Note PowerPoint presentations have become commonplace. Exhibit 7-6 shows some sample slides on how you can incorporate the MeasureMax approach.
Exhibit 7-6: PowerPoint presentation.
Step Six: Conditions Met
All the measurable benefits of the customer’s confirmed goals have product features that help to achieve them. Verify that customers agree that the features of your product selections are on target. You now recap how your proposals satisfy their conditional commitments.
Measurable Phase Change 3: Solution Confirmed
Once they agree with your summations, customers turn your products into solutions (products that customers confirm achieve their goals and satisfy their conditional commitments). Your products now solved the question of how to achieve customers’ goals. You are almost ready to ask for orders. Some steps remain to make orders foregone conclusions rooted in logic and known facts—not leaps of faith revolving around emotions and unknowns. Patience and discipline will pay off. Upon receipt of this third MPC, immediately proceed to the final selling phase, which is MP 4: Implement Agreement.
Scopes of Work
Send the highest-level decision maker you contacted a Scope of Work sheet to review before generating your proposal. Send it via fax, postal mail, or e-mail (do not invest an in-person sales call on a Scope of Work that a customer has not had time to review yet). This informal proposal is an outline that lists the details of customers’ goals, measurable benefits, and conditional commitments, and explains how features of your products connect to them.
Encourage customers to review the connections and edit anything that does not meet their requirements. If any discrepancies surface, correct them before making your formal proposals. Scopes of work allow customers to perform one last check before you make your final presentations and proposals. As always, the final decision makers’ comments count most. If sales opportunities involve advocates or gatekeepers, the FDM will contact them if he or she thinks their review is necessary.
Although scopes of work do not include pricing, you let customers know they satisfy their conditional commitments. You highlight that fact in the budget section. A scope of work combines the Q sheet from Chapter 6 with the Connecting Value sheet in this chapter. You explain that you will firm up pricing once they confirm that the current product(s) and feature selection(s) achieve their goals. Without firm prices to squabble over, you avoid the “one from column A, two from column B” quagmire that wastes everyone’s time and effort. If pressed for cost details, verbal pricing works. A sample of a scope of work cover letter and a scope of work checklist follow in Exhibits 7-7, below and 7-8 (page 214), respectively.
Exhibit 7-7: Scope of work cover letter.
Scope of Work Checklist
Positron Requirements
FutureTech Comments
Positron Comments
Primary goal: Prevent production stoppages from 18 hours to 9 hours annually
þ
Can do it with it with Predicto Services
q
What can we do to reduce downtime to six hours?
Downtime costs: $40,000 per hour
þ
Confirmed costs using your past records
q
Let’s review your calculations again
Projected savings: 9 hours decrease save $360,000
þ
Confirmed savings using your past records
q
Let’s shoot for six hours
Start date: November
þ
No problem if order released by September 15th
q
No problem
Finish date: December
þ
No problem if project begins by November 15th
q
What happens if we run into the holidays?
Budget date: Not to exceed $1,080,000
þ
Current selection of products fit within this budget figure
q
What will the actual price be?
Payback: Three years or less
þ
Current selection of products fit within this payback figure
q
Did the survey indicate that there might be a way to lower our payback to two years?
General notes: Very similar situation that we have encountered on four other projects.
General notes: Survey really documents some significant opportunities to decrease downtime.
General notes: Still want to see some sort of guarantee on the savings.
Solution Selection and Review
Measurable Benefits
Product or Service
Feature and How It Works
Benefits of Features
FutureTech Comments
Positron Comments
Prevent production stoppages from 18 hours annually to 9
Predicto Services
Variance Alerts prevents unscheduled breakdowns by warning operators of impending failure
It ensures uninterrupted shipments to your customers and saves money from lost production.
Only company in industry that provides this type of service
How come no one else offers it?
Tolerance Checks prevents unscheduled breakdowns by electronically analyzing critical components for wear and tear on a weekly basis
Same as above
By increasing tolerance checks to a daily basis, your records indicate that you can reduce downtime to six hours
What will that do to both cost and payback?
General Product Selection Notes for FutureTech: Suggest you visit a working installation.
General Product Selection Notes for Positron: Great idea. Which one will best resemble our operations?
Exhibit 7-8: Scope of work checklist.
Note All the templates shown in this chapter can be down-loaded from www.measuremax.com.
Although Steven still has questions that need answers and issues that need resolving, at least he and Olivia are working together to solve them. (See Exhibit 7-8.) In addition, note that you need only one or two features to achieve the measurable benefits of a customer’s goal.
Case Study
Continuing the case study from Step Four: Purpose and Summary, and after resolving all the issues from the scope of work, Steven reconfirms that Olivia’s goal is to reduce downtime from eighteen hours to nine hours a year. He also verifies that her conditional commitment requires a three-year payback and a price not to exceed $1,080,000. He also confirms that a lost hour of production costs $40,000. His explanation begins with her goal of reducing downtime. Watch for the goal-benefit-feature-explaining pattern.
Steven: Olivia, you want to reduce downtime (goal) by nine hours annually to save $360,000 in lost production time (measurable benefit). Our Predicto Services use variance alert monitors (feature). They warn of impending failures if the equipment is working outside its normal operating range to prevent breakdowns (benefit).
Furthermore, variance alert monitors (feature) could have prevented four failure instances last year for a savings total of three hours, which represents production savings of $120,000 (measurable benefit). Olivia, have I explained it where you can see how it does that? (Steven verifies that Olivia understands how feature connects to measurable benefits—and lets Olivia know that he takes responsibility for making sure she understood his explanation.)
Olivia: It makes sense.
Steven: (Steven then connects the second feature that achieves this goal.) In addition, our service includes tolerance checks (feature). They analyze critical components on a weekly basis for wear and tear (benefit). There were two cases last year where this service could have prevented production stoppages totaling five hours, or $200,000, in lost production (measurable benefit).
Steven then would proceed to a second goal, if there was one, or to another benefit or feature of the first goal.
The Steps of MP 4: Implement Agreement
You are now ready to conduct MP 4: Implement Agreement. (See Exhibit 7-9.) Its purpose is to set up the contractual relationships necessary to start the sale. It has two steps.
Exhibit 7-9: MP 4— Implement Agreement.
Step One: Deal
Verify customers are ready to implement your proposals. Use the momentum that has been building as a direct result of the three Measurable Phase Changes previously obtained. Confidently and directly, ask customers to use your solutions to achieve their goals. You do not need trial and assumptive closes after showing how your features achieve the measurable benefits and requirements of their conditional commitments.
Step Two: Logistics
Reassure customers that their purchasing decisions are well thought out and will achieve their goals. Then, explain what you need to start. Have the necessary paperwork ready to sign. It demonstrates your confidence that you and the customers already had a tacit agreement on what was required to conduct business. After receiving MPC 2: Potential Confirmed, but before your presentation, provide customers with a blank contract so that they can review terms and conditions. Do not let paperwork become an issue during MPC 4, especially if company lawyers need to review documents. Furthermore, you never know what will happen when support people review contracts with big numbers on them that they feel do not directly benefit them.
Measurable Phase Change 4: Agreement Confirmed
This last phase ends with the final Measurable Phase Change— MPC 4: Agreement Confirmed. Customers confirm they will proceed with your proposals and issue formal commitments.
Steven now completes his sale and receives the order. While it would make a great sequel, there are no cliffhangers today with the audience wondering whether Steven Smartsell received the order. What would your commission be on a $1,080,000, high-profit, value-driven sale? You find out when you make value measurable.
Case Study
Steven confidently asks Olivia if she is ready to start this program to reduce her downtime by 50 percent. Once she confirms that she is, Steven reinforces how her decision pays for itself many times over. He then discusses the logistics and deadlines. He also gets the necessary documents signed or purchase orders issued.