A Clever Way to Identify Critical Business Issues – Before the Call!

  

A recent Great Demo! Workshop graduate asked, “How can we find relevant Critical Business Issues (CBIs) for prospects with job titles that are unfamiliar to us?”

 

Excellent question! This can happen frequently for new sales team members and when moving into new markets, new verticals, or when launching new products.

 

Try searching online for a job description for that specific job title and industry. What you find often provides wonderful information on that job title’s likely top-level challenges and, therefore, their likely CBIs.

 

Additionally, the descriptions of the role and responsibilities provide good material for discovery discussions of “Problems/Reasons.” This same information can help populate Situation Slides for Vision Generation demos, as well!

 

For example, you’ve been asked to present to a “Manager, Financial Analyst” in a large banking organization. A quick search using “manager financial analyst banking job description” yields several excellent overviews, including:

 

“A Financial Analyst, or Accounting Analyst, studies a company’s financial data to give advice for guiding business investments and overall financial strategy. Their duties include predicting the return on investment for different stocks and business ventures, writing financial reports and collecting industry research to inform decision making.

 

Financial Analysts gather data to understand the trends affecting a specific type of product, geographical region or industry to help their clients make important investment decisions. They often have the following responsibilities:

 

-       Analyze financial data and provide forecasting support.

-       Prepare reports and projections based on financial data.

-       Recommend individual and collections of investments, also known as portfolios.

-       Evaluate current and previous financial data.

-       Study business and economic trends.

-       Determine a company’s value by examining its financial statements.”

 

(Thanks, Indeed!)

 

Based on this example, a good CBI starting point might be, “Deliver accurate and timely reports on yearly growth, return on assets, return on equity and earnings per share.”

 

It’s all out there on the web, apparently…!

 

You can learn more about the use of CBIs and Vision Generation Demos in the Third Edition of Great Demo!