TSG Velocity SAMA Part 2

The value road map:
Part 2
Developing and articulating
the value you create

C
reating relevant, differentiated we’ve identified seven capabilities and
By Philip Styrlund solutions and articulating “next practices” that distinguish the great
chief executive officer compelling value propositions that from good when it comes to developing
the Summit Group leverage enterprise-wide capabilities are and differentiating products and solutions.
fundamental to higher-order value creation.
Shakeel Bharmal In this installment we capture how the best Co-creation
president (canada) companies differentiate their products and Leading companies engage their
solutions, elevate the value they create
the Summit Group “lighthouse” customers to elevate and
and articulate it in the market. This article
accelerate innovation. While there are
builds on the value road map’s first two
and James Robertson many challenges – such as culture and
stages (Velocity, Vol. 11, No. 3/4, Summer/
Vice president of business development intellectual property – in co-creating
Fall 2009) where we explored leading
solutions, the payback can be significant.
the Summit Group practices for understanding customer value
As the vice president for global strategic
drivers (Step 1) and aligning capabilities
accounts at a Summit Group client
with those drivers (Step 2). (See Figure 1
commented, “By working collaboratively
on Page 14.)
(with our customers), we were able to
identify and create solutions none of us
Step 3: developing and
would have identified on our own.” Leading
differentiating your products
this collaborative co-creation process, we
and solutions
Leading companies act engaged the best and brightest people
Leading companies act on our client and its customers had in their
on strategic customer strategic customer and value space to focus on elevating our client’s
chain insights to co-create value proposition to its customers. The
and value chain insights relevant, differentiated solutions outcomes were:
that leverage their enterprise
to co-create relevant, capabilities and resources. As
• Inter-company teams drove a set of joint
initiatives.
Jack Welch, retired chairman
differentiated solutions and chief executive officer of • Real-time business alignment accelerated
General Electric Co., put it, “An new products’ time to market and
that leverage their organization’s ability to learn and strengthened relationships.
translate that learning into action • As our client said, “In 2009 we were able
enterprise capabilities rapidly is the ultimate competitive to increase sales by $550 million without
advantage.” Based on our research introducing any products.”
and resources. and experience working with the • Our client is launching six solutions as a
world’s top sales organizations, direct result of this co-innovation process.

Velocity® ••13•• Q2 2010
Copyright© 2010 StrategiC aCCount ManageMent aSSoCiation. all rightS reServed. reproduCtion or diStribution without expreSSed perMiSSion iS StriCtly prohibited.

• The global strategic accounts VP was recently promoted to to leverage all your assets enables you to:
a senior international leadership role. • Elevate business relevance.
• Differentiate your solutions.
Leveraging all your assets
• Counter competition and commoditization.
Many companies continue struggling to navigate
• Increase solution richness and value.
across their organization, break down silos and offer
company-wide capabilities to customers. The ability While there are numerous challenges, strategies and tactics
to managing the mother ship, one notable practice is for
marketing to provide sales teams with an updated inventory
of the company’s offer enablers™, those capabilities beyond
Figure 1.
products and services that can be bundled to create highly
The value road map
relevant, differentiated solutions. Salespeople are often
unaware of everything their company has to offer or where to
find offerings. As one of our clients said, “We tend to show up
Step 7
smaller on the outside than we are on the inside.”
Sustaining value
Using the voice of the customer to engage and align the
Step 6 organization

Delivering the The competencies, knowledge and resources to create
value proposition enterprise solutions reside across the company—at every
level, in different geographies and in multiple functions. High-
performing salespeople use the voice of the customer to build
Step 5 alignment, gain commitment and secure resources inside their
organization. They accomplish this in many ways, notably by:
Capturing value • Bringing relevant colleagues into joint business alignment
and planning sessions with the customer.
• Hosting collaborative “help sales sell” workshops that use
Step 4 VOC to depoliticize the need to align and mobilize action.
• Telling structured, creative, compelling stories that describe
Articulating the customer priorities and business drivers, competitive threats,
value you create opportunity attractiveness, impact, feasibility and the action
and resources required to win, all in a way tailored and
Step 3
relevant to the colleague from whom they need support.
• Running live offer-development workshops where the “critical
crowd” wraps itself around major new business opportunities
Developing and and works through a best-practice process in a war room
differentiating your Step 2 environment. As for business impact, we’ve seen these live
products and solutions offer-development programs increase conversions, or win
rates, from a pre-program 27 percent success rate to a 70
percent win rate for projects that went through this process.
In the case of one high-tech client the average contract value
Aligning your Step 1 increased more than 650 percent from a deal size of $81
capabilities with the
million to $622 million.
customer value drivers

Implementing a replicable solution development and
bundling process
Understanding A common language and consistent approach enable agility,
customer value drivers
speed and, paradoxically, creativity. The distinguishing
capability is to develop a replicable, efficient approach to
tap into offer enablers and enterprise assets that are highly
relevant to customer needs.

Velocity® ••14•• Q2 2010

Laser focus on business relevance customers’ business, leading
and “fit” salespeople seek to elevate the What is rarely considered
Business relevance drives the value value their customers extend
created. The greater the alignment and to customers. By affecting why in the planning stages of
impact your solutions have on what the their customers’ customers
customer cares most about, the greater choose to do business with their a solution bundle launch is
the value you can bring. World-class customers, they distinguish
sales organizations and star sales coaches themselves and significantly the challenge of preparing
increase their business relevance
focus on “fit” throughout the solution
development process by constantly and value. The value created the sales force and channel
elevates their relationship
considering the following:
toward co-producer status
partners to clearly articulate
• Which products and services will
have the greatest impact on what the
and accelerates growth. By
a new product’s or solution’s
customer cares about?
• What does our solution do for the value to customers.
customer?
• What value does our solution create? transition is IBM Corp. Its successful
• So what? strategy to combine business consulting,
hardware, software and implementation
• Who cares about that?
support is probably the biggest
• Does their position, title or function contributor to its continued survival in
change what they care about? the highly contested technology space
These questions pose important while so many peers have struggled.
considerations as you begin crafting institutionalizing a replicable enterprise- We’ve found in our work that what
your message for the customer to wide approach to creating customer- is rarely considered in the planning stages of
directly target its stated issues, concerns, centric, relevant solutions, companies a solution bundle launch is the challenge of
needs and initiatives. “What does our are able to have substantial immediate preparing the sales force and channel partners to
solution do?” describes in customer and long-term impact on customer clearly articulate a new product’s or solution’s
terms and with customer value in mind loyalty, profit and growth. Once the value to customers. Countless times we have
what the solution accomplishes. It is solution has been conceptualized and seen companies invest millions of dollars
not enough to speak of a product’s new created, a message articulating the in market research, product development
and improved features and functions. “proof of value” must be developed and and marketing communication, then fail
Instead the imperative is to describe the communicated, which leads us to the to sufficiently plan for or invest in the
application and its impact in customer next step in the value road map. tools, training and time to enable sales
business terms. success. By the time the product is ready
Step 4: articulating the value you for launch, management is so eager for
Emphasize what distinguishes versus create the revenue to begin generating return
expected value Many companies have successfully on investment that the pressure is on to
made the transition through the previous roll the product out to the marketplace
Through research-based analysis of
steps, having developed products and often at the same time the product rolls
customer decision criteria and competitor out to the sales force.
capabilities, leading companies develop solutions that truly address higher-order
an accurate picture of their relative customer business issues. Deere & Co. Certainly every launch team makes
developed a landscapes division, John an effort to communicate the product
competitive position. In a structured,
Deere Landscapes, to provide bundled characteristics and benefits to sales
replicable way they create, eliminate,
solutions to independent landscape colleagues and produce attractive
elevate or reduce elements of their
contractors, making their lives easier and marketing collateral. Rarely do we see
offer guided by relevant differentiation,
businesses more profitable. These new enough time and detailed effort put
impact, attractiveness and feasibility.
solution bundles included landscaping in place to enable true success. As a
machinery, supplies, materials and even result the expected – indeed, eagerly
Focus on elevating the customer’s project financing, all delivered through anticipated – revenue ramp-up is
value proposition new retail channels. In the technology frequently delayed. This is a shame since
Rather than focus solely on their world the most publicized example of this the new solution’s excitement usually
Velocity® ••15•• Q2 2010

brought back in. This time they bring
Figure 2. live deals they are currently working
on, and through the course of a day
they work with an integrated team of
experts from within the company to
build an action plan for taking that
customer relationship to the next level
and winning the business. This type of
training format is much more “real” and
has found tremendous success at leading
companies across numerous industries,
such as Xerox Corp., GlaxoSmithKline
plc, Cisco Systems Inc. and Marriott
International Inc. An executive at one of
these companies commented, “Where we
thought the business opportunity with
a client was in the range of $7 million
to $8 million, the revenue we actually
achieved was closer to $30 million.”
Several other best practices relate
to the culture and process change that
© The Summit Group
surrounds the sales professional. Of
these, the greatest effect we’ve seen is
energizes and unifies a company before driven versus transactional customers. from the disciplined delivery of on-the-
launch. The lack of immediate success A holistic diagnostic can be conducted job sales coaching after the initial launch
after launch starts an unnecessary cycle through online surveys and interviews of of the product or training. Studies by
of blame and disappointment. However, the sales organization and customers. the Integrated Sales Executive Council
there is hope. Many companies do With a complete diagnostic, best- of The Corporate Executive Board Co.
get it right, usually because they have have shown that people trained on a
in-class organizations deliver intense,
learned from past failure but sometimes new product or sales approach without
interactive two- to three-day programs
because sales and lighthouse customers coaching retain only 13 percent of the
that go beyond providing product
are involved early in the planning for new knowledge a month later. On the
knowledge and a theoretical background
product development and launch. We other hand, combining training and
on value solution selling by incorporating
offer you some best practices covering coaching increases the productivity
realistic case-based customer scenarios
three areas from several of our clients:
and engaging role-plays. This allows impact to 88 percent.
sales training, sales communication tools
sales professionals to put their skills and Two of several critical coaching
and quantified proof points.
knowledge (both pre-existing and new)
variables are “when to coach” and
to the test as well as build confidence.
Preparing the force “what to coach.” Research has shown
Scenarios are written to reflect real-life
that the greatest impact comes from
The best of the best and those aspiring customer situations and often require
coaching delivered in the field. It’s not
to be the best involve their sales leaders the sales professional to do pre-work to
about spending more time with sales
during the product launch phase and come prepared for several intense rounds
representatives in formal coaching
conduct an objective assessment of the of simulated customer meetings followed
sessions. Instead star sales coaches
current state of sales skills. Then they by coaching. At the end of the sessions
focus existing time on mind-set and
build a training program based on that the participants are required to deliver a
skill set coaching, both immediately
assessment that is integrated with the solution-oriented customer presentation
before a customer call and just after.
product roll-out. This can take many forms, that can be judged for quality by a panel
This way coaching can be tied to
but the most comprehensive approach is of executives from both within the
specific customer scenarios relevant to
a competency assessment of value selling company and lighthouse customers. An
advancing the business while at the same
skill dimensions, including business example of the modules from one such
time developing the sales professional.
acumen, consultative relationship skills, program is outlined in Figure 2.
There is no need for complex coaching
value articulation skills, adaptability to After several months of in-field frameworks or forms to fill out. Rather
change and ability to differentiate value experience sales professionals can be the best companies keep coaching

Velocity® ••16•• Q2 2010

Figure 3.

simple by using tools like Third Box tailored based on the buying process other similar clients have seen?
Thinking TM, which we described in stage the customer is in. For example, one Another instance of a sales
the previous article. Working with the of our clients in the supply chain industry communication tool is an interactive
sales professional to think through what prepared copy for e-mails and letters that presentation builder. Many companies
creates value for the customer’s customer, could be sent by sales professionals to have fallen into the trap of creating a
what the customer cares about and what their key target clients. The rep would boilerplate sales presentation that sales
your company can do that relevantly simply customize the message with a professionals deliver as is to clients
affects the customer is a simple, effective personal opening paragraph and paste whose attention spans wane due to the
way to drive the coaching conversation. in the prepared copy that delivered a lack of relevance to their specific issues.
value proposition in customer language. The better professionals build and add
Communication tools The best e-mails/letters use principles we their own slides to customize to client
To support the sales team’s success described in our previous article, such as needs. This is great; however, the result
in representing the value created by “them-us-fit-proof”—what issues does the is a plethora of inconsistent quality and
the new solution, some best practices customer face, what capability do you positioning delivered throughout the
include preparing flexible, customizable have, how does it impact the customer’s marketplace. An excellent compromise
communication tools. These can be issues, and of course what is the impact we have seen at leading companies is
the creation of an online
presentation tool. Through
Figure 4. an easy-to-use interface reps
respond to questions about
their clients’ business issues
and needs. Once complete,
the presentation builder
creates a presentation
leveraging pre-created slides
customized to those issues
and needs. This balances
the need for consistent
messaging around value
creation with the desire for
customers to see how the
solution directly impacts
their relevant business.
Clearly, providing
tools to help salespeople

Velocity® ••17•• Q2 2010

communicate value to their customers should represent the target market’s companies develop their offerings and
is critical, but many companies miss the industry range. These can be very articulate the value they’ve created to
importance of creating tools to help sales effective, as can more in-depth white the marketplace. We look forward to
professionals communicate internally papers that communicate the same idea: continuing down the value road map
within their own company. An approach where it has been done before and what in the next article, where we’ll discuss
we call “structured storytelling” gives a the results were. delivering your value proposition and
simple framework for sales professionals to capturing the value you’ve created.
The next level of sophistication and
take what they learn from their customer
sales empowerment comes in the form
discovery process and translate it into James Robertson and Philip Styrlund will conduct
of ROI calculators. Companies such as sessions and workshops about effective virtual
terms they can use to garner support
Alinean Inc. specialize in building easy-to- team leadership and coaching, leading strategic
from internal subject matter experts growth initiatives and leveraging and aligning
use online calculators. Through a series of
whom they engage in the customer enterprise capabilities at SAMA’s 46th Annual
simple questions answered by either the Conference in April in Chicago. Styrlund is chief
interaction. Indeed our research with
customer or sales professional (or better, executive officer of the global consultancy firm The
buying executives indicates that many
both), a report is generated that uses a Summit Group (www.summitvalue.com), which
customers believe that the problem with focuses on sales training and strategic account
most salespeople is they do not have the combination of graphs and qualitative management/development. He can be reached at
ability to rally support on their behalf content to articulate the possible financial ps@summitvalue.com or (952) 891-8400. Shakeel
benefits customers can accrue should Bharmal is president (Canada) at The Summit
from internal stakeholders. A common Group and can be reached at sb@summitvalue.com
refrain from buying executives is, “They they implement the solution. One of or (604) 218-1076. Robertson is vice president
talk a good talk with me, but then they our clients in the transportation industry of business development for The Summit Group
are unable to pull things together within created such a value calculator to help the and can be reached at jr@summitvalue.com or
(952) 221-4889.
their own company.” Structured internal company’s reps demonstrate how their
new supply chain service could save their Additional resources
storytelling helps this.
client time and money. (See figures 3 and For more information on this subject by these
writers in SAMA’s library, the editors recommend:
Value demonstration 4 on Page 17.) Some combination of case
Philip Styrlund, Shakeel Bharmal and James
studies, white papers and customized
The most basic best practice for Robertson, “The value road map: Part 1—taking
demonstrating how the solution creates ROI calculations is a very effective way value creation to the next level in an increasingly
value is to create a library of real case of enabling your sales team to articulate competitive marketplace,” Velocity®, Vol. 11, No.

studies delivered in multiple formats the value you create. 3/4, Summer/Fall 2009, www.strategicaccounts.
org; and Philip Styrlund, “On-demand webinar:
the sales professional can draw on and Through steps 3 and 4 hopefully creating business value,” Oct. 17, 2007,
share with customers. The case studies you’ve gained insight about how leading www.strategicaccounts.org.

Velocity® ••18•• Q2 2010

TSG Velocity SAMA Part 2

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