April 5, 2010

Nurture means Overcoming the Fear of Value Paranoia.

In a recent interview I was asked to recall some of the more significant and memorable mentors and teachers who have influenced and befriended me over the years and who ever so gently guided me with their own acts of generosity, wisdom and often brilliant insights in their writings.

Very high on my list of such authentic human beings that I have met is Dr. Tom Sant, a self described, former stand-up comic,
university professor, software application wizard-entrepreneur as well as one of the best and most consistent business writers I have collected in my over 50 years of reading.

Case in point: Dr. Tom’s monthly and always totally-nurturing content in his “Messages that Matter” newsletter proves the intent. Always helping the reader succeed. No strings, no upgrades for $, and notice the near absence of pitch or hype. Just pure nurturing-dimensionalized and, as usual, so very well articulated.

I rank Dr. Tom Sant among the greats, certainly in the early-adopting and evangelizing of the concept of nurturing customer relationships.
Right up there along with the 21^st century marketing legends such as Seth Godin, Geoffrey Moore, Don Peppers & Dr. Martha Rogers.

Read on and see for yourself why Tom has so long been placed so highly on the wall in my personal, ‘Helping Customers Succeed’,
Hall of Fame and he is always a must-read for me each month, like now. J

From: Tom Sant's Messages that Matter [mailto:tomsant@santcorp.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2010 6:07 AM
To: Jim Cecil
Subject: Overcoming the Fear of Value

To: jim@nurtureinstitute.com
Subject: Overcoming the Fear of Value

Why is it that so many proposals and letters contain no value proposition at all? What are those writers afraid of?

That is our topic this time.

Regards,

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Blog! Read other Messages that Matter articles in our blog.

Overcoming the Fear of Value

Are you afraid of value? There's plenty of evidence that suggests most proposal and sales-letter writers are. For one thing, very few proposals even contain a value proposition. And for another, when I bring up the importance of putting a value proposition in your proposals, the audience pushes back—hard!

I call this reaction "value paranoia." The result is weak value propositions that do little or nothing to move a deal forward. Here's an example of a so-called value proposition born of value paranoia:

"We offer a full range of enterprise-strength, integrated technology solutions."

Pretty exciting, huh? Makes you want to grab your checkbook, right? Or how about this one:

"We are a true one-stop shop for all your financial services needs."

I'll bet that makes you want to shout YES!, doesn't it? And here's another one—one that was actually used as the value proposition for an opportunity worth over $500 million:

"We are committed to the success of the enterprise."

Good grief! These are horrible. There's just no other word to describe them. For one thing, every one of them starts with "We," even though common sense would suggest that an effective value proposition should be focused on the buyer and what they care about. And for another, they contain no promise of positive results that can be tracked or quantified. Finally, none of them are backed up by even a shred of proof. These three supposed value propositions—all of which appeared in real proposals, by the way—are little more than marketing fluff.

When I press clients to create a more compelling value proposition—"ABC Company can reduce total energy costs by 75 to 80 percent by implementing our solar energy panels"—they sometimes squirm in their seats.

"What if the client actually follows up and holds us to our promises?" they ask. "Where will we find the baseline data against which to measure our impact? How will we ever get this past our in-house lawyers?"

These are all good questions. But they are questions that can be answered by modifying your sales and implementation processes and presenting your value proposition in clear, careful language. They are not reasons to refrain from offering a meaningful value proposition.

1. What if the client actually measures our results?
It'd be great if they did, assuming your products and services are as good as you claim. Why not make that part of your implementation strategy? Tell them that you'll work with them to set up the processes necessary to track results. Getting that data should make it a lot easier for you to win the rebid or the next phase of work.

2. Where will we find the baseline data against which to measure our impact?
Ideally, you will get it from the client, but we all know that many of our clients aren't measuring current performance so they have no way to know what kind of impact our products and services have had on their operations. If the client can't provide the baseline data, how about industry associations? They often publish data that represents industry averages. Or how about getting your own baseline data by going into a new client immediately after you have won a deal and measuring the key parameters at the outset and then measuring them again after six months? If you do this half a dozen times, you'll have your own baseline data that you can use as a starting point with customers. You'll know the average cost of processing a check in the Accounts Payable systems from half a dozen organizations that are similar to your new client. You'll know how long it takes to process a data record in a legacy system compared to what it takes once your system is in place. And so on.

3. How will we ever get this past our lawyers?
Lawyers believe that their job is to keep the company out of trouble. And they know that the primary sources of trouble are (1) clients and (2) employees. If they can just eliminate both sources, they will have done their job perfectly. Unfortunately, in the real world there must be a balance between the "excess of caution" that lawyers love to live by and the slight risk of doing business that is required to actually close a deal. By using weasel words appropriately—"this may result in…," "you could see an increase of up to 20 percent…", "based on current assumptions, we project savings of…"—you can protect the company from making promises that could come back to haunt you and yet you can still offer a meaningful value proposition.

Value propositions are the means by which we motivate the decision maker to move forward. A strong, specific value proposition that offers quantifiable improvements in a core area of performance is the key to shortening your sales cycle and winning more business. Don't let value paranoia cripple yours.

We can calculate a compelling value proposition from automating your proposal operations. Give us a call and we'll put some pretty impressive numbers in front of you—and no marketing fluff!

About The Sant Corporation

The Sant Corporation enables sales professionals to deliver high quality content throughout the entire sales cycle. Our sales enablement solutions reduce the time it takes to locate the best sales materials and expertise within the organization. Our proposal automation solutions improve win rates by accelerating the production of persuasive proposals, RFP responses, presentations, and related documents. Businesses choose Sant to improve sales productivity and win rates, increase marketing effectiveness, and deliver accurate, personalized documents to their customers.