“Developing a business case is always important and critical, and it can help you in your sales process from turning that business case into prospecting language, turning it into early discovery questions for validation, and even putting a proposal forward unsolicited with your professional opinion about how they can make impacts in those areas.” – Jack Wilson in today’s Tip 1531
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Jack Wilson. Here he is:
Jack Wilson: What’s going on, Daily Sales Tips Community. Jack Wilson back with another tip. You might have noticed recently, but we’re in a bit of an uncertain economic period. And sure, you might think that’s a giant understatement. Well, what happens to us as sellers in these types of uncertain economic periods is we find it very hard to get people to part with their hard-earned money, especially when it’s harder for them to come buy that money. That’s why my tip today is to help stress the importance of developing a business case for your buyers.
Now, a well-thought-through business case is something that I believe starts before you even engage with your buyer. A business case is actually relatively easy to put together, especially when you’re working with large enterprise-type businesses because they tend to publish this information regularly, whether it’s on their quarterly earnings calls, whether it’s on their company investor page, or even through ESG reports and regular meetings and presentations about their brands and future plans.
Step one is to find out where your buyer is communicating their intentions, plans, and priorities.
Step two, once you’ve found those things, start to catalog them, prioritize them in the mind of your buyer, and then further prioritize them by ways you can impact or tie your product or solution to those initiatives.
Once you’ve done that, then go find other outside or third-party trusted information that your buyers tend to listen to.
Many companies use a Deloitte, a Gartner, or a Forester to guide their big strategic initiatives and plans. But depending on the industry that you’re hunting in, they might listen to different sources. So broaden your sphere to things like a Corn Fairies or other analysts’ reports as well.
Once you’ve combined public information that your buyer is saying out loud with industry information that leaders and analysts are saying out loud, now it’s your chance to synthesize those together and start to draw a thin red line directly to what you can do for that buyer.
Now, the reason business cases are even more important in these difficult economic times is because just because times are hard doesn’t mean all strategic initiatives stop. It just means that the only strategic initiatives that get acted on are the ones that happen to be the top priority. Those top priorities are the ones that get spoken about most often.
Now, I used to be skeptical about this. I would think, Man, is it so easy that what they say in a proxy statement or in an annual report is what they mean is important to them? But lo and behold, when you pressure test these things back against an organization, what you hear from senior, middle, lower, and even entry-level employees is that these initiatives are often echoed from on high and they cascade down through the organization. Which means when you say these things in your buyer’s language, they resonate because they’re being told to them and enforced on the daily.
Developing a business case is always important and critical, and it can help you in your sales process from turning that business case into prospecting language, turning it into early discovery questions for validation, and even putting a proposal forward unsolicited with your professional opinion about how they can make impacts in those areas.
Now, this tip didn’t do a great job on telling you how to put together a business case. For that, here’s a bonus tip. Follow Nate Nasralla on LinkedIn. I’m probably pronouncing his name wrong, and I’m sorry for that Nate, but he gives away a ton of free information, templates, and even publishes video walkthroughs on how he puts together business cases. I’ve personally used them on a handful of occasions, and it’s changed the game for me.
Thanks, Daily Sales Tips Community. I hope this was helpful.
Scott Ingram: For links to connect with Jack and Nate, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1531. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!