When is the best time to use business comparison?

Scenario One…pre-sales.

I’m sure most people in sales can relate to this situation – you’ve spent time engaging with a prospect and you have come to an agreement on your solution’s benefits, and you think, “great, it’s a done deal”. Then the customer throws in a request to do a comparison by project, cloud versus on premise, or a change in the cost profile or benefits…or everything! However, they request that you keep the original analysis so they can compare the two or more scenarios.

‍Scenario Two…post-sales customer success review.

This is something that not every company will do. However, here at Shark Finesse, we believe it’s a vital part of any customer engagement. It’s a great way to help with customer retention (you’re finding potential problems sooner and have the opportunity to fix them) as well as identifying new opportunities for your products or services. So, what do we mean by a post-sales customer success review?

Let’s paint a picture…you’ve created the business case with your customer as part of your pre-sales activities but once they’ve purchased and implemented your solution, what do you do next? Wait a year and speak to them again at renewal time (and hope the renewal goes through) or do you get your Customer Success Team involved? We believe the latter is the best next step, but how do you make their lives that little bit easier? This is where your original business case plays an important role. It acts as a record of what everybody thought was going to be the value outcome of the project based on agreed KPIs (where would they be saving money, operational efficiencies, and where would that generate more revenue / margin), but it also gives your Customer Success Team a basis to work from a few months after implementation to evaluate how everything is going.

‍How can Shark help?

If you’ve used Shark to create the original business case, you can use the Deal Compare functionality. The following will take you on an easy 3-step guide as to how to compare business cases. For this example, we are going to create a customer success business case comparison, however the exact same method applies to creating a pre-sales business case comparison.

Step 1 - Within Shark make a duplicate of the original case and give it suitable title such as “First Year Review” to distinguish it.

Step 2 - Open the new copy of the business case and get started. Let’s look at this example of a solution for a Pharmaceutical business – we originally identified 4 benefits and if we examine each in turn, we can compare the current achievement versus the initial best estimate. Some areas may have overperformed and some will need remedial action so the analysis will highlight those areas of focus for the upcoming year.

‍Step 3 - Now all we need to do is create a report for the team to work with. Go back to your Shark session manager, select the two cases (your original and the new modified copy) and choose “Compare sessions”.

Export the Word (and if required, the Excel) report from Shark and delight your customer with your ability to ensure the project is staying on track. It’s as simple as that!

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At Shark Finesse we have created business case software to help you win budget and change the way you talk to customers about business value.

It provides everything you need to create customer specific, ROI-based business cases for your solutions and services. It's easy to use, intuitive and usable directly with the customer to negotiate the likely business returns from investing in your solution.

Shark is used by sales, pre-sales, consultants, value teams and customer success to ensure that proposals are cost-effective and fully differentiated from the competition.