At mb&l, we firmly believe that B2B sales are all about the perceived benefits by potential Clients. No company spends or invests without expecting a favorable outcome from that operation, whether economic or financial, obtained either directly or indirectly. However, not all benefits are direct, and not all are easy to calculate.
Let’s start with definitions: What do we mean by direct benefits? Direct benefits are those with tangible, typically economic results, obtained through a process of comparison.
We compare the performance of one tool against another, the effectiveness of one process against the current one, or even against an operation without any defined process. In direct benefits, these comparisons are relatively straightforward because they involve proven elements.
For example, if we were to offer an air conditioning unit, it has measured, tested, and certified characteristics because it consumes a certain amount of energy measured in amps, delivers a certain amount of cooling measured in BTUs, generates a certain amount of noise measured in decibels, and has concrete size and weight measurements. With this data, we can easily compare it with other models that perform the same function, and the Client will have plenty of data to justify their investment.
But what happens when these benefits are not so direct or are rather indirect? For example, specific training is always beneficial, but how do we measure its real effectiveness beyond an exam? How do we measure the return on that investment within the Company’s operations?
And sometimes these “benefits” may never materialize, yet they still exist within the accounting, such as in the case of insurance for workplace accidents: we may never have an accident, yet we can still calculate its benefit.
Having established that there are benefits not directly tangible, how would a Salesperson clearly present them and ensure that the Client considers them within the financial analysis of the potential purchase?
In these cases, it’s best to “negotiate” them. This means reaching an agreement with the Client that these benefits exist, even though we may not be able to measure them precisely upfront. This agreement is often sufficient to justify the purchase. Returning to the training example, how much better will participants be after the training?
We don’t know upfront, but we can agree that they will be sufficiently better to justify the training cost. If a Company decides to train its Sales team, where each member is responsible for achieving a certain sales target or revenue within a given period, surely if these Salespeople are 3% or 5% better at the end of the training, and this improvement applies to their goals, they will easily cover all the additional costs.
In summary, we almost never have the comparative advantage of direct benefits, but we can always “negotiate” with the Client on the indirect benefits and agree on a minimum outcome, which we can verify in the future.
Verifying in the future means that we will return a year after the purchase to demonstrate that what we promised as an annual benefit was more than fulfilled—a practice we always follow without exception, right?
But this topic deserves another upcoming discussion as part of the financial concepts that every Salesperson should master… Future document…
To learn more about these topics, contact us. We’d be delighted to expand on these and other concepts of Consultative Selling.
