We’re living in uncertain financial and political times these days. The recent bailout of the US and European banking sectors represents intervention of an unprecedented scale. We don’t yet know how long it will be before things are back to “normal”. Till then, expect it to be tougher than usual to make sales.
In these types of selling environments, you need a hard, quantifiable value proposition for your company and product. Don’t be a vitamin, be a painkiller. Be something your customer absolutely needs. Whereever possible, quantify the value that you are providing.
To do this, get your CFO (or the closest mathematically inclined equivalent you have) involved to help you craft hard, quantifiable benefits for your customers and prospects.
Here’s an example: Back in 2002 (during similarly unsettled times for tech companies), I was running finance and corporate develpment for a startup. I was giving a big pitch to the entire management team of a partner target. This company was public, so I managed to find an analyst’s model of their business. When I gave them the pitch about combining our product with theirs, I talked about the usual benefits: new features, improved customer experience, etc. But I also went a step further and quantified the impact on their financials and even their share price (a huge motivator for any management team). I even left them the model to play with so they could figure out the impact for themselves.
All I can tell you about this is that the meeting went VERY well. Crisp, hard, quantifiable value propositions are hard to refute. More importantly they are portable. Your sales proposal is going travel to more desks than usual for approval. And one of those desks will likely be the company’s CFO. Hard benefits improve your chances of getting approvals - especially since many of these people likely had no contact with you or your product before being asked to approve a purchase.
So, if you want to sell more - get your CFO involved.