If you are a value seller with more than one product or service to offer your prospects, you are calculating an ROI for each offering as a stand-alone. What if you were able to aggregate the ROI calculations into a package that shows the total impact of your products on the prospect’s business?
A Portfolio Tool provides a platform for Account Based Sales, also known as key account marketing. According to Nick Panayi, Head of Digital Marketing and Global Brand, CSC:
Account based marketing is thinking of the account as a market of one. It’s about being laser-focused on their needs and deploying the most effective marketing tactics available to nurture value-added, pervasive conversations with key stakeholders. This is the place where marketing and sales are at their closest, brought together by common goals and a crystal clear understanding of what success looks like.
You are treating each customer from whom you stand to gain the most revenue as a target market in and of itself, leveraging all the same tools you would use for a more diverse target.
A Portfolio Tool rolls all the scenarios from your value selling tools into one report for prospects to review. Your prospects don’t have to do any of the mental work needed to determine the ROI or total cost of ownership (TCO) for solutions that can be implemented in sequence or in tandem. In fact, your prospects may not have any idea that you have more than one solution that could work for their companies; you would be introducing your company as a valued partner with more to offer than the prospect may have imagined.
How the Portfolio Tool Works
A Portfolio Tool is similar to the ROI tool, but the mechanics are different.
In a value selling scenario, an ROI tool shows the prospect the total value of a particular offering. If you were selling multiple products or services, you would need to calculate the ROI of each one separately.
The Portfolio Tool takes all the ROI calculations and aggregates them into a single view. Additionally, the tool allows the user to time-shift the start date for each offering, so you have a precise reading on the impact of all the scenarios based on when they are implemented.
For example, you sell a widget, a gadget, and a thing-a-ma-bob that can work as separate products but can be used together. You calculate the ROI of each piece and then use the Portfolio Tool to calculate the value of all the pieces together whether your prospect deploys them all at once or one at a time.
If the prospect is on the fence about buying all three together, a Portfolio Tool will provide the numbers you need to seal the deal.
The Benefits of the Portfolio Tool
For sellers of complex solutions, the Portfolio Tool pulls together a persuasive business case for the total value of your products taken altogether.
You may have multiple solutions that can be phased in with one part implemented at the beginning (or month zero), another part implemented several months down the road (month seven), and a third at an even later time (month 14).
If your prospect is planning a phased implementation, the Portfolio Tool helps take the guesswork out of predicting future cash flows.
Selling to Your Sales Whales
Account based marketing is a hyper-targeted approach to prospects and existing customers with whom you are building a long-term relationship and to whom you want to sell multiple offerings.
Since these buyers are your ideal target customers and have the potential to provide substantial revenue to your business, you want to take as much of the hard thinking and busy work out of a complex sale as possible. You already have a tool to create a business case for a single offering. Take it to the next step by expanding the business case to include the entire solution.
If you have multiple standalone products to sell, a Portfolio Tool easily brings cross-selling opportunities to the table. It works for both complex solutions phased in over time and to show the total value of multiple offerings in aggregate. In both scenarios you can show time adjusted results so your buyer can budget for separate products, purchase them at different times, and still see what the ROI will be over a prescribed period.
Just as an investor keeps a portfolio of stocks, tracking each stock separately as well as overall performance, a Portfolio Tool shows buyers the value your products bring overall, boosting your wallet share of each account you market to.
