Value Statements Need to Align with Job Title

The sales call wasn’t going well!

 

I was watching the prospect’s reaction to the salesperson’s statements…

 

He said, “It looks like you’ll gain $24 million annually by implementing our software.”

 

The prospect players’ response was silence. No excitement, no discernable interest. What was going on?

 

The prospect participants consisted of mid-level managers and their staff members. I heard one staffer mutter to a colleague, “$24 million? We won’t see any of that!”

 

Even though sufficient discovery had been completed, and the numbers were from the prospect, this group remained unconvinced.

 

Why? Because value statements need to align with job title!

 

There are three interchangeable measures of value: time, people, and money. Each needs to align with the corresponding job title level.

 

What are executives interested in saving or gaining? Money! When speaking to high-ranking prospect representatives like C-suite, senior VPs, and VPs, their metric of interest is money. For these folks, gaining $24 million each year resonates strongly. 

 

What about middle managers? (Your turn…!) If you said “people,” you are correct! Yes, money is of some interest, and time savings as well, but what do middle managers always request when planning next year’s budget? People! “We need more resources…!”

 

So, our salesperson translates $24 million into people resources, and we have that number from our example: 12 additional doctors (https://greatdemo.com/arithmancy-the-magic-of-numbers/). Our salesperson rephrases, accordingly, when addressing the mid-level managers, “It looks like you’ll gain the equivalent of 12 more doctors by implementing our software…”

 

This time, we see engaged responses from the managers. They can visualize 12 additional headcount contributing to their team.

 

OK, the executives are now looking forward to an incremental $24 million in revenues and the managers are updating their doctors’ schedules to accommodate the additional doctor-patient interactions represented by 12 additional doctors.

 

What about the staff, the doctors themselves? What motivates them?

 

One motivation is improved patient care. By seeing more patients each day, they can visualize improved patient care and (hopefully) improved outcomes. And by saving 3 minutes recording their notes with each interaction, they recover 45 minutes each day that were previously consumed by laborious manual documentation (to say nothing about readability, transcription errors, etc.!). 45 minutes is a quantity that is easy to picture, and it resonates with the doctors.

 

Summarizing, when communicating value, we need to align to prospect job title and level:

 

·      Executives are interested in gaining or saving money.

·      Middle managers want more people resources.

·      Staffers want to save time (and to go home on time!).

 

See much more starting on page 85 of Doing Discovery

https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Discovery-Important-Enablement-Processes/dp/B0B8RJK4C2/