How frequently do you use the term “ROI” in front of customers and potential buyers? I frequently hear sales and marketing professionals talk about “ROI” inaccurately. If you're having a serious conversation with someone who’s well versed in financial terminology, any misuse of the term could leave a disastrous impression about you and your company.
Each year, sales operations and marketing managers purchase sales enablement tools to help their sales teams increase win rates and close deals faster. So why do so many of these tools gather dust in the salesperson’s toolbox? In my experience, this happens for two main reasons.
I truly believe in the power of ROI tools and value calculators to help generate better, more qualified B2B marketing leads and enhance a B2B sales rep’s ability to close a deal. If I didn't, I wouldn't be in the business of selling them. Here are my responses to common objections to value selling tools:
There are a couple of categories of value dimensions that will often be challenged by a prospect when you are building an ROI-based business case, and labor savings is at the top of that list. Labor savings tend to be tough to get customer buy-in for a number of reasons: Labor Savings are often spread across many people’s time and thus are considered soft or indirect benefits without real economic impact In order to capture the labor savings, the company often needs to take some action (reduce headcount, avoid hiring more workers, or reallocate employees to other value-added activities) Often the people that you are dealing with when building the business case are the people that will be impacted by the actions required (e.g., selling a technology solution to the IT department that reduces IT headcount may be difficult) Companies have been promised productivity gains many times, but rarely have they seen the results.
