Tag Archives: Value Proposition

You Can ALWAYS Demonstrate Quantified Value

February 23, 2011 – 7:16 am

There is no excuse to not quantify the value you can deliver to a customer.  Collaboration and trade always produce value for both parties in the deal.  Think through the following.
Percy and Steve are cave men.  They have each independently discovered that a cave man can keep himself well fed on one fish per day.  [...]

By Todd Youngblood | Posted in Differentiation | Also tagged , , | Comments (0)

What Does A Price Concession Really Mean?

August 21, 2010 – 12:44 pm

Scenario 1:
Sales Rep: “With a 3% price cut, they’ll buy.  Without it we lose.  It’s a $100,000 deal and we cannot risk losing it for a paltry $3,000 of the company’s take.  We must give them the price decrease they want.”
Sales Manager: “No.”
Sales Rep: (after leaving the manager’s office)  “That @%#&* idiot!  How can he [...]

By Todd Youngblood | Posted in Differentiation | Also tagged , | Comments (0)

Ban The Bid! Quash The Quote!

July 31, 2010 – 8:18 am

Back in January,  I realized I was wrong about proposals.  I don’t do them anymore.  I admonish clients and colleagues when they talk about writing one.  A Recommendation Summary, while extremely similar, is profoundly different.  And it’s much more than semantics.  As an outsider, I humbly submit my proposal for possible consideration by the all-powerful [...]

By Todd Youngblood | Posted in Differentiation | Also tagged , | Comments (1)

It’s OK If Your E-Rep’s Aim Is Off A Bit

July 30, 2010 – 3:11 pm

WARNING: If you hold one of more of the following opinions, reading this post will be a waste of your time:

I can’t keep up with all my e-mail as it is, so I am NOT going to set up an RSS Reader that will only flood me with more stuff I don’t have time to [...]

By Todd Youngblood | Posted in E-Rep | Also tagged , | Comments (2)

What You Get Paid For Is NOT What You Sell

July 26, 2010 – 5:45 am

Had a lunch meeting with a sales exec this past Friday, a prospective client.  A colleague brought us together and it was the first time I’d had contact with the man.  Ever leave a meeting and have this feeling that the other person was somehow different/unique/better in some way, but couldn’t quite put your finger [...]

By Todd Youngblood | Posted in Value Propositions | Also tagged , | Comments (3)

How Self-Absorbed Are Your Value Propositions?

July 13, 2010 – 6:15 am

What’s in it for the customer? From day one of a sales career, the necessity of thinking in that context is crystal clear. Everybody knows it. Everybody believes it. It’s intuitively obvious!!! BUT …sometimes the obvious is not so easy to execute…
Ready for another humbling experience? Here’s your mission… Randomly choose [...]

By Todd Youngblood | Posted in Value Propositions | Also tagged | Comments (0)

Cumulative Cash Flow + Payback = Committed Customer

June 29, 2010 – 9:02 am

This is the third post in a series about selling with Finance, the Universal Language of Business.

Part 1: Do you speak the universal language of business?
Part 2: Selling With A “Net Cash Flow” Approach

OK, here we go again…  Doesn’t matter what they sell or what their SIC code is, ALL of your customers are [...]

By Todd Youngblood | Posted in Finance | Also tagged , | Comments (2)

Do you speak the universal language of business?

May 12, 2010 – 8:36 am

Communication is one of the obvious cornerstones of a successful sales career. You need to speak the language of the country where you’re doing business. You need to know and understand each industry’s specific lingo. You need to have a solid grip on the unique dialect of executives with different functional [...]

By Todd Youngblood | Posted in Finance | Also tagged , , | Comments (11)

The Rodney Dangerfield of Sales (aka Mr. Low Price)

April 8, 2010 – 6:10 am

Ever wonder how Rodney Dangerfield came up with his signature, “I don’t get no respect,” line?  My guess is it first hit him when he still had his job selling aluminum siding.  Yep, that’s how he supported himself and his family before his big break on the Ed Sullivan Show.  Anyway, talk about a tough [...]

By Todd Youngblood | Posted in Differentiation, Value Propositions | Also tagged , , | Comments (2)

Ogilvy & Mather, IBM and Salesforce.com should be ashamed of themselves

March 29, 2010 – 6:39 am

I don’t need my cup of extra-strong coffee to get going this morning.  If you’re in sales, you won’t either.
Just read about this Ogilvy & Mather-led contest that insults the intelligence of sales professionals, managers and executives everywhere.  Selling a red brick to a panel of “executives” from Ogilvy & Mather, OgilvyOne, IBM and Salesforce.com [...]

By Todd Youngblood | Posted in Value Propositions | Also tagged , , | Comments (2)