GDA's Quantifying Benefits

...Selling Value to Create Customer Urgency and Eliminate Discoutning

Every sales and marketing person has had the perplexing experience of losing a big sale that we "just knew we had won!" We proved our business solution, our features were great, the customer was enthralled with our people, our prices were better, and the customer wanted the benefits... yet we lost. Whether the loss was to a competitor, to another internal project or to perpetual delays, it hurts. Where did we go wrong? Many times it is not where we went wrong, but that we forgot or didn't know how to answer the question, "So What?" For most major decisions, the question remains, what does it mean to my bottom line? What do faster reports mean? What is the value of “better productivity”, or “easier to use”, or “more professional”, or “better architecture?” Even price discounts are not compelling reasons to buy. But if we could get a customer to say, "Every month we delay costs us $90,000," then we have created a compelling reason to buy.

• How do your sales people prove their value proposition?
• Is your value proposition documented?
• Can everyone in your company articulate your advantages well enough not to discount?
• Do you have a comprehensive database of your best references? Does it quantify their benefits?
• Can all reps describe the quantified benefits of the key references within their respective territories?

GDA’s Quantifying Benefits – GDA’s skills development workshop for verifying the financial advantages of your products and services

The next logical step after proving value of a feature or product capability is articulating the value to a customer's bottom line. The answer is in the customer's business.  GDA’s Quantifying Benefits will teach attendees how to help a customer quantify that value. More important, Quantifying Benefits teaches how to help the customer find it and believe it. And since quantified benefits are most often worth far more than the purchase price of products or services, competitive discounts become irrelevant. The course agenda includes:

• "So What?" Selling: Business Benefit versus Features
• Guiding the Customer to Quantifying and Believing
• Developing Compelling Reason to Buy
• Case Study Analysis

As a result of this class, attendees should be able to determine the financial advantages of their products and services and guide customers to committing to those savings. Sales people will be able to utilize these financial benefits to develop compelling reasons for buying even when faced with reduced budgets, competitive discounts and look-a-like alternatives.

Call GDA at 800-966-4321 for more about Quantifying Benefits

Quantifying Benefits can be combined with Consultative Selling, Demand Generation and Preferred Partner to implement a complete and proven sales curriculum for record level growth.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Will this class teach my people to read customer financial reports? No, these are sales essentials for sales people, implemented so that every sales professional can successfully articulate the business impact of the services provided. We integrate in plane language elements of cost justification including terms like return on investment, cost avoidance, profitability, cost of goods sold, etc. Each opportunity might be viewed differently within a unique corporate culture, and the right answers are to be found by asking the right questions within that culture. Quantifying Benefits teaches the student to ask the right questions in search of the real bottom line benefits, and what to do with the answers after that.
2. Why haven’t you included practice role-play sessions in Quantifying Benefits like you have in Consultative Selling? Quantifying Benefits is part of GDA’s core curriculum of courses that are integrated to complement and build upon each other. The practice role-play sessions provided in Consultative Selling are designed to provide the requisite skills needed to implement account management tactics in both Quantifying Benefits and Preferred Vendor. In Quantifying Benefits, we utilize team breakout discussions and presentations of team findings to create deep understanding and confidence.
3. Will our people get the same value from Quantifying Benefits if they have not taken Consultative Selling? Each GDA class is capable of standing on its own, and GDA has numerous customers that have begun their curriculum with Quantifying Benefits instead of Consultative Selling, or with one of the other core programs. In almost every case, these customers have then returned to include another course or courses, once they begin to understand the depth and value of the material provided.
4. We already have references and success stories on record. How are your QB References different? GDA will examine your references for repeatability and quantified information. If the current references explain why the customer chose your solution; what critical needs the solution addressed; what aspects of your solution were essential to the sale; and what the quantified benefit this reference actually derived from their association with your company, will incorporate your existing references into the training.
5. Who should attend this class? All sales, presales, and their management should attend Quantifying Benefits. It is also appropriate for proposal teams, sales support teams, marketing personnel, and sales executives.
6. Aren’t there some benefits that simply cannot be quantified? Aren’t some just intuitive? All benefits can be quantified in terms of money, lives, graduates, savings, or probability, to name a few. Benefits left to intuition lack urgency and often result in discounts or deferment.
7. How precise are these quantified benefits expected to be? These are not the salesperson’s numbers. Quantifying Benefits teaches the sales person to guide the customer to determine their own assessment, whether a fixed number or a range of likely results. The customer’s precision will vary based on the customer’s culture.

Companion Product

GDA’s QB References Database  consulting service is a tactical field-implementation initiative designed to deliver numerous quantified references according to client designated business segments, product solutions, customer needs or strategic preference.  With GDA’s professional guidance, you can have these valuable sales tools as a follow-on to the GDA Quantifying Benefits workshop… now!