Sales Community - Making a Business Case

Making a Business Case

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Randy's Tips to Sell More ?? Excerpts from Your Go-To Sales Advisor

Making a Business Case/ROI Presentation

By Ben Solari, VP of Sales at Jellyfish

What the idea is: I’ve developed a methodology to use in today’s day and age when selling disruptive technology that is not budgeted or is a new category that requires a significant unbudgeted investment. This method- ology helps you determine how you can work with customers/prospects on measuring and quantifying the business metrics.

1. Enablement Pieces: Hiring and fostering people who are suitable for the role

a. Screen candidates thoroughly for this type of methodology. Think through the hiring prospects. One important trait they should have or develop would be business fluency, meaning the candidates should have a finance or business-center back- ground that enables them to think more holistically about how the technology they are selling fits into the broader business. Being analytical with an innovative approach to looking at alternative solutions to solve a business’s issues gives them a definite edge in the process.

b. This requires a macro-level analysis. The team developing the business case will come in, look at how the business makes money, and determine the best way to implement the technology into the business.

c. There are questions you can ask in the interview process to help you gauge the critical thinking skills of your candidates. Ask them to describe:

• How they are making their customers money ii. How they impact their bottom line today
• How they think our technology impacts the bottom line for our customers

The candidate’s answers to these questions will help you determine whether this individual can think about the bigger picture, is able to think critically, and understands how your technology fits into the business.

2. Training: How do you create collateral or training to instill in your team a level of comfort in dealing with executives (C-Suite) who need to level up beyond feature functionality? Think about your customer. He/she is going to need to justify spending money that doesn’t exist to bring in a piece of technology. Brainstorm with your team to come up with cost/revenue levers that your technology relates to, or break down their business (i.e., if you are selling to an engineering dept with $XX budget that has XX fixed number of engineers, and the department will spend $XX per engineer per year, that creates a target for you for that year that your technology can potentially impact). What are some levers the customer can pull that would allow him/her to feel confident that the money he/she spends will pay for itself?

Why It Is Valuable: The customers want to know whether the technology works. Is this technology valuable and/or does it present an opportunity for a return on investment?

The business case shows your work/math behind justifying the answer that this is a positive return on investment.

How it works: It is asset/collateral that comes about after the proof of the concept, using an executive readout deck that has two pieces:

1. A business impact slide that shows assumptions on impacting the levers you have identified and says, “Here’s what it can mean for you.” This slide generally answers the question, “Does the technology work?” It includes screenshots of software with the customer’s data in it, which allows you to tell a customized story that shows how the technology will benefit the customer. It also contains an analysis of how it relates to the data, indicates areas for improvement, and so on.

In your business case, outline levers around cost/revenue that innovates faster, reduces costs, and improves the yield of the current team. Include assumptions that are supported by the customized data presented initially, and allow the customer to have a conversation around how the data is presented.

1. An investment slide that outlines what the total cost of the investment would be. This should generate a conversation around how the technology would pay for itself.

How do you measure its success?

1. If you are able to improve the business fluency and invest in a business-case template that the reps can successfully deploy, one quantitative measure you should see over quarters is an increase in your average deal size as your sales force becomes more confident in the business value they are creating. This gives your customer a clearer understanding of that impact, which justifies a higher spend.
2. The win rate from the POC should start to improve as you increase your success rate in unlocking any spend in general and are able to better equip your buyers by showing your work on why this investment would be valuable.

Supporting templates, forms: You should develop your own PowerPoint or Google slides to use for your purposes.

Here’s something to think about:

If you have a champion who wants the software, the hard part is helping equip him/her to sell it internally to the final decision maker (finance/executive team) by having a well-polished, thorough business case. When you have reached that point, this person has already bought into the idea (the purchase), and this extra help supports him/her when having to sell internally for a net new spend.