The Ultimate ‘NO’ and How to Overcome It
Few people would accuse those in procurement roles as being ‘yes men’. But perhaps a direct ‘no’ is less common than people think. Those in procurement and finance have found a more effective way of stopping buyers (and those who want to sell to them) in their tracks. It is to ask for a cost-benefit […]
Selling To The Buyer’s Primary Ratio
Are you connecting with the number one metric used by CFOs and CEOs to measure business performance and to guide important decisions – including big purchases or investments? Here we will examine how talking ROCE with the buyer can boost your sales success. Return On Capital Employed The primary ratio is ROCE or Return On […]
Why Only Hard Savings Can Close The Deal
Sellers are not the only ones obsessed with making their numbers. Buyers have targets too – typically ambitious targets for cost reduction. However, increasingly only hard savings have the power to close the sale. We all know that buyers are increasingly numbers obsessed. The question is what format must those numbers be in […]
How To Make Your ROI More Buyer-Friendly
As with building skyscrapers, the temptation for sellers in building a business case is to add another floor of benefits in a bid to achieve the highest possible ROI for the buyer. However, it is important to remember that the higher the ROI, the greater the danger of the buyer simply toppling your figures. With this in mind, you need to help the buyer create a more credible business case on three levels…
Examining the Business Case – The Building Blocks
The term business case can mean different things to different people. For this reason it is helpful to explain the key elements of a business case in terms of other more universally understood business planning and analysis tools. The business case combines four elements as shown in the diagram. The Building Blocks of the Business […]
Buyers Face 3 Business Case Challenges
Predicting the future is not easy, but that is exactly what the business case must attempt to do. This is particularly true in a time of market turbulence. Today’s perfect plan could be completely invalidated by a change in the competitive situation, an upset in the market or any one of a host of other […]
What Are Buyers Thinking?
Why do buyers do what they do? Why do they choose one supplier over another and choose some projects to be scrapped, while others are advanced? These are questions that understandably intrigue salespeople. Buyers tend to reveal little, leaving many salespeople complaining that they don’t know what buyers are thinking. They may even complain buyers […]
What Is The Business Case?
One of the most powerful realizations for sellers is that when it comes to the complex sale there are no buying decisions, only business decisions. The implication is that buying decisions which in the past focused on the what, where, when and how, are now purely concerned with the ‘why?’ Peel back the layers of […]
Salespeople Grapple With The Business Case
Would you be surprised to know that many large organizations require a business case for purchases of as little as €20,000? As one UK veteran salesperson told us recently, ‘I have seen more business cases in the past year than I have in the previous 19 years.’ There is more strategic business logic being applied to […]
The Role Of The Business Case
Why is the business case so important? Well, the key reasons the business case is now at the center of major buying decisions are listed below. 1. Drives business success: It ensures any projects, purchases or investments enable the organization to achieve its objectives. 2. Allocates scarce resources to maximum effect to get the best […]
Examining the Business Case – The Cost-Benefits Equation
The business case can take many forms, but at its core is one key question — why should we buy? or more to the point: How will this purchase help the organization (department/unit) succeed? The business case clearly outlines the value equation of the proposed purchase that reflects not only costs, benefits and risk, but also how […]
Examining the Business Case – Considerations Of Risk
The business case requires much more than a cost-benefit analysis — that is too simplistic for complex business decisions. For example, a more in-depth analysis would highlight that while the payback from project A might be twice that of project B, this benefit may be negated when higher levels of risk are considered. Managers are […]
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