Making food, making money and Rock 'n' Roll - Part 6

A 6-part series depicting the events of a salesperson selling to a global food manufacturer without a business case or value-selling approach.

Stephen Jackett
December 22, 2022
Education

DISCLAIMER: this is a true story. The events depicted in this story took place in the United Kingdom in 2018. At the request of the subjects, the names have been changed and some events dramatised. Out of respect for the customers, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.

The meeting progressed well. The team worked through the process analysis, taking each potential process pain point and then they used Dark Finesse software to value what an improvement in that process could mean to the business financially. This was so much easier than Jon could have ever imagined:

Jon: “So, you’re currently using Beige to run your accounts, but it’s not linked to the food processing system. This alone is causing a number of issues with invoicing and dispatch. When we implement our new system, is it a fair assumption that you will no longer need to pay for these licenses?”

Sally replies: “Sure, but we will need to run the systems together for 6 months to integrate the data and ensure we can continue to invoice.”

Jon replies: “Great so how much are you paying for the licensing and maintenance of this?”

The conversation continued along these lines for each point in the process analysis and after around 90 minutes they were finished. Jon already had access to the proposed costs from a previously written proposal, so he entered these into Dark Finesse.  

Jon revealed the results, showing a great business case with significant return on investment - he was doing his best to hide his joy! Jim wanted to know some more detail about one of the ROI calculations. Thanks to his tuition from Martina Souvern at Dark Finesse, Jon felt quite comfortable answering these questions. Jon created a draft business case report and presentation, then sent it to Sally and Jim before leaving the room so they could finalise and confirm the numbers. Jon then closed the meeting.

With that Jon, Gill and Japaak skipped down the hill back to the carpark for a quick debrief:

“So, how do you think that went Jon?”, said Gill

Jon replied: “Did you not see the reactions on their faces?”

Early next week the business case was finalised and presented to the decision-making team in the food processing business. The quality and conservative assumptions in the case made it a very easy decision. Billy left that meeting on a high, he had made the right decision to stay, but now the work really began! He called Jon:

“Jon, unofficially we have approval! I cannot believe how you did it, can you send me the name of the company that supplies that software?...Shark Finesse or something?”

“Hey Billy, no problem, all in a day’s work! Its Dark Finesse, pretty effective stuff huh!”

Jon hung up the phone to Billy and searched through his contacts to ‘S’…he found Sally’s number and hit the call button…

What we do

At Shark Finesse we have developed an enterprise-grade cloud application to help businesses standardise and simplify their value engagements across the entire customer journey.

Shark, a business value engagement platform used by 1000’s of customer-facing teams globally (e.g. pre-sales, sales, value teams, and customer success) is easy to use, intuitive and usable directly with the customer to negotiate the likely business returns from investing in a solution.

By adopting the Shark approach you will fundamentally transform conversations with new and existing customers, close more business, and differentiate from the competition.