This is the accepted paragraph describing the Value Engagement Series offering. The Dealmaker difference is what sets us apart, so you need to stress the ‘intelligent and automated’ aspect of the blueprint.
These are the key business requirements of Chief Sales Officers, translated into which areas of sales effectiveness they are investing in in 2011. We touch all of these 7 priorities, but the first 2 speak to Engage to Deliver Value and Engage to Discover and Access, in that order.
This is how the Value Engagement Series fits into The TAS Group capability ‘stack’. It complements the sales methodology and is delivered, underpinned and reinforced by the intelligent Dealmaker platform (specifically Collaboration Map, Political Analysis Map, Pulse and Coach Me).
Sales skills, specifically the Value Engagement Series are all about ‘how do I?’. Sales skills are about how you execute on the sales methodology and sales process to progress the deals and improve revenues in a sustained manner. Value Engagement Series is complementary to any sales methodology or process.
You can’t sell VES to your customer until you have uncovered problems or pain points for which our skills solution would be right. These are the typical tactical pains that you might expect to hear from your customer that would lead you to solution components contained in VES.
The Value Engagement Series is intended to be additive to both the OM and the AM methodologies – applicable equally to both. They are focused on skill building, delivered in the context of the methodology with which they’d be used.Engage to Discover and Access is all about understanding the customer situation – through the eye of the buyer, and the subsequent gathering and mapping of customer problems and their related business impact. Then you can begin to connect potential solutions we can offer to the various needs you’ve uncovered. It also Engage you to effectively navigate to and interact with the key executives and stakeholders in your customer organization and establish a plan for working together collaboratively.Engage to Deliver Value focuses on the skills and techniques to provide your solution and value proof points in a concise and compelling way, reinforcing your competitive position and fulfilling your competitive strategy.
In Discover, Discovery, the 4 phases of the buying cycle helps you remember that the intensity of importance shifts across the various buying concerns as the sales cycle advances – and even in the post-sale timeframe. Also, you must remember that you will encounter 3 types of customer need in every situation: those that are unknown by the customer, those that are known, but not being actively addressed, and those that are active and in need of a solution.The proper use of the Collaboration Map as a Discovery tool, including The Way Organizations Work, Tactical Pains, Consequential Pains and Key Business Requirements helps you and your customer visualize the customer challenge. Extending the Collaboration Map to attach solutions to your customer’s Tactical Pains and validating this this against your strategyensures that your solution fit is aligned with your selected competitive strategy.Effective competitive traps contain competitive messages and are aimed at helping your customer come to their own conclusion regarding your superiorityand advantageIn order to ensure you have the right information to build the maps, you use High Yield Questions, including the High Yield Opener techniques, layering questions and question types, all to be used within the engagement framework.You need to do this all while keeping in mind the Competitive Landscape, your Unique Business Value and the degree of Solution Fit you believe you have.
When you are having the conversations with the executive, you need to focus on the topics they care about, within their conversational context. This leads to increased credibility with executives and contributes to the trust that is needed to elevate yourself above vendor status.As you engage to access key stakeholders, particularly executives within your customer, you need to plan the call or meeting, to ensure you have well structured objectives and the topics for discussion will laid out. In a team setting, this helps ensure that everyone is working toward the same outcome of the conversation and aligned as to their responsibilities.When you are having the conversations with the executive, you need to focus on the topics they care about, within their conversational context. This leads to increased credibility with executives and contributes to the trust that is needed to elevate yourself above vendor status.As part of navigating your way to the right executives, you will need to establish credibility and have a message of value that resonates with that executive. The Political Map offers valuable guidance as to how to reach those executives through the use of coaches and influencers who have preference for you or your solution. Additionally, research via any number of sources, including Google search, Google reader, LinkedIn or any of the many Social Media tools such as blogs or Twitter, can be used to gather valuable information to help you align your message to an area of interest – professional or personal – to that executive.In any type of ongoing relationship, there is value in documenting the activities each of the parties will do, who has responsibility for those activities and when they’ll be accomplished. Whether managing an evaluation for a particular solution, or constructing a collaborative plan for working together over the next 2-4 years, having a Joint Engagement Plan enables everyone in the relationship to identify and plan for the resources needed and the activities expected to occur.
To communicate value – whether related to a specific opportunity at hand – or for an ongoing, strategic level relationship between you and your customer, you will need to deliver a well structured, meaningful message that is easily understood and related to the customer’s issues.The Delivery Heartbeat provides such a structure for communicating that message, in a way that addresses the executive, management and functional needs of your customer.The first step of the heartbeat is to Set the Stage – to establish a foundation, giving you control in the delivery environment. It allows you to establish your credibility to the entire audience, and gain agreement on the key topics to be discussed, the agenda, and to ensure active participation by everyone involved.As you begin to convey your message, linking your solution or approach to the customer’s challenges, you have the opportunity to re-live the business issues, bringing them to the forefront and creating a connection to the proof statements you will provide. You can personalize the benefits and related the competitive advantages delivered by your solution or approach, differentiating yourself from other alternatives the customer may believe they have.As part of this, you will want to present the customer-specific Collaboration Map, in a way that ensures it speaks from the customer’s perspective, giving credit and ownership to those who’ve either shared the issues with you, or validated those you brought to the table yourself. The map can provide a valuable visualization of how your solution or approach matches their needs exactly.Closing the Delivery Event offers you an opportunity to answer any last open questions, summarize the proof points you’ve shown, as well as the benefits, value and competitive advantages you’ve communicated. Lastly, before closing, you have the opportunity to set expectations as to next steps to maintain the momentum of the relationship.Throughout this process, you should rely upon the Political AnalysisMap,as well as paying close attention to where you are in the sales cycle and which stage you’re in related to the Buying Cycle.
These are some specific results achieved by InfoMentis customers.The Value Engagement Series is a product of the acquisition by The TAS Group of InfoMentis. It combines the InfoMentis intellectual property that has been delivered to 50,000 sales professionals in 67 countries with The TAS Group’s Value Driven Selling methodology, all incorporated in our intelligent Dealmaker application creating a superior sustainable solution for our Customers.
This slide reinforces the Dealmaker difference, namely sales skills to execute on sales methodology, made automatic and intelligent by the Dealmaker platform, and encapsulated in the end-to-end Momentum change execution process.
