SCAI’s “Aligning Your Buyer and Seller Processes” CD-based training is for marketing or sales management tasked with the responsibility of aligning its products, services or solutions with buyer expectations and evaluation processes. By listening to this powerful 4-CD set, you will acquire the foundational principles of the Attribute Perception Selling (APS) model – a unique process detailing the art of the post-decision interview to quantify prospect perception. Clients pay SCAI between $40,000 and $250,000 annually to deliver its APS services. Instead, this CD set shares the same APS principles for only $499. That’s $499 to learn a unique process that shows you how to diagnose your company’s sales performance, align your sales process with that of your buyer, validate your competitive differentiation, and to centralize your intellectual assets into a centralized messaging system.

Each CD is recorded from monthly presentations given by Roger W. Allison, Founder of SCAI, to his Sales Cycle Performance Club members. The Attribute Perception Selling model is delivered in four different 45-60 minute PowerPoint presentations:

• 8 Rules of Successful Win/Loss Analysis;
• Discovering Competitive Differentiation;
• Aligning the Sales Process With the Buyer Evaluation Process;
• Storing/Accessing a Centralized Messaging System.

The following descriptions provide details of each CD training session included in the $499 $297 set.

• Aligning Buyer & Seller Processes Part I: Eight Rules of Successful Post-Decision Interviews
  Few organizations fulfill the potential that win/loss analysis delivers. Whether the reason is lack of resources, commitment or process fewer than 20% of organizations conduct a win/loss analysis with any regularity or discipline. Furthermore, the pervasive practice is to not conduct these interviews at all because prior win/loss analysis efforts produced little more than a watered down version of what the prospects were comfortable divulging.

  On the other hand, post-decision interviews are powerful replacements for any win/loss analysis efforts to discover how clients make decisions, view your solutions, prioritize their selection criteria, understand your differentiation, and perceive your organization and competition.

  Only the fear of understanding the truth would provoke any organization to move onto another prospect sales cycle without first understanding, diagnosing or learning the lessons of their previous performance!

  Matter of fact, we believe that a sales cycle is not complete until the due diligence has been performed to understand and diagnose the completed sales cycle performance. How else can you stay in alignment with your buyer’s expectations?

  Even organizations who have invested into sales process training and claim to be conducting post sales cycle alignment initiatives commonly admit that the training initiative was a one-time event with no plans of creating internal transformation.

  No wonder 4 out of 5 organizations investing into sales enablement training have failed to return its investment. This number is absurd!

  Post-decision interviews are not discretionary to stay ahead of your competition…period. If you are not conducting post-decision interviews, you are not fulfilling the benefits of solution-centric sales principles or the best practices of “tuned in” marketing functions.

  The benefits to your sales organization as a result of fulfilling solution-centric principles are:

  • 3X more successful in highest proposal win category;
  • 20% higher win rate;
  • Outdistance competition quota attainment by 25%;
  • Avoid excessive discounting by a factor of 5.

  Kieth Eades, author of The New Solution Selling and The Solution-Centric Organization says this regarding buyer alignment: “A good sales process should also be aligned with how buyers buy rather than with how salespeople want to sell.” Furthermore, Eades adds, “Misalignment with buyers is one of selling’s most critical mistakes.”

  Truthful words, yet solution-centric sales process training does not provide a vehicle for maintaining alignment of its sales process to prevent selling’s most critical mistake.

  Post-decision interviews are the only means of extracting market perception to continually align your sales process with that of your buyer and to diagnose your sales cycle performance.

  Furthermore, if conducted properly, the learned sales cycle knowledge can also verify valuable competitive differentiation and validate your company’s prospect awareness of its marketing message.

  After deciding to conduct post-decision interviews as a practice to conclude your sales cycle you must decide whether to outsource this step or to conduct the interviews internally.

  Regardless of your organization’s choice to outsource this critical step or to self-conduct the interviews, a discipline must be followed to be successful.

  In the first module training presentation, you will learn the 8 Rules of Successful Post-Decision Interviews. Specifically, you will grasp:

  • The difference between win/loss analysis and post-decision interviews;
  • The most successful environment of conducting post-decision interviews;
  • Who should be conducting post-decision interviews;
  • The critical interview timeline for conducting post-decision interviews;
  • If outsourcing, what to look for in an interview partner;
  • The importance of metrics in the post-decision interview;
  • That perception is reality when collecting post-decision interview knowledge.
  
  
  
  

• Aligning Buyer and Seller Processes Part II: Differentiation
  Ted Levitt, author of Thinking About Management, says, “Differentiation is one of the most important strategic and tactical activities in which companies must constantly engage.  It is not discretionary.”

  Its amazing to learn of the amount of money corporation’s spend on research and development to bring competitive solutions to market, yet little (if any) money is spent on training the sales force on how to position and articulate a solution’s differentiation.

  When asked, most organizations differentiate themselves by doing something better or worse than their competition. Examples are: breadth of product line, quality, service, and functionality. Realistically, these differentiators represent operational effectiveness more than real differentiators.

  Corporate differentiators, when validated, are “owned” attributes that are embedded into an organization’s DNA, such as: integrity, innovation, flexibility, vision, and professionalism.

  Furthermore, “owned” attributes are best verified by discovering prospect perception. As a result, sales performance is escalated due to the knowledge gained when verifying prospect perception of your company’s and competitor’s differentiation.

  Jack Trout, author of Differentiate or Die, adds, “Positioning has become the world’s
  #1 business strategy.” No truer words have been spoken!

  Matter of fact, real differentiation positions a corporation’s solution to run a race that only it can win as opposed to being more, or less, effective than the competition.

  Solutions are articulated by first understanding product/service differentiation. This is not an automation issue, because knowledge management systems assume that you already have the knowledge to articulate your solution’s differentiation. This also isn’t a training issue because every solution-centric sales training process assumes the insertion of differentiation and messaging, but does not provide that critical knowledge.

  The simple reason that automation and sales training initiatives require, but don’t provide, competitive differentiation is that IT’S NOT EASY.  As such, very few models exist that can verify and continually validate true competitive differentiation.  

  SCAI’s Attribute Perception Selling™ model is the only iterative process to verify competitive solution differentiation and map the differentiation to corporate “owned” attributes. The result is an articulated differentiation that the sales channel can recite to ensure that your solutions are positioned to run a race that only they can win!

  The second module training presentation explores how Attribute Perception Selling™ principles will verify and validate your competitive differentiation. Specifically, this presentation reviews:

  • How to use prospect perception to validate your solution’s competitive differentiation;
  • The alignment of corporate attributes with solution differentiation;
  • How to internally align and centralize sales and marketing messages;
  • The differences between emotional and logical marketing campaigns;
  • The necessary strategic sales resources required to sell solutions;
  • An iterative process to continually match selling with buying processes.

   

  
  

• Aligning Buyer & Seller Processes Part III: Sales Process
  Three out of four (75%) organizations investing into sales enablement process training fails to return their investment. Furthermore, 80% of companies who have defined their sales process using sales enablement training have not aligned the sales process with the customer’s buying activities.

  These dismal failure rates are because organizations:

  • View sales training as a one-time event and not as integral organizational transformation;
  • Attempt to solve the sales discipline scenario in a sales-based incubator;
  • Were out of alignment with their buyer’s evaluation process immediately upon completion of the sales process training;
  • Did not invest in a back-end performance diagnosis to maintain alignment with its buyer.

  Sales enablement training processes focus on qualifying the prospect and not on aligning the attributes/solutions to the buyer’s process and needs.

  Even the most seasoned sales professionals have difficulty maintaining alignment of the prospect’s constantly changing needs and risk aversion to the vendor’s solutions and affordability.

  Without a constant and proven process, sales cycles fall short and the vendor’s sales representatives have no clue why! When probed as to why an opportunity was lost, sales representatives will falsely point to product price, product shortcomings, or lateness to the sales process.

  Sales processes ignore the buyer evaluation process. Furthermore, articulation of a product or service differentiation and validation of product or service differentiation are the two primary keys to a successful evaluation process.

  It is curious why the buyer evaluation process isn’t the primary focus to successfully position (align) solutions. Is it that generic messaging tools and templates are the easiest method to deliver and the least responsibility for the sales enablement vendor to execute?

  Keith Eades claims, “A good sales process should also be aligned with how buyers buy rather than with how salespeople want to sell.” Excellent proclamation, but solution-centric sales training and CRM, SFA and other sales effectiveness automation tools assume that this knowledge resides within the trainee’s organization when, in reality, it rarely exists!

  Sales enablement training vendors want you to believe that “alignment” is between the individual “qualified” prospects during a single sales opportunity and the vendor’s objectives and goals. In reality, diagnosing buyer alignment is not a single opportunity event, but should focus on aligning validated industry-wide prospect perception to an organization-wide sales message.  This industry-specific alignment is best achieved by committing to and engaging, monitoring and measuring an iterative and corporate-wide process.

  The smartest man of our time, Albert Einstein, said, “The significant problems we have cannot be solved by the same level of thinking with which created them.” Therefore, organizations should invest into third party models or services to diagnose their sales cycle performance and competitive differentiation rather than adopting internal responsibility or turning to the same sales enablement vendor that trained them.

  SCAI extracts a vetted process from its Attribute Perception Selling™ model to align your prospect’s sales cycle priorities and concerns to your “owned” company attributes and your solution’s competitive differentiation.

  In the third module training presentation, you will learn how to continually align your prospects priorities to your strengths before and during the sales cycle.

  Specifically, you will learn to:

  • Identify misrepresentations of solution-centric sales process training;
  • Diagnose your sales performance;
  • Understand the buyer decision process;
  • Prioritize sales cycle efforts;
  • Extract prospect perception to interpret the effectiveness of each sales cycle process;
  • Align buyer processes with seller processes;
  • Make solution-centric sales training work.

   

  
  

• Aligning Buyer & Seller Processes Part IV: Centralized Messaging
  Less than 80% of marketing collateral is considered useless by sales professionals. Conversely, 70% of all marketing-generated leads are never followed up on by sales professionals.

  Why is there such a combative and non-synergistic alignment gap between marketing and sales? 

  Marketing’s role is to provide the emotional awareness for the buyer mindset to enable increased or easier sales. Sales and marketing collaboration is paramount for success. Unfortunately, only prospect confusion results if sales and marketing is misaligned or their messaging is incongruent.

  The messaging DNA of an organization resides in many places (e.g., marketing, branding, sales, product management, shareholder communication, and customer training).  This “silo” responsibility matrix is common, yet it is the cause of disparate and autonomous messages that communicate differing goals.

  Only a validated and centralized messaging strategy can synergize market communications to eliminate prospect confusion. That said, centralizing all messaging into a DNA ecosystem is inherently complex, faces cultural resistance and rarely has the commitment of management.

  In the first three presentation modules we used the SCAI Attribute Perception Selling™ model to validate and discover competitive differentiation while aligning buyer and seller processes.

  Once the validation and discovery is complete, a cross-organizational process is required to centralize all valuable corporate-wide messaging or DNA.

  Why is this necessary? Unless this discovery is cross-organizationally communicated, its value is at risk of only helping a single “silo” department rather than having a collaborative impact on organizational transformation.

  SCAI is certified on the ValueMapper™ model created by Bob Schmonsees and sponsored by the Value Mapping Consortium. Its process was vetted by interviewing over 200 sales organizations who claim to sell solutions.  

  During this fourth training module, Centralized Messaging, you will learn how to centralize messaging discovered and validated by SCAI’s Attribute Perception Selling™ model into a Value DNA ecosystem. Specifically, you will learn the importance of:

  • Maintaining the alignment between corporate attributes and your solution’s differentiation;
  • Mapping the products that you currently sell to your prospect needs;
  • Mapping competitive differentiation to the prospect problems that it solves;
  • Mapping your solution’s primary capabilities to your prospect’s underlying issues;
  • Monitoring mapped knowledge by market, stakeholder and competitor;
  • Accessing centralized content, sales tools, best practices and relevant positioning insights.

   

  Gerhard Gschwandtner, Publisher of SellingPower magazine, says, “Companies who are successful at selling solutions are passionate about clearly defining and communicating their value, and more importantly, their differentiation, in the context of the problems they solve…not just the products they sell.”

  Logically, organizations can only sell the products that they currently have. However, organizations must be able to decompose their customer/prospect needs into underlying issues that their products solve. The documentation and mapping of this differentiation in context to prospect needs and underlying issues is the corporation’s Value DNA.

  Furthermore, by articulating their competitive differentiation in context to the problems that they solve, organizations can run a competitive race that only they can win. This context is the anatomy of selling a solution as opposed to selling a simple product.

  In this fourth and final presentation module, you will learn to:

  • Visually understand the entire Attribute Perception Selling™ components;
  • Identify internal bottlenecks preventing messaging alignment;
  • Understand the importance of Value DNA when selling solutions;
  • Align sales messaging with corporate marketing/branding messages;
  • Extract prospect perception to interpret the effectiveness of marketing messages;
  • Assemble the components to successfully sell solutions;
  • Recognize and test a Value Mapping™ process;
  • Make solution-centric sales training work.