A solid business case is essential for conveying the value of your solution through its obvious and more subtle advantages. When properly prepared, a business case informs and challenges customers to consider new perspectives, and gives you an opportunity to seal the deal with speed and confidence.
Consider using these three strategies to strengthen your business case and accelerate the sales process. Be sure to adapt them to suit your product and market, and encourage your team to think creatively about every possible benefit you offer.
1. Include Peripheral Benefits
Everyone expects your business case to include ROI on the purchase price of your solution. Distinguish yourself by going beyond the obvious and including indirect benefits that often seem inconsequential at first glance.
Let’s say your Service-Level Agreement (SLA) for network services guarantees 99.99% uptime, and your competitor guarantees 99.9%. A difference of 0.09% doesn’t seem like much, but don’t minimize its importance just yet. For the right customer, a TCO tool can turn that seemingly small difference into a competitive advantage. For an airline, a 0.09% improvement in uptime (or about 8 hours of avoided downtime) in its reservations system can prevent a revenue loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not exactly pocket change!
2. Don’t Overlook Training
We think training is a benefit, not a cost. When companies invest millions of dollars in new technology, they need to provide training to realize the full value of their investment. Without proper training, users struggle, overall adoption is poor, and they can waste a lot of money on a solution that will never reach its potential.
You can change the perception by presenting training as a solution benefit and building it into your business case. When customers understand the connection between training and faster realization of ROI, it’s easier to persuade them to invest in training. Not only do they get a better outcome, you can increase the average size of your deals and improve customer satisfaction.
3. Highlight Savings and Revenue
A typical business case tells customers how much they will save with your solution. An exceptional business case quantifies the positive impact on revenue through better workflows, greater productivity, and other unique solution benefits.
Revenue considerations can and should be included in your business case. A solution that boosts customer satisfaction improves retention, and enhances upselling and cross-selling opportunities. Key analytics and dashboards that improve management decision making increase business agility, as well as the organization’s ability to respond to changing market conditions, competitive pressures, and unique customer preferences. Higher performing organizations also bring their products to market faster, which speeds the acquisition of new revenue streams.
Consider the multitude of solution benefits that can result in greater revenue opportunities for your customers. Then strengthen your business case by expanding its financial focus to include both revenue growth and cost savings.
Conclusion
Encourage your sales teams to expand what they include when building a business case. Then empower them with value selling tools that quantify both the core and tangential solution benefits and challenge your customers’ thinking. An insightful business case is key to accelerating the sales process and closing more sales.
