Time to meet the finance team? We’ve got you covered… ??

You’ve had a successful first discovery meeting with a prospect.?

You’ve validated your assumptions about their business, and they understand how your solution can enhance their proposition.

Now you need to demonstrate how it will impact their bottom line.?

You’ve been asked to meet their finance team to develop a business case.?

The question is, how will you persuade them to sign a partnership?

In this article, we look at three simple tips to get the agreement over the line:

1. Show them the benefits.

Based on their strategic and commercial goals, show how your offering will help them.?

Being able to demonstrate an understanding of their business and how your offering adds value will not only show you’ve done your homework on them, but it shows them exactly how a partnership will benefit them.?

What you list as benefits will ultimately depend on the solution that you provide, however it is crucial that you support your claims with evidence to build a strong argument for a partnership.?

Describing how you would go about implementing the proposed improvements alongside examples of previous partners you’ve done similar work for will help to quantify the results.?

Something that will be very much appreciated by the finance team you’re pitching to.

2. Pull out the spreadsheets and get modelling.

Now you’ve shown how you can support them and how you have mutual goals, create a value model in a spreadsheet to validate your assumptions and use it as a tool to secure finance teams buy-in.

Gather inputs by reviewing annual reports, financial statements and other sources of public information that provide deep, factual insights into the prospect’s business.?

Consider the following:

• What was last year’s turnover? How does it compare year-on-year? What are this year’s targets?
• What is their average margin? What are the most and least profitable areas of their business?
• How is their cost base constructed?
• What are their average basket sizes?
• What is the frequency of customer shops?
• What are their engagement rates?
• What are their average transaction times?

Show you’ve done your homework by producing a draft model for the meeting that can be validated by the prospect and even modelled further together.

If approached correctly, the CFO and their finance team will relish the opportunity to co-create with you at an early stage - producing a collaboration model that becomes the basis for a business case and commercial targets that both parties buy into.

3. Provide a clear - and realistic - understanding of what it’ll take to get started.

Many businesses claim to have minimal or no integration required, but that’s rarely the case.?

It’s important to be candid about the resources required for success and to build it into the business case and development plan that the partner signs up to.

Being evasive or unclear risks the loss of trust - or worse, the fledgling partnership being brought to a halt.?

The fact is, no one likes feeling they’ve had the wool pulled over their eyes - which doesn’t bode well for the start of a fruitful partnership based on trust and integrity.

What have we learnt?

You’ve invested significant time trying to secure a meeting with your target partner, and they like what they see.

To ensure the partnership comes together, frame your solution in a way that supports their goals.

Don’t make the mistake of making it all about you - it needs to be about how you’ll add value to their business.

Doing your homework and building a commercial case together from the second meeting will yield dividends.?