How much time and money does your company waste each day?
We all like to think that our companies are models of efficiency and that we’re maximizing profit potential in all areas. But that’s simply not the case.
One of my clients, Tim Reynolds, President of Tribute, recently told me that many industrial distributors fail to realize how much time and money they waste every day. He added that they also don’t realize the magnitude of savings that an enterprise-wide distribution management (essentially an ERP system) solution like Tribute can provide.
This is a common problem for B2B organizations. How do you convey your value? How do you help clients solve problems they’re not aware of, or that they don’t want to acknowledge.
A great place to start is numbers. One thing B2B leaders understand is a balance sheet and business cases. We worked with Tribute to create a custom ROI calculator, which they made available on their website. Now, any industrial distributor can use the calculator on Tribute’s website to quantify potential improvement to their profitability.
The ROI calculator helped Tribute in two ways. First, it assured prospective buyers that the changeover costs incurred to deploy Tribute’s solution would be recouped, and in a short time frame. Second, the ROI calculator helped Tribute highlight the unique ways its software provides real, bottom line savings.
Today, Tribute’s sales team uses its custom ROI calculator in meetings with prospects. The tool shows prospects much money they can save in a three-year period in different areas (such as warehouse and assembly labor, scrap material costs, inventory management, and more). And prospects receive a report that serves as a business case and includes key financial metrics such as net present value (NPV), ROI and payback period.
One of the biggest challenges that sales reps have is showing value using legitimate or believable numbers with prospects. Tribute’s reps can be confident that the numbers they showcase using their ROI calculator are generated based on industry average data culled from trade-association reports and firsthand discussions we had personally with numerous existing Tribute customers. This way, the sales team can use this data to create a reasonable scenario ahead of time and then refine the calculations during the sales event.
In fact, during one such discussion, when a Tribute sales rep was talking about the value enabled by one of Tribute’s unique features, the business owner had a eureka moment and made a buying decision on the spot. Success stories such as these show that value-based selling really does work in a B2B setting.
How do you use numbers to prove your value in prospect meetings? Leave your thoughts in the comments section or feel free to email me at firstname.lastname@example.org.