The Ingredients of a Compelling "Point of View"

It’s that time of year again in Software sales and business development, where budgets have recently opened up, account planning is in full swing, and you need to bring forward ideas to stakeholders that align with their initiatives. Part of having a very solid account plan is also having a compelling and informed perspective of exactly how your solution can help their business, the impact it drives, and where else your organization has helped other customers accomplish their goals.

Today we dive into what we call the “POV”, or point of view, and what are the most important components to include when bringing ideas to your customers. This will separate you from the competition and move you into the “trusted advisor” category vs just another vendor.

I want to get a few things out of the way before we dive in.

1. This is for your largest and most strategic customers only.

2. This is a process, and evergreen and will never be perfect. You will constantly be working on this with your customers and you want their edits/feedback.

Ok, now that we have that out of the way, let’s start high level and work on specificity and depth as we go. The most important components of a compelling perspective that you can then bring to your customer are the following:

• What initiative or outcome does this tie to?

• What was the business impact or expected ROI (return on investment)

• Where else has your company delivered the expected results?

• What is the time to value?

Now let’s break down each one of these more in-depth.

Initiatives:

Understanding their highest priority initiatives and business metrics they are looking to impact, will require a good amount of research. If you haven’t read our article on finding these initiatives in the public-facing 10K, you can read it here. Your goal is to understand the top priorities of the company that your solution can impact. Can you help cut costs? Does your solution provide efficiencies? Grow revenues? Increase CSAT? Pro Tip: If you can find 3-5 top priorities, send them to someone to whom you have access and have them prioritize, and add to that list.

Business Impact:

Now that we have our list of top priorities, we need to calculate how much value your solution will bring to the customer and what metrics we will impact. Most organizations I have sold for have some sort of ROI calculator. If you don’t have any sort of ROI modeling/calculator, the next best data would be from case studies of other customers and what you were able to help them achieve. The business always has initiatives to grow revenues, reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction, and become a more efficient organization. If nothing else, you can always fall back on these just listed. Now that we have our list of top priorities and potential ROI of solving the priorities, we need to showcase we have experience delivering the results.

Case Studies:

Most companies have a very comprehensive list of case studies on the value, benefit, and success of the projects they have delivered for their customers. The goal here is to showcase that you have experience in delivering the results your customer has been looking for many times before. Find case studies that are as close to the industry or business model as your prospect. Pro Tip: If you work within a partner ecosystem, you may have luck finding case studies through them as well.

Time to Value:

The final important component of a strong point of view is the time to value. This will help answer the “why now” question. How long is this transformation going to take to deliver? Why change? What is the opportunity cost of not changing the status quo? Your organization again, should have case studies that outline how long it took to deliver results.

Summary/Next Steps:

Now that we have all 4 crucial ingredients, you compile this summary and bring it to your prospective customer. The best meetings I have been a part of are collaborative and many edits are being made to this POV in real-time. You want your customer to correct you because the more edits that are made, the closer you are to the exact solution for a top priority. Add in a compelling business case with a short delivery timeline and you have the makings of a deal. However, this will also help you get more meetings as it shows you know the business and what they are trying to achieve.

Every great account plan I have seen has a really strong POV tied to it. This will help you focus and prioritize your time throughout the year. Happy Selling!