UID Day #2 – Solution Based Selling

Today’s class was “Solution Based Selling” presented again by Tim Underhill.  The main focus of class today was on the selling your solutions to the customer.  A percentage of customers may solely focus on price offers but others will go beyond that if there is a compelling reason.  How do you compel them to do business with you? Solutions that strategically produce value. Providing solutions is the best way to differentiate yourself from your competitors by giving you a competitive advantage and showing that you more than just  the “Price Guy”.

Steps in my Solution Process – D.E.C.I.D.E.:

  • Differentiate Yourself.  Market yourself as a solution provider.
  • Engage the prospective customer. Learn the customer’s objective.  What are their cost drivers? What are their objectives? You need to understand where you can provide a solution that will impact their cost and revenues.
  • Collaborate and Innovate. Create a solution WITH the customer.  Collaboration will create a long-term relationship that will be profitable for both parties.
  • Deliver results that show value. Measure and Record the results.
  • Exceed their expectations. Build a relationship that will last and create continuous business.

As in my previous post, it is extremely important you document EVERYTHING.  When the time comes you want to be able to show the customer you accomplished the objective, improve their revenue, and/or reduce their costs.

Success in solution based selling will result in a strategic business partnership and break you from being the “Price Guy”.

Let me know your thoughts and comments.

Filed Under: Business, Business Model Innovation, Innovation Tagged With: , , ,

UID Day #1 – Creating Competitive Advantage Through Total Cost Savings

Today’s class was “Creating Competitive Advantage Through Total Cost Savings” presented by Tim Underhill.  The class’s purpose was to explain the importance of documenting the value you create for your customers. What is the importance to documenting value? In the current economy it is extremely important.  You need to be able to justify your price when your competitors will cut yours by “X”%.   You can finally answer, “What have you done for me lately?”, with solid documented proof.  It is important to show the customer the increases in revenue and/or decrease in cost from the solutions you provide.

In a poll by Value Added Partners, end users were asked if the ability for a distributor to provide documented cost savings would enable the distributor to earn a larger portion of their business. 74% said YES!!!

How do you get the information needed from your customer to show the total cost savings and value you provide?
ENGAGE THE CUSTOMER! COLLABORATE! Learn about their strategic goals.  Understand their operation. What are their cost drivers? Listen.  I know it isn’t always possible to learn the customers true cost so making educated assumptions is important as well.

Is one Value Document enough? NO! As time passes it gets harder to show more value.  External factors can influence the customers market resulting changes of their needs.  In order to continue to provide value it is imperative to innovate and continuously improve your business solutions.  Documenting and showing the value to the customer will keep you ahead of your competition.

Another advantage of documenting your value is the ability to create case studies.  Case studies allow you to show prospective customers what value you can provide them.

Tomorrow’s class is “Proving Total Cost Saving”.

Filed Under: Business, Business Model Innovation Tagged With: , , ,

Will the iPad Break into the Business World?

It seemed like more people in the internet world were interested with the release of the long anticipated Apple iPad than the State of the Union address by our President.  I personally looked forward to the  release event and followed a live blog whenever I had the chance.  There is no question of the influence it will have in the media environment but I am more interested in how it will influence the business environment.

The implementation of groundbreaking technological innovations seem to take forever in the business.  I attribute this to the killer phrase, “If it isn’t broken, Don’t fix it”.

I am going to look beyond this and brainstorm potential uses of the iPad in the day-to-day grind of the real world. Below is a brief list of the good and the bad of the device.  (My list of good and bad is based off of what I read in many different articles.)

Good:

  1. Size – Much easier to carry that into a meeting with the customer than a laptop and stack of catalogs.
  2. Connect-ability – Wi-Fi and 3G. You can access email, access databases, check on orders, check inventories.  Smartphones and Blackberrys have that ability but lack the 10″ display.
  3. Professionalism – The presentation of the iPad portrays a clean leading edge image.
  4. Apps –  There is an app for everything. Enough said.

Bad:

  1. Multitasking – Lacking such an important function in the fast-paced world may be the deal breaker.  I would want to be able to jump from a customer catalog to CRM software without having to close either one.
  2. Adapters – You need an adaptor to connect to anything that isn’t the proprietary.  I really dont want to have to lug around a bag of adapters to connect to portable hard drives and SD cards.
  3. iPod touch-based OS – I would have preferred to see  it run MAC OSX.

Conclusion: I feel in the near future we will start seeing iPads (and similar tablets) in business meetings and sales calls across the country.  The potential is there to innovate the business to business interaction and with constant development of different applications anything is possible.

Down the road I would love to get my hands on one (Engineer Mentality).  First hand experience may or may not change my opinion.  I am also looking forward to seeing what the competition will put out there.

Let me know what think. I would love to hear other opinions about the innovation of tablets and their potential influence in the business world.

Filed Under: Business, Innovation Tagged With: , ,