was amazed at this because
(26:29):
I'm probably more of a math person than a visual, but graphs make
management happy. They love the waterfall graphs. They love the breakeven
graphs. That business case is gonna get passed around from your contact
to their boss or other people, and the visualization makes
a difference. The professionalization and visualization. You know, smarter
companies have said Excuse me. I really need to have different stages
(26:52):
of case. And I'm not saying these terms are the right terms,
but, you know, I'm gonna test the calculation, then I'm gonna
propose it to a customer, then we're gonna banter back and forth about the
numbers of believability. We change if the customer buys the
solution or service, it became accepted. They've accepted some of the
logic. Then we actually had a system in place for the bigger customers
(27:13):
to go back and verify what actually happened. Eventually, we got to
the point where we could sit in front of a industry and say, we've done
this 800 times in your industry around the world. The min,
the max, and the mean have been this on the improvement. We had more data
than the customer had. So, again, if it's a one off
spreadsheet, they just get bounced around, and there's no follow-up.
(27:35):
So I'll just gonna be clear and easy to understand. And the I think the
last thing in pricing that really screws people up for value is giving away free
stuff. And the research shows that,
you know, if you're given two choices, you're gonna go to Whole Foods this weekend
and there's a free Hershey's kiss or there's a 13
chocolate. More people will take something for free. There's no downside. I'll
(27:58):
just take it. If I told you that the average Hershey kiss cost,
I think, 6¢, 5 or 6 cents depending on the volume,
and the average Lindor chocolate is 55¢,
and I say, okay. You wanna know what? I want you to realize you're getting
more free value. I'm asking you to pay 13¢ to get something that's, we'll just
say, 53. That's a 40% 40¢ value surplus.
(28:20):
I gave you something for free that cost me 5¢. That's less
value. By trying to tell you how it's better doesn't work. If
I say you wanna know what? I'm gonna charge you 1¢ for the Hershey's gifts.
It changed almost the exact opposite. It changed which one people
chose. Because now you're going, I'm doing math
and subconsciously maybe, but I'm starting to think. So
(28:42):
giving away free stuff screws people up. Small numbers
associated with it makes them think of what's better, and they're
always structuring the offering for the customers. I mean, the joke
I have, I think we've all been to trade shows and stuff. How many people
buy, grab stuff off somebody's booth at a trade show, then they throw it out
before they even get to the hotel? You know? If you
(29:03):
if you're not willing to pay 1¢ to get the koozie cup, you're not gonna
probably ever use that thing. Make a donation to the children's foundation
or something. And you see that the numb percentage of people that chose
neither option didn't dramatically change by putting
1¢. But it's really interesting how free stuff screws people
up. So with this takeaway more is to take all the services you
(29:26):
offer and structure them into a very low price
1¢ offering and one that somebody might pay
for. So, this is some research from a professor that I've
done some work with, but, you know, let's get rid of the services that
cost us money that the customers don't value, and then let's put
together a offering that says, okay. Here's the low price or
(29:48):
the free version. Just think of Amazon shipping as an
example. You know? You you want engineering design?
Yes. Within one week, I'll tell you yes or no. That's maybe
free part of doing business. Oh, for a thousand dollars, I'll return the
answer within two days, and I'll give you five things to be concerned about.
Training. Is training free? Todd, not an engineer, drops
(30:11):
in and spends thirty minutes for lunch, shows you three new features, that's
free. A three day training, that's for a fee.
So, again, confusing customers going what's free, what's not
free, and and, therefore, what's of value. All the
stuff I covered has been researched a lot for academic
groups. What I think is interesting is these are procurement people around the world that
(30:34):
have had me on stage having almost the same conversation. I
mean, National Institute of Government Procurement, that was Asia.
That's American. The universe Arizona
University. So it's not just the sales thing. Procurement gets it.
They say, you know, make it reasonable, make it hard, bring us the business
case. And I won't go through all this, but
(30:57):
from probably one of the seminal books ever started value merchants.
I mentioned one of the authors before. This is a recent article from last
summer that I was involved in. But, you know, my favorite stat, you know, companies
are priced for value, which means they've quantified it and sold it,
are 24% more profitable than the industry average and
36% more profitable than those who will make it up in volume
(31:19):
market share. Reduce discounting, bigger order
size, higher customer satisfaction,
80% higher win rate, 25%. The ones with the last
tricks are based on the MIT Sloan article. That's the reason why those are there.
So we had talked about this. Those that were able to join deans, I throw
this in. I will not go through it all, but companies that buy based on
(31:40):
the same way, based on true value, are more profitable. So the
top left is an association called mapping manufacturers alliance.
So big industrial machineries, people that measured all these
variables and made decisions based on them were 35 more
profitable than companies that did not. And, again, you could see there's a bunch of
people saying we need to buy this way. We know it's better for us. We
(32:02):
know it's best practice. How come more sales organizations aren't bringing
us this data so we can make up an informed decision?
So gives you a flavor on what I focus on, value. You know,
we've got the tool right here, which you'll see in a moment. Again, the marketing
and the training and the selling and some pricing stuff around it. With
that, Bruce, type of questions, or you wanna take a quick, dive through, the
(32:24):
tool? Todd, thank you for taking us through that, and
just looking at, you know, the case for change and and how we
can, support our buyers, especially procurement.
Dean, as you know, how can we improve the
ability to shape that value proposition? And, Todd, you make the case that
it makes you way more profitable if if you're able to do that, especially
(32:47):
when most vendors are not doing that. So, that that's
wonderful. Dean, did you have any observations though? Just curious, based on your thought
you're saying. Tidy in with something I've been saying before, but the
power of the business case and working with
procurement to be able to present that value into the organization
is huge, because something procurement really struggles with is
(33:09):
getting recognition for its efforts. And the simplest
metric that finance uses is the price and the
cost, not the value. So the
kind of tools that Todd's talking about and the example
he gave from AstraZeneca are absolutely spot on. You have to be able
to present the business case, then educate procurement
(33:31):
in how to present that on your behalf because the likelihood is
you're not in the room when that final discussion is taking place as
a salesperson. So you need to empower the procurement
guys to be really effective at transmitting that message. Would
that resonate with your experience, Todd? Very much so. And that's a reason
also the the tool, the calculation, the reports need to be clear,
(33:53):
concise so that your agent, the
procurement general and, again, I live with this tool. I know this tool inside and
out. That's my industry terminology. That's how I speak. No. No. That's not
how you speak, and that's not how your boss speaks.
So instead of trying to overcomplicate it, which some people like to
do, you know, that the visualization, the clear concise, the summary
(34:15):
numbers upfront. And then, of course, you can have all the reports afterwards
of calculations and the line for sure. Yeah. I loved your point about
the the visuals because that's so true. I I worked for one
company where if you couldn't get your entire argument on
one piece of paper, the execs wouldn't even look at it. You can have a
ton of support material, but you had to be able to capulate
(34:37):
that. Keep, a value argument in
one slide. Todd Todd, did you invent the price
berg? I did. Couple of years ago, people again, I'm sure other people
because I've had procurement conference that we we use we never used the term price
berg, but we understood the idea. So I think So
I love it. You know, if you guys remember Todd's visual, the price perg, it's
(35:00):
this, you know, tip of the iceberg out of the water, underneath the water is
so, so, so much more. And, Todd, you made that very real with that
visualization of, you know, the the the price of that offering and
then the total cost over time. You know, how that price was, like, you know,
eight to 12%. But the but the, the
total cost was, like, 88% over time.
(35:22):
And, the price per so perfect because then you can take the
weight off the price discussion, put it more on the total cost of
ownership and how you're gonna improve that for the buyer to get more
value, and and, hence, you know, not not
have that discounting pressure. So I I I love
it. I think I have always gone through a I wouldn't call it a process,
(35:43):
but the price per most people will nod, and then they get through a
model, which is different by industry because of the terminology. And then they're like,
okay. Now now show me. So it's kind of like educate
them to realize okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's a pretty slide, Todd.
Now now show me some numbers, examples, and measurements you would do.
So that HBR or MIT Sloan says if you go right to just
(36:06):
trying to use the numbers without the education that there's more there,
people won't listen to the numbers. That that that's one of the the major takeaways.
But, okay, you show me that there's all these other elements. You show me that
there's a ratio of this to that. Now I wanna hear those numbers
to me, but I used to probably go in and go, look. I'm
asking you to spend this. It's gonna give you this. Maybe
(36:28):
try to close too early. I mean, I'd rather get you wanting to even
talk to me to think differently. So that's why some of those, I call
marketing slides, get people warmed up to have the discussion. Interested,
okay, by the way. Wonderful. Hey, Darren. I think what
we'll do next is, you know, so Todd's
talking about shaping the business case. And how can you do that,
(36:51):
you know, simply and visually? And I've invited
Darren, one of the the cofounders at Value Pros. Darren, if you wanna do
a quick introduction to yourself, and then please do,
talk about Value Navigator and how that might help people. Yep.
Absolutely. Thanks, Bruce. And thanks, guys. Todd, great stuff. Todd and
Dean both. Yeah. So I'm Darren Fleming, partner with,
(37:14):
Value Pros as, Bruce said, and,
also, president of ROI Selling. And, Value Pros
and ROI Selling have worked together to come up with Value Navigator, which
is a self-service tool to be able to be
able to, build a business case, on the fly
for any solution for any customer leveraging AI to be
(37:36):
able to do that. And so I'm gonna show you
just quickly, and and by the way, all of you will get
access. There's a thirty day free trial that Bruce will be sending you a link
to that you can actually try this out on your own for thirty days for
free, to to just tick the tires. But I'm gonna show
you the same solution. It's actually called NeutralHouse. Not
(37:58):
gonna get into the details of the solution for two different customers. So it's the
same solution being sold to two different customers. One being, say, Dow
Chemical, one being Cleveland Clinic, a health care facility, and
show you the power of being able to discover the benefits,
and quantify the value for that solution. So I'll start with
Dow. This is, you know so this is the customer. Here's the
(38:21):
solution neutral host for for the plant.
I'm gonna go in here. This was the information that was
provided to the platform. So it was the name of the
solution, a description, the link to the solution, the name of
the customer, the customer's website, and just the scope of what it
is. I've already created this, so I don't have to go through and create it.
(38:43):
But this came back with the benefit dimensions, some cost reducing,
revenue enhancing, productivity enhancing benefits.
And you'll start looking at the, the
benefits. So, like, operational data
collection efficiency, enhanced production monitoring efficiency,
enhanced predictive maintenance capabilities. So it's very specific to,
(39:05):
in this case, a chemical plant leveraging a telecommunications
solution, to improve the efficiency of their of
their operations. You can go in and then put the investment in. You can see
across here, it kinda builds up the, the key
financial metrics that a customer would care about. You can change the length of
the analysis, for what the customer wants to see. Go look at some
(39:27):
charts of what it looks like over time. This is all built in a matter
of minutes based on putting in the target
target customer, the scope of what you're selling to them, and the
target solution, and it'll help build this up in a matter of minutes. So that
was an example for Dow Chemical. Now I'm gonna go over
to this, which is Cleveland Clinic. You know, so this in
(39:49):
this case, it's a health care network. So same product, same
solution. And if I look at the
description here, it just says it's now targeted at Cleveland Clinic.
So it's a different target customer. So now it's talking about
improved patient experience revenue, accelerated telehealth
adoption, enhanced patient experience revenue, enhanced
(40:10):
medical device connectivity, you know,
so, enhanced research collaboration efficiency. So things that
are very specific to, in this case, a research hospital
network, with the exact same product. So it helped
fine tune and bring together what are the benefits
that a customer will get in this specific situation for this specific
(40:33):
customer with your solution, and then you can go in and refine any of these
numbers, adjust them. Again, go talk about the
investment, review what it looks like, look at a chart view
of it, what it looks like over time, what where the
benefits come down, and then generate a report that then you can use
to attach to your proposal to cost justify the overall
(40:55):
solution. So just showing you the power of two very
different customers in very different industries and within minutes being
able to build a a the quantified quantified, cost
justification or the same solution in two very different
industries. So love to have you kick the tires, take a look, and
provide any feedback you have on it and see what you think. Awesome,
(41:17):
Darren. Yeah. And, I I know we've all seen it, but, gosh, just the
the benefits of that, I think, are fairly profound where, you know, you
can leverage the power of AI. What's that being? With it, Bruce.
I love the fact that it even does your PowerPoint slides for you.
Yeah. So yep. Yep. I mean, to talk about
empowering the buyer to go forward with a value,
(41:40):
argument is is just phenomenal. Yeah. Yeah.
Awesome. And, Todd, I know you played with it as well, etcetera. It's hot off
the press, everybody, and and it's it's only gonna get better. But as you
can see right now, oh my god. You know, just version one point o,
You know, you can have your, financial analysis within
seconds, you know, based on on the work that that tool does for
(42:04):
you as you collaborate with your buyer to shape that analysis. So
really, really powerful. One thing that, Darren didn't hit
upon that I think is just as powerful, maybe the way to say it, is
each one of those formulas have references of where the data came from. It wasn't
Yep. You know, their annual revenue is a billion, and we think we can improve
it by 10%. It was a link to a report whether they're on it would
(42:25):
there's some meat behind those numbers. Yeah. If you remember
Yep. Yep. Yeah. Here. I'll I'll dig into one of those to show what Tad's
talking about. Just so let me go into one to,
of course. Was it scrolled at the very bottom? Was it is it very bottom
(42:45):
where the little eyes were?
Yeah. And as you're hunting around, I'll describe it too, Darren. But what what
happens is the tool once it comes up with a
example calculation, it'll go you know, through AI,
it'll go out and do the research for you and find, you know, is there
a reference benchmark or a study that could be
(43:07):
cited that'll add a little bit of gravitas and
evidence to that calculation. So just building
more social proof into the formula. So, you know,
that that financial buyer who wants to have a little bit more confidence
can see that something is study backed. There you go. Here's here's an
example. It's you know, this I was showing some analysis that were built
(43:30):
with previous versions. So, the, but here's one that
actually average number of unplanned planned chiller related
downtime events per year. So, obviously, very specific to an industrial setting
with chillers in a refinery. And here's a
report from McKinsey and Company reducing unplanned refinery outages,
reduce downtime chiller or downtime cost in refinery and pet chemical
(43:53):
plants. I can click on that, and that pulls up the reference study
that actually helps to support what that value is.
And most people will never go read all those reports. They just wanna see that
there's something behind us or they'll say, talk to
Bob. Bob knows that number for our own company. But
Yep. I also like the fact that you can adjust
(44:15):
it based on your own sense of what reality is for you,
or you can take a conservative view if you want to and see what it
does to the numbers. Yeah. Absolutely. Like, here's an example
of emergency reduced emergency repair labor costs, you know,
$750,000. You can change that if you don't believe that number, and
then that's how much you're spending today, and we're gonna reduce it by 40%.
(44:37):
You say, well, I don't think it's gonna reduce it by 20%. Okay. Great.
Change it to 20%, you know, so you can refine it on the fly as
you're talking to the customer. Or if
the customer says, you know what? I just don't believe this reduced labor
or lost revenue. You can just exclude it, and it still shows up
in your report. Now in this case, it went negative because, you know, the investment
(45:00):
was bigger than the benefit now. But, you know, you can
include or exclude, delete them wholesale, add new benefits. I can
just create a new one and describe what the benefit is. I can let AI
do the whole the whole thing for me. Lots of different ways to
to to slice and dice to get a quantified cross justification
to go along with your business case and your your proposal.
(45:23):
Yep. Awesome. Well, good enough, you guys.
Well, everybody, thanks so much for attending this
webinar. We'll get the recording out to you. It it's also out
there on LinkedIn live right now, which I'm really delighted with. And,
so for everyone next week on, June 4,
same time, we'll be focused on the buying experience.
(45:46):
That webinar is the buying experience edge, how to stand out and close
more deals in a risk averse market. And so we'll bring us all
together. I'll I'll introduce, you know, the framework around how
to drive a more compelling buying experience.
We're calling that the total value experience, and and there's key phases in how
to do that and and different dimensions. We've done a bunch of
(46:09):
research, to figure out what are those causal
dimensions that drive the better buying experience. So, I'll introduce
that. We'll have a panel discussion about that next week on
June 4. So thanks everybody for attending. Thanks, Todd,
for, all that wisdom that you shared, best practice, and
how to shape the business case. Thanks, Dean, for for weighing in and making
(46:31):
sure this is all real. Darren, thank you also for introducing
Value Navigator. And, David, thanks for being the voice of reason as always.
So, everyone, thanks so much, and we'll see you next
week. What a powerful session with Todd Snelgrove
and the rest of the team at valuepro.io. We explored
how top performing teams avoid the discount trap by
(46:54):
building believable, buyer ready business cases. Todd
gave us a practical road map showing how to shift from cost
conversations to total value discussions that actually
resonate with executive decision makers. What really stood out
for me was the insight that the supplier who co builds the
business case with the buyer wins 80% of the time.
(47:16):
And then Darren showed you how you can harness the power of AI to
quickly shape a business case with our brand new value navigator tool. The exciting thing
is this is just version one point o of value navigator, exciting thing is this
is just version one point o of value navigator. Strap in for more
value in this tool as as we evolve it in helping buyers buy.
If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe to the Value Pro Show.
(47:38):
And if you're feeling kind, leave us a review so others can find and enjoy
it too. Wishing you successful value selling.
Welcome to the ValuePro Show, where value pros get value
ready.
Hi. My name is Bruce Scheer, the host of the ValuePro Show. In this
webinar, we are talking with Todd Snellgrove, a globally
recognized authority on value selling and the former global
head of value at SKF. Todd has spent over two
(00:24):
decades helping companies shift from competing on measurable defensible
value, working with Fortune 1,000 organizations to build
business cases that win over procurement and finance leaders.
He's also coauthor of the best selling book Value First Then
Price and creator of the frameworks like Total
Profit Added used across industries to justify premium
(00:45):
pricing in risk averse markets. He's also one of our
affiliates at valuepros.io. So the focus of
this webinar is how to win executive buy in without cutting your
price using a powerful business case that speaks procurement's
language. Todd breaks down exactly how sales teams
can collaborate with buyers to frame value early, overcome price
(01:08):
objections, and close deals with higher margins
even in a tough economy. He's then joined by me, Dean
Edwards, former head of procurement at Levi Strauss, Ingram Micro, and
Yahoo, and then Darren Fleming, who introduces
our sexy new AI powered value navigator tool to
help business stakeholders with their business cases. Welcome to this
(01:30):
webinar, and, we're really excited to, for you
to be here with us. The focus on this
overall series is revenue mastery in
2025, and we've been thrown so far
so many curve balls in 2025 with tariffs and
other types of economic influences that we we weren't
(01:52):
expecting, and it's gonna make our our selling climate, and
it already has, much harder. So that was kind of the genesis
for us to create this, webinar series, revenue mastery
2025, outselling an uncertain, economy.
We started off with that with our absolute procurement
expert Dean Edwards, and he'll do an introduction just in a minute. But
(02:15):
we focused on inside the buyers' minds, what drives
decisions in an uncertain economy. And that particular
episode can be, watched off of the Value
Pros website. If you just go to
valuepros.io, And then
once you're in there, just go to show, and then you'll see Dean
(02:36):
talking about with us about, gosh, how do we partner with
procurement in these, economic uncertain times? So that
was the first webinar. The second one here is with Todd
Snelgrove, and this one is the business case advantage. How to win
executive buy in without price cuts. You know? How do we get to
yes? You know, through the power of a business
(02:57):
case. Todd, will do a beautiful job in talking
about that. And then our third webinar series is coming up next
week. Third webinar in the series is where I'll lead off, but
it'll be a full panel of us talking about how do we elevate the
buying experience. And, we all saw a statistic at
the end of twenty twenty four. '50 '9 percent of the influence on
(03:20):
a bold buying decision, you know, with a high consideration
solution is influenced by the buying experience. Not
the solution, but the experience. And we'll all talk about how do we
drive a better buying experience so you can improve your deal performance
toward you know, as as we move deeper into 2025.
So that's kind of our format. Why don't we do just
(03:43):
a quick, round of introductions, and then, Todd, we'll let you get rolling
on that. I'm Bruce Shearer. I'm one of the cofounders at
ValuePros.io. Lately, I've been calling myself the
ValueVitalizer. You'll see that on my LinkedIn profile.
And then, David, do you wanna introduce yourself? Yeah.
Sure. I'm a stakeholder at Value Pros, and my primary
(04:04):
goal is to help clients identify the value
drivers for their solutions and then translate that in
meaningful ways, in personal ways to each customer's
status quo environments and KPIs. Dean?
Awesome. Dean Edwards, I've got
decades of experience in procurement, Fortune 500 size
(04:26):
organizations, such as Kaiser Permanente, Levi's, Yahoo,
Ingram Micro. And now I run a company working with
sales teams, teaching them how to engage more
effectively with procurement to drive better results.
Thank you, Dean. And then Todd. So I spent
twenty something plus years in the b two b market,
(04:49):
industrial market, but, most of those years was as
the first to my knowledge is a VP of value. And it was
because the company said, we spend all this money and time and effort
creating something that is a value. But the technical buyer
was starting to have to involve the financial buyer
procurement. And finance was saying, I'm not willing to pay that much for
(05:12):
that. Is it really worth that? What is the value? So the
CEO said, guess what? We really need to equip our teams with a business
case, the confidence, and all these other things we'll talk about today so they can
get to the market and have a value conversation, not a price
or discount discussion. I consult on this
area right now. I'll I'll close with that. Some of the examples
(05:34):
will come from this book. What I like about it, you know, we should always
talk about the value first because then price becomes part of that.
But if you ever lead with price, they're never gonna hear the word value. They're
always gonna be anchored on that number. What I think is interesting about this book
is I think it was 12 companies in the B2B marketplace that wrote
about their best practices. They all come back to a thesis that you
(05:55):
need a good business case and a bunch of other things.
But there were four or five procurement people that also wrote saying, I'm willing to
pay more if there's a business case that's clear, concise, believable,
maybe even guaranteed. But it's, you know, not this. Here's how we
should sell versus this is how we should buy. So with
that, just to give you a flavor, you know, a lot
(06:18):
of capital equipment industrial, but you'll see things in there of medtech. The
total cost of care is a term. Renewable energy,
you know, levelized cost of energy. The terms might change by
industry, but the logic is the same. If you're selling something that's not the lowest
price, you better have a business case, and it's our job to put
that together for the customer. I start with a variation of this
(06:39):
slide with my own team, but also with customers to make sure we're
using the right term. I mean, price, cost, value, they're
all five letter terms. I believe everybody that's watching is North
America. But, you know, they mean completely different
things, and the sales team needs to be confident when the
customer uses a term to challenge them. And I don't mean be
(07:01):
arrogant, but to challenge them. So if a customer
says your price is too high, I'd say, might be higher, but my costs are
lower. Well, how would you measure that? What are those costs?
Where have you done it before? Do I believe you? I
mean, procurement people, I spend 20% of my
time at procurement events, and they say it's funny. We'll send out
(07:23):
the annual email. You know? We need to get our cost center control.
It's 2,025. These are the reasons. It depends who you
talk to, but they say, you know, a lot of suppliers will come back with
price cuts or terms that are associated with that. They don't come
back with, we're gonna come in with an efficiency program. We're gonna walk the
line. We're gonna enumerate 10 problem areas. We can reduce other costs.
(07:45):
And value's on the upside. And when I mean value, I mean, there's the emotional
value, but you could also put some numbers on value.
I don't have the slide here, but I use a term called total profit
added. I want my clients to be more profitable.
Cost reductions is only one side of that. You know? The shipping, the receiving,
the, you know, the operating cost, the energy, the water, the downtime.
(08:08):
But if I can help a customer get to market faster, in some industries, that's
worth a lot. I think you get a patent for ten years. If you spend
six months trying to get it to market because of the mark whatever
reason, that's lost revenue. In the high-tech industry technology,
I mean, you've got a short window of differentiation. You know? If
I could help that client get to market faster, it's worth something.
(08:31):
Variations of my signature have basically said, I can be the highest price
with the lowest cost or and or the best value. And
then really have a structured methodology, a tool to say, let me show
you how. Here are the 400 drivers we have. Here are the
impacts. We'll get to that stuff. But, again, hopefully,
most sales teams are equipped and have role played that. Let me put this in
(08:53):
because I think it's an interesting piece of research, with the professor that's
done value management for thirty years,
professor Jim Anderson. And he said, what I find a lot of
people doing is saying, I'm just gonna create a value based sales tool. I'll put
somebody in a corner, and I'll say, grab Excel and make up a
model. And then we go to market, and it doesn't work. We'll talk to
(09:16):
you later why Excel or ad hoc homegrown
systems don't work. I just got 10 examples of things I've seen, and I'm talking
from Fortune 100 companies. But real quickly, you're
gonna get snippets of this as we go through. If anybody wants a chapter or
two, just send me a note. But, you know, if you put the value methodology
and mindset when you create a new product or service, if you challenge, what will
(09:38):
this be worth for the customer in this industry versus the alternatives?
Because a lot of companies get to the end, they launch it, and they go,
why aren't people buying it? Is it part of your selling
process, or is it just, okay. We put the offer into the
customer. We didn't do proper discovery. We didn't find the value drivers,
but they're pushing back the prices too high. Hey, Todd. Create a
(10:00):
case and hit send. Probably too late. You need to frame it
early. Has the team been trained on how to sell value? How to talk
financial? How to challenge? How to use these terminologies? Is it
ongoing? So he says that's the ability to sell. What
I find a lot, though, is companies don't spend any time on getting the sales
team to want to sell. So sales compensation.
(10:22):
You know, I was just at a school and a professor was talking about quality
of sales. And my old CEO would say, we probably have 400 ways to
discount. But, you know, publicly traded company, this gross margins are
all these nice numbers. But if I cut 5%, that's half the profit.
But the sales team would laugh. I could cut the 55% today, be
at the golf course this afternoon, and it barely would affect any sort of
(10:45):
compensation for me. So look at your compensation. Is it driving
the behaviors you want? Are you giving customers value buying
options? I have created a bunch of performance or outcome
based contracts. They're not near as confusing or risky as people
think. It doesn't need to be a % at risk. But you
wanna know what? I'm higher priced than the alternative. Let me guarantee you that
(11:06):
you're gonna get value. We just gotta agree on what is value, how would we
measure it, how do we define it, how do we implement it. But I
signed a 80 of those agreements with fortune somethings around the world.
But, you know, if you're saying you're more expensive, maybe you should put some
money where your mouth is. And, again, what's funny is a
lot of companies will say again, I I make up numbers as examples. You
(11:29):
know, the threshold for that level is to cut 10%. If you can cut the
price 10%, how come you can't guarantee 10% value and not cut the
price? My job would then to get the customer to nod and go, you're
right. 10% value is better than 10% price. More
internal, do you have the right business culture? I mentioned that we're very lucky to
get to a CEO that said, we've gotta do something.
(11:51):
The world is commoditizing what we do. There's a lack of differentiation.
There's new competitors popping up every day. If we're not better in
really getting this message out there, but it can't be just a, you know,
for the moment. It has to be a commitment. And then I spent a lot
of time on customer culture. And what I mean by that is getting to the
market and getting people to rethink. When I buy this,
(12:13):
should I spend a time, effort, or energy to really even think anything besides lowest
price that's landed cost? It's a bearing. It's
a this. It's a that. So I would spend a lot of time on stage,
articles, this type of stuff going you know, there's a lot of money to be
found or made by really rethinking how you buy this type
of stuff. Because, you know, if the perception says it's a commodity, there's a
(12:35):
bunch of suppliers, it'll be leveraged price. The
purpose of the business case is amazing and it allows the
customer to change how they buy. So I'm not a pricing
expert, but there's two pricing terms I'll share with you very quickly.
ATP, the ability to pay. So whatever
year it is, I'm in front of the boss, and he goes, you know,
(12:56):
market's really bad. I mean, you know, we had all these really value added solutions,
and he goes, that portfolio is really you know, it's
doing better than the rest of the business, but, you know, they said, boss,
nobody has money to pay. And he looked at me. He was Scottish, so he
had a little bit of an accent. He said, yes. They do. I will
change my ability to pay based on the business case. Because
(13:18):
I can understand my my my sales team saying there's no the customer
doesn't have the money. He goes, yeah. If there's the right business case, they will
find the money. They will move it from another budget over right
away. You know, we thought we were gonna do this. We thought we'd cut these
costs here, there, and everywhere. Wait. There's a business case that shows me if I
do this within this year or this budget, I'm gonna save that,
(13:40):
and it's believable, I'll find the money. I'll go to the bank and get the
money if I have to. So their ability to change
changes. I mean, someone came to my door right now and said, I wanna sell
you something for a thousand dollars. I probably said, I have a thousand dollars lying
around. If there was a believable business case, I would take it from another account.
I would borrow them. I would do something. I would find the money. Similar but
(14:02):
different is the willingness to pay. And I thought this is
hilarious, and I think somebody stole this example, but it's a true story.
You know, companies will line up their major goals for the year. Their focus
is we're gonna buy this system or that. We're gonna upgrade here. And I
did a consulting, three day workshop for a medical
company to make the big MRI or cat scan
(14:24):
machines. I always confuse those two. And they talked about a deal they had
in Australia. It was done. They got the deal. And, do a
follow-up a few weeks later, and the vice president of Asian sales
or whatever says, well, guess what? We didn't get the deal. And I'm
like, what happened? Great. You you know, we just spent three days. And
he goes, you wanna know what? We thought we had the deal, so we didn't
(14:45):
write the business case. The technical buyer says you got it. You're better. Whatever
the better was. I go, so what happened? We lost to a
parking lot. Pardon? Yeah. Well, somehow
the board looked at and said incremental revenue
for a parking lot. It's newer revenue. It's better, whatever, blah,
blah, blah, Sweat the assets on the existing machines. So
(15:08):
the takeaway from his was, I think I'm number one on the company's priority
that changes based on my competitor. My competitor is not the other
medical machine company. It could be something completely different. So
a business case allows people to find the money and prioritize the
money. You have to have some marketing that helps
the customer rethink. I love the price per because everybody
(15:30):
can say, yeah. I see the price. It's whatever percent, But all those
things, it's different by every industry, the terminology, but I'll show you, I
think, one slide with some numbers on it. It's amazing how the bottom stuff is
bigger than the top stuff, but it's our job to bring that information
that's reasonable, researched, has some background to it and
say, you know, I don't care where the price is. I used to say you
(15:52):
want a smaller price per that's how you'll be more profitable.
So it's amazing how much research you can find. And you'll
see later, when we play with this tool, how
much better it is today than it used to be. But finding these numbers, one,
you could ask your people internally, but there's research out there.
So if somebody had the money and wanted to go buy an airplane from Boeing
(16:15):
tomorrow, that would and they wrote the check for whatever, a hundred million, that
would represent 8% of the total cost of that airplane
over its life. The depreciation, the tires, the maintenance,
the fuel, the labor on it, these the upgrades,
etcetera. Class eight trucks for those that are interested are, like, the big
18 motors you see. Industrial equipment is 12%.
(16:38):
So everybody's focusing on that little red line, and they're missing the big
gold color. So I was involved in our procurement team
eventually because the boss said, you know, we have a structured methodology
in our sales side. Maybe we should take that and just do it with our
suppliers. Value is value whether it's on the buy side or the sell side,
but he goes, I don't think we have a good structure when we're buying. So
(16:59):
we are involved, and, we had three companies come to us. It was capital equipment
machinery, very important to the business. And the vice president of procurement said to
me, which one do you think we should choose? I said, well, I like that
one. He goes, yeah. Yeah. Of course. Imagine that. You're choosing the one that's
10% more expensive. And we were buying a bunch of like, it was a big
dollar amount. I was, yeah. But he showed us how he's gonna
(17:20):
save 2% on the operating cost. And Bo
Inge, we're now friends, good friends actually, said, I don't know what math they
taught you in Canada, but 10% is better than 2%. They said,
no. It's not. You need the denominator. 10% of
12 is 1.2, but 2% of
88 is 1.76. It's it's about 40 to 50% more
(17:42):
impactful. The problem is nobody thinks for these or we thought they
were all the same. They're all gonna use the same energy. They're all gonna have
the same cost to repair them. They're all gonna fail the same. That's a lot
of if. One supplier did a good job of showing why their stuff
could be different. But you can find the stuff out there. I was at, The
UK Years ago. Hathaway International is a sales company, Spin Selling.
(18:04):
But this lady who used to be the head of procurement for the r and
d business for AstraZeneca Pharma, who was just
becoming the chartered Institute of Procurement CEO, said this on stage.
We were together. Suppliers don't come to us with a business gauge. Sell your
value using our numbers. You don't need their numbers, but you need to put a
number out that's reasonable, not a billion. But, you know, in this
(18:25):
industry, we think downtime is this. Well, that's for that type. We're more
eight or 12 or something. But my favorite
line because most of not most. A lot of companies would say, we can't
quantify our value. And her point was, if you can't quantify, don't expect me
to do your job. I'm in the middle of buying companies, setting up new
plants, and you want me to sit down and do a value analysis
(18:47):
on that. That's your full time job company. You better
bring it to me. It better be believable. I think this is really
interesting. A procurement gentleman put this together. They do some work with Rob
McGuire on the bottom left there, but we were somewhere he goes, you
salespeople better learn the buying process. And I laugh
because, you know, we've all got our CRM systems and we have our sales process.
(19:09):
He goes, this is how people buy and how companies
buy, how people buy in general for considered purchases, where this
thinking is very similar. And because we all come from different industries,
let's assume we're gonna buy a car and walk through the logic. And then
afterwards, insert office supplies, insert
electrical motors. It's the same process. A need has been
(19:31):
identified. The businesses said we need this. At home,
I need a new car. The lease has gone out. The kids got older. The
other one got in an accident. I don't know. I need a car. Now you
can change need, but I want a car. I need a car.
Then I will sit back and, in general, establish the specifications. So
based on my assumption, my knowledge at that point in time, I want a
(19:53):
gas car. I want a four door car. Okay? Doesn't mean
that's logical, but I've sat home and said, I I don't want electric, and I
don't want the diesel. Dad had a diesel car. My mom and dad had one
a hundred years ago in Canada. It was a little more work than a normal
car. So I've made some assumptions. So with that, Tesla's out. It's electric. And
so I kinda narrow down a little bit. And then I say, you wanna know
(20:14):
what? I've had bad experience with that company. I don't trust that company, and I
don't like that one, but I like these three or four. And my old role
is always three to four bids. So I list whoever those four
people would be that make what I'm looking for. And now I'm
gonna chop around. RFQ, RFI, and then, you
know, who's got this vehicle? What's your, you know,
(20:35):
value proposition? What's your delivery? You know? They're
going to do some work and give me a price negotiation delivery
type of number. We might do some negotiation, then I eventually will
buy a car from one person. What you need to understand is your ability to
get me to focus on value versus lowest cost that beats the
minimum criteria dramatically changes over time.
(20:58):
So a lot of the stuff needs to be early in the sales cycle, even
before the sales or the buying cycle starts. You know,
this is what I was saying about the thought leadership. Oh, the next time I
buy, I should think about this. I should think about I didn't know that. Oh,
okay. I'm framing it earlier. Everyone says, you know, help the customer
write their, RFQ. Better is to get them to even think of it on their
(21:19):
own and then help them. So a piece of research that follows
us, there's so many pieces of research, but they all are
close enough to call it even. So this is Gartner Group
from b two b buying, interviews of
750. The question was, where do you spend your time
in this buying cycle? 27%
(21:41):
is, researching independently. Show me car
companies. Who is the best supplier? Tell me you know, that type of
stuff. Or trade associations, maybe. I don't know.
Only 22% is with an internal group, the people that will probably
use the product or service. 18 is researching
independently offline. That's where I'm thinking colleagues, other people within
(22:02):
industry, you know, thought leadership groups that they're involved with. Hey. We
gotta buy an ERP system. What works? What doesn't work? Who should we be careful
of? What should I know? You know? I'll buy you dinner and tell me something.
16% is other, and 17% is spent with,
suppliers. If there are four suppliers, you're getting less
than 5% of their time. 5% of their time to try to get them to
(22:26):
say, oh, we shouldn't care about price. It's all about value is very tough. And
I used to get that from colleagues worth the RFQ stage, get in the plane,
and come here and help us. It worked. I'm just suggesting you really need to
have value in the messaging and the framing very early
to have higher success rates. Now some things I
see some companies do when they become to try to get paid for value that
(22:49):
actually caused more problems. So it's called the jam
study, and they gave customers two choices. We'll say
Whole Foods as an example. You know, people love
choice. So you come in, there's different sizes, mixtures, flavors.
And what the study found is giving customers too much choice
actually causes them to buy less. It confuses them.
(23:11):
Buyer's remorse sets in right away, and they can also unbundle. This is where procurement
will say, well, if the strawberry is this and the blueberry is that and the
strawberry blueberry is this, I can start figuring out cost structures and
unbundling structures and the like. So my old team
was notorious for sending you offers that had 20 tabs at the
bottom, showing how smart they were. We can bundle this and bundle
(23:32):
that. The point here is give customers options, limit options.
And it turns out based on research, you should give customers
three options. So with that, I was talking to the team at
Value Pros, and it's, like, amazing how many people I mean, you know, starting the
value journey by just trying to write down value drivers is great. We think we
can affect this here and here, but a lot of people then end up with
(23:54):
an Excel tool. And I'm quickly just gonna go through, you
know, what to be careful for for anybody that does do
that. Inaccurate formulas. And I'm talking Fortune
100 companies going, that's wrong, or it was a mistake. One person had a
currency table that wasn't working properly. One person, you
know, fat fingered a number somewhere. So, you know, if everybody's
(24:16):
creating their own tool and putting on a where database somewhere that they're
downloading and then modifying, you get a lot of mistakes. Right
formulas. I see, you know, technically inaccurate formulas.
Some companies are notorious for taking cash flow and calling it free
cash. I was just saying to Bruce, if I don't pay my Visa bill this
month for a thousand dollars, I don't have a thousand dollars. I just pushed off
(24:37):
paying it, so it's time value of money.
I still owe it. Depends on the customer. Customer's right. But if
you try to claim increased revenue as a hundred percent
cash, most customers will say that's not how it works.
Most of the time, we're able to get customers agree to contribution margin. You've been
running your business this way. The CEO's being paid. The buildings are being
(25:00):
paid. You know, every widget you you sell has
variable costs. If I help, you know, increase this.
So it's a more accurate formula. You know,
a lot of these one off tools don't have any impact ranges.
They just say, if I could do this by 1% or 10%, it's not where
have we done this before? Here's some industry research. Here's a link to
(25:23):
a report from somewhere that says here's best practice. Here's where
you are. It's just a bunch of what if. Most customers are saying, you know,
I've heard somebody what ifs. I don't believe them anymore. With the idea of, hey.
Just do this. It'll be worth that. You know? And, again, because I started before
tools existed, I mean, spelling mistakes, currency mistakes,
units. You know? Is it number of tons of papers or
(25:44):
number of feet of papers? Number I mean, you
need to have disclaimers. It's not a legal thing. The output.
You know? It's important to have output in the way the customer thinks, and that's
different by industry. Sometimes you need more high level
IRR and PV. Sometimes you're confusing the
customer. You know? For that level of purchase, they don't need to overcomplicate
(26:07):
it. And my favorite calculation is this minimum improvement. I mean, it'd
be great if we could get to here, but I only need to get that
much improvement to pay for all this. Some references or links to
justifications, whether those are internal success stories, benchmark data, third
party. I don't care. But some meet around it, not somebody sat at home and
just did their we think. I was amazed at this because
(26:29):
I'm probably more of a math person than a visual, but graphs make
management happy. They love the waterfall graphs. They love the breakeven
graphs. That business case is gonna get passed around from your contact
to their boss or other people, and the visualization makes
a difference. The professionalization and visualization. You know, smarter
companies have said Excuse me. I really need to have different stages
(26:52):
of case. And I'm not saying these terms are the right terms,
but, you know, I'm gonna test the calculation, then I'm gonna
propose it to a customer, then we're gonna banter back and forth about the
numbers of believability. We change if the customer buys the
solution or service, it became accepted. They've accepted some of the
logic. Then we actually had a system in place for the bigger customers
(27:13):
to go back and verify what actually happened. Eventually, we got to
the point where we could sit in front of a industry and say, we've done
this 800 times in your industry around the world. The min,
the max, and the mean have been this on the improvement. We had more data
than the customer had. So, again, if it's a one off
spreadsheet, they just get bounced around, and there's no follow-up.
(27:35):
So I'll just gonna be clear and easy to understand. And the I think the
last thing in pricing that really screws people up for value is giving away free
stuff. And the research shows that,
you know, if you're given two choices, you're gonna go to Whole Foods this weekend
and there's a free Hershey's kiss or there's a 13
chocolate. More people will take something for free. There's no downside. I'll
(27:58):
just take it. If I told you that the average Hershey kiss cost,
I think, 6¢, 5 or 6 cents depending on the volume,
and the average Lindor chocolate is 55¢,
and I say, okay. You wanna know what? I want you to realize you're getting
more free value. I'm asking you to pay 13¢ to get something that's, we'll just
say, 53. That's a 40% 40¢ value surplus.
(28:20):
I gave you something for free that cost me 5¢. That's less
value. By trying to tell you how it's better doesn't work. If
I say you wanna know what? I'm gonna charge you 1¢ for the Hershey's gifts.
It changed almost the exact opposite. It changed which one people
chose. Because now you're going, I'm doing math
and subconsciously maybe, but I'm starting to think. So
(28:42):
giving away free stuff screws people up. Small numbers
associated with it makes them think of what's better, and they're
always structuring the offering for the customers. I mean, the joke
I have, I think we've all been to trade shows and stuff. How many people
buy, grab stuff off somebody's booth at a trade show, then they throw it out
before they even get to the hotel? You know? If you
(29:03):
if you're not willing to pay 1¢ to get the koozie cup, you're not gonna
probably ever use that thing. Make a donation to the children's foundation
or something. And you see that the numb percentage of people that chose
neither option didn't dramatically change by putting
1¢. But it's really interesting how free stuff screws people
up. So with this takeaway more is to take all the services you
(29:26):
offer and structure them into a very low price
1¢ offering and one that somebody might pay
for. So, this is some research from a professor that I've
done some work with, but, you know, let's get rid of the services that
cost us money that the customers don't value, and then let's put
together a offering that says, okay. Here's the low price or
(29:48):
the free version. Just think of Amazon shipping as an
example. You know? You you want engineering design?
Yes. Within one week, I'll tell you yes or no. That's maybe
free part of doing business. Oh, for a thousand dollars, I'll return the
answer within two days, and I'll give you five things to be concerned about.
Training. Is training free? Todd, not an engineer, drops
(30:11):
in and spends thirty minutes for lunch, shows you three new features, that's
free. A three day training, that's for a fee.
So, again, confusing customers going what's free, what's not
free, and and, therefore, what's of value. All the
stuff I covered has been researched a lot for academic
groups. What I think is interesting is these are procurement people around the world that
(30:34):
have had me on stage having almost the same conversation. I
mean, National Institute of Government Procurement, that was Asia.
That's American. The universe Arizona
University. So it's not just the sales thing. Procurement gets it.
They say, you know, make it reasonable, make it hard, bring us the business
case. And I won't go through all this, but
(30:57):
from probably one of the seminal books ever started value merchants.
I mentioned one of the authors before. This is a recent article from last
summer that I was involved in. But, you know, my favorite stat, you know, companies
are priced for value, which means they've quantified it and sold it,
are 24% more profitable than the industry average and
36% more profitable than those who will make it up in volume
(31:19):
market share. Reduce discounting, bigger order
size, higher customer satisfaction,
80% higher win rate, 25%. The ones with the last
tricks are based on the MIT Sloan article. That's the reason why those are there.
So we had talked about this. Those that were able to join deans, I throw
this in. I will not go through it all, but companies that buy based on
(31:40):
the same way, based on true value, are more profitable. So the
top left is an association called mapping manufacturers alliance.
So big industrial machineries, people that measured all these
variables and made decisions based on them were 35 more
profitable than companies that did not. And, again, you could see there's a bunch of
people saying we need to buy this way. We know it's better for us. We
(32:02):
know it's best practice. How come more sales organizations aren't bringing
us this data so we can make up an informed decision?
So gives you a flavor on what I focus on, value. You know,
we've got the tool right here, which you'll see in a moment. Again, the marketing
and the training and the selling and some pricing stuff around it. With
that, Bruce, type of questions, or you wanna take a quick, dive through, the
(32:24):
tool? Todd, thank you for taking us through that, and
just looking at, you know, the case for change and and how we
can, support our buyers, especially procurement.
Dean, as you know, how can we improve the
ability to shape that value proposition? And, Todd, you make the case that
it makes you way more profitable if if you're able to do that, especially
(32:47):
when most vendors are not doing that. So, that that's
wonderful. Dean, did you have any observations though? Just curious, based on your thought
you're saying. Tidy in with something I've been saying before, but the
power of the business case and working with
procurement to be able to present that value into the organization
is huge, because something procurement really struggles with is
(33:09):
getting recognition for its efforts. And the simplest
metric that finance uses is the price and the
cost, not the value. So the
kind of tools that Todd's talking about and the example
he gave from AstraZeneca are absolutely spot on. You have to be able
to present the business case, then educate procurement
(33:31):
in how to present that on your behalf because the likelihood is
you're not in the room when that final discussion is taking place as
a salesperson. So you need to empower the procurement
guys to be really effective at transmitting that message. Would
that resonate with your experience, Todd? Very much so. And that's a reason
also the the tool, the calculation, the reports need to be clear,
(33:53):
concise so that your agent, the
procurement general and, again, I live with this tool. I know this tool inside and
out. That's my industry terminology. That's how I speak. No. No. That's not
how you speak, and that's not how your boss speaks.
So instead of trying to overcomplicate it, which some people like to
do, you know, that the visualization, the clear concise, the summary
(34:15):
numbers upfront. And then, of course, you can have all the reports afterwards
of calculations and the line for sure. Yeah. I loved your point about
the the visuals because that's so true. I I worked for one
company where if you couldn't get your entire argument on
one piece of paper, the execs wouldn't even look at it. You can have a
ton of support material, but you had to be able to capulate
(34:37):
that. Keep, a value argument in
one slide. Todd Todd, did you invent the price
berg? I did. Couple of years ago, people again, I'm sure other people
because I've had procurement conference that we we use we never used the term price
berg, but we understood the idea. So I think So
I love it. You know, if you guys remember Todd's visual, the price perg, it's
(35:00):
this, you know, tip of the iceberg out of the water, underneath the water is
so, so, so much more. And, Todd, you made that very real with that
visualization of, you know, the the the price of that offering and
then the total cost over time. You know, how that price was, like, you know,
eight to 12%. But the but the, the
total cost was, like, 88% over time.
(35:22):
And, the price per so perfect because then you can take the
weight off the price discussion, put it more on the total cost of
ownership and how you're gonna improve that for the buyer to get more
value, and and, hence, you know, not not
have that discounting pressure. So I I I love
it. I think I have always gone through a I wouldn't call it a process,
(35:43):
but the price per most people will nod, and then they get through a
model, which is different by industry because of the terminology. And then they're like,
okay. Now now show me. So it's kind of like educate
them to realize okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's a pretty slide, Todd.
Now now show me some numbers, examples, and measurements you would do.
So that HBR or MIT Sloan says if you go right to just
(36:06):
trying to use the numbers without the education that there's more there,
people won't listen to the numbers. That that that's one of the the major takeaways.
But, okay, you show me that there's all these other elements. You show me that
there's a ratio of this to that. Now I wanna hear those numbers
to me, but I used to probably go in and go, look. I'm
asking you to spend this. It's gonna give you this. Maybe
(36:28):
try to close too early. I mean, I'd rather get you wanting to even
talk to me to think differently. So that's why some of those, I call
marketing slides, get people warmed up to have the discussion. Interested,
okay, by the way. Wonderful. Hey, Darren. I think what
we'll do next is, you know, so Todd's
talking about shaping the business case. And how can you do that,
(36:51):
you know, simply and visually? And I've invited
Darren, one of the the cofounders at Value Pros. Darren, if you wanna do
a quick introduction to yourself, and then please do,
talk about Value Navigator and how that might help people. Yep.
Absolutely. Thanks, Bruce. And thanks, guys. Todd, great stuff. Todd and
Dean both. Yeah. So I'm Darren Fleming, partner with,
(37:14):
Value Pros as, Bruce said, and,
also, president of ROI Selling. And, Value Pros
and ROI Selling have worked together to come up with Value Navigator, which
is a self-service tool to be able to be
able to, build a business case, on the fly
for any solution for any customer leveraging AI to be
(37:36):
able to do that. And so I'm gonna show you
just quickly, and and by the way, all of you will get
access. There's a thirty day free trial that Bruce will be sending you a link
to that you can actually try this out on your own for thirty days for
free, to to just tick the tires. But I'm gonna show
you the same solution. It's actually called NeutralHouse. Not
(37:58):
gonna get into the details of the solution for two different customers. So it's the
same solution being sold to two different customers. One being, say, Dow
Chemical, one being Cleveland Clinic, a health care facility, and
show you the power of being able to discover the benefits,
and quantify the value for that solution. So I'll start with
Dow. This is, you know so this is the customer. Here's the
(38:21):
solution neutral host for for the plant.
I'm gonna go in here. This was the information that was
provided to the platform. So it was the name of the
solution, a description, the link to the solution, the name of
the customer, the customer's website, and just the scope of what it
is. I've already created this, so I don't have to go through and create it.
(38:43):
But this came back with the benefit dimensions, some cost reducing,
revenue enhancing, productivity enhancing benefits.
And you'll start looking at the, the
benefits. So, like, operational data
collection efficiency, enhanced production monitoring efficiency,
enhanced predictive maintenance capabilities. So it's very specific to,
(39:05):
in this case, a chemical plant leveraging a telecommunications
solution, to improve the efficiency of their of
their operations. You can go in and then put the investment in. You can see
across here, it kinda builds up the, the key
financial metrics that a customer would care about. You can change the length of
the analysis, for what the customer wants to see. Go look at some
(39:27):
charts of what it looks like over time. This is all built in a matter
of minutes based on putting in the target
target customer, the scope of what you're selling to them, and the
target solution, and it'll help build this up in a matter of minutes. So that
was an example for Dow Chemical. Now I'm gonna go over
to this, which is Cleveland Clinic. You know, so this in
(39:49):
this case, it's a health care network. So same product, same
solution. And if I look at the
description here, it just says it's now targeted at Cleveland Clinic.
So it's a different target customer. So now it's talking about
improved patient experience revenue, accelerated telehealth
adoption, enhanced patient experience revenue, enhanced
(40:10):
medical device connectivity, you know,
so, enhanced research collaboration efficiency. So things that
are very specific to, in this case, a research hospital
network, with the exact same product. So it helped
fine tune and bring together what are the benefits
that a customer will get in this specific situation for this specific
(40:33):
customer with your solution, and then you can go in and refine any of these
numbers, adjust them. Again, go talk about the
investment, review what it looks like, look at a chart view
of it, what it looks like over time, what where the
benefits come down, and then generate a report that then you can use
to attach to your proposal to cost justify the overall
(40:55):
solution. So just showing you the power of two very
different customers in very different industries and within minutes being
able to build a a the quantified quantified, cost
justification or the same solution in two very different
industries. So love to have you kick the tires, take a look, and
provide any feedback you have on it and see what you think. Awesome,
(41:17):
Darren. Yeah. And, I I know we've all seen it, but, gosh, just the
the benefits of that, I think, are fairly profound where, you know, you
can leverage the power of AI. What's that being? With it, Bruce.
I love the fact that it even does your PowerPoint slides for you.
Yeah. So yep. Yep. I mean, to talk about
empowering the buyer to go forward with a value,
(41:40):
argument is is just phenomenal. Yeah. Yeah.
Awesome. And, Todd, I know you played with it as well, etcetera. It's hot off
the press, everybody, and and it's it's only gonna get better. But as you
can see right now, oh my god. You know, just version one point o,
You know, you can have your, financial analysis within
seconds, you know, based on on the work that that tool does for
(42:04):
you as you collaborate with your buyer to shape that analysis. So
really, really powerful. One thing that, Darren didn't hit
upon that I think is just as powerful, maybe the way to say it, is
each one of those formulas have references of where the data came from. It wasn't
Yep. You know, their annual revenue is a billion, and we think we can improve
it by 10%. It was a link to a report whether they're on it would
(42:25):
there's some meat behind those numbers. Yeah. If you remember
Yep. Yep. Yeah. Here. I'll I'll dig into one of those to show what Tad's
talking about. Just so let me go into one to,
of course. Was it scrolled at the very bottom? Was it is it very bottom
(42:45):
where the little eyes were?
Yeah. And as you're hunting around, I'll describe it too, Darren. But what what
happens is the tool once it comes up with a
example calculation, it'll go you know, through AI,
it'll go out and do the research for you and find, you know, is there
a reference benchmark or a study that could be
(43:07):
cited that'll add a little bit of gravitas and
evidence to that calculation. So just building
more social proof into the formula. So, you know,
that that financial buyer who wants to have a little bit more confidence
can see that something is study backed. There you go. Here's here's an
example. It's you know, this I was showing some analysis that were built
(43:30):
with previous versions. So, the, but here's one that
actually average number of unplanned planned chiller related
downtime events per year. So, obviously, very specific to an industrial setting
with chillers in a refinery. And here's a
report from McKinsey and Company reducing unplanned refinery outages,
reduce downtime chiller or downtime cost in refinery and pet chemical
(43:53):
plants. I can click on that, and that pulls up the reference study
that actually helps to support what that value is.
And most people will never go read all those reports. They just wanna see that
there's something behind us or they'll say, talk to
Bob. Bob knows that number for our own company. But
Yep. I also like the fact that you can adjust
(44:15):
it based on your own sense of what reality is for you,
or you can take a conservative view if you want to and see what it
does to the numbers. Yeah. Absolutely. Like, here's an example
of emergency reduced emergency repair labor costs, you know,
$750,000. You can change that if you don't believe that number, and
then that's how much you're spending today, and we're gonna reduce it by 40%.
(44:37):
You say, well, I don't think it's gonna reduce it by 20%. Okay. Great.
Change it to 20%, you know, so you can refine it on the fly as
you're talking to the customer. Or if
the customer says, you know what? I just don't believe this reduced labor
or lost revenue. You can just exclude it, and it still shows up
in your report. Now in this case, it went negative because, you know, the investment
(45:00):
was bigger than the benefit now. But, you know, you can
include or exclude, delete them wholesale, add new benefits. I can
just create a new one and describe what the benefit is. I can let AI
do the whole the whole thing for me. Lots of different ways to
to to slice and dice to get a quantified cross justification
to go along with your business case and your your proposal.
(45:23):
Yep. Awesome. Well, good enough, you guys.
Well, everybody, thanks so much for attending this
webinar. We'll get the recording out to you. It it's also out
there on LinkedIn live right now, which I'm really delighted with. And,
so for everyone next week on, June 4,
same time, we'll be focused on the buying experience.
(45:46):
That webinar is the buying experience edge, how to stand out and close
more deals in a risk averse market. And so we'll bring us all
together. I'll I'll introduce, you know, the framework around how
to drive a more compelling buying experience.
We're calling that the total value experience, and and there's key phases in how
to do that and and different dimensions. We've done a bunch of
(46:09):
research, to figure out what are those causal
dimensions that drive the better buying experience. So, I'll introduce
that. We'll have a panel discussion about that next week on
June 4. So thanks everybody for attending. Thanks, Todd,
for, all that wisdom that you shared, best practice, and
how to shape the business case. Thanks, Dean, for for weighing in and making
(46:31):
sure this is all real. Darren, thank you also for introducing
Value Navigator. And, David, thanks for being the voice of reason as always.
So, everyone, thanks so much, and we'll see you next
week. What a powerful session with Todd Snelgrove
and the rest of the team at valuepro.io. We explored
how top performing teams avoid the discount trap by
(46:54):
building believable, buyer ready business cases. Todd
gave us a practical road map showing how to shift from cost
conversations to total value discussions that actually
resonate with executive decision makers. What really stood out
for me was the insight that the supplier who co builds the
business case with the buyer wins 80% of the time.
(47:16):
And then Darren showed you how you can harness the power of AI to
quickly shape a business case with our brand new value navigator tool. The exciting thing
is this is just version one point o of value navigator, exciting thing is this
is just version one point o of value navigator. Strap in for more
value in this tool as as we evolve it in helping buyers buy.
If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe to the Value Pro Show.
(47:38):
And if you're feeling kind, leave us a review so others can find and enjoy
it too. Wishing you successful value selling.
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