What is Attribute Perception Analysis?
Attribute Perception Analysis (APA) is a trademarked and proven methodology that utilizes fifty attributes, actions and questions to quantify market and prospect perception. SCAI adopts a post-decision interview format, which is a considerable enrichment over vague win-loss analysis, to:

• Diagnose sales cycle performance;
• Verify competitive differentiation;
• Validate buyer decision criteria;
• Discover company attributes;
• Align sales and buyer processes;
• Synthesize marketing and sales messaging.

APA applies an iterative process designed to continually measure sales cycle effectiveness and to instill the verification of essential organizational messaging. Finally, APA sales cycle findings are interpreted and the trends are presented to clients in the following categories: Statistics, Sales Cycle Anatomy, Decision Process, Decision Criteria, Sales Performance, and Company Attributes. Performance ratings, relevance, and weight are affixed to the Decision Criteria attributes and are presented by solution, technology, company, sales performance, demonstration, corporate perception and competition.

What is the difference between APA and Win/Loss Analysis?
Even though SCAI uses the same win/loss contact list extracted from the monthly sales forecast, a win/loss analysis looks to: Discover the reasons for lost opportunities; Increase sales per employee; Enhance competitor understanding. The drawbacks of organizational win/loss analysis are:

• Surveys are viewed as discretionary and are conducted randomly, if at all;
• There isn’t an actionable goal for collected outcomes;
• Templates are usually non-existent;
• Questions are open-ended with no quantifiable result;
• Organizations cast surveys to the sales department to collect the data, so that the single reason field can be entered into a monthly loss report.

Common to win/loss analysis, APA collects prospect statistics, and dissects the anatomy of a particular sales cycle. Conversely, APA goes beyond sales knowledge by deploying an iterative process using a post-decision interview format to verify competitive differentiation, messaging, attribute ownership and brand recognition with a main focus on aligning prospect perception and activities with your elected solution-centric selling process. The truth is that perception is the only knowledge extracted from post-decision interviews because the prospect has yet to use its acquired products or to experience vendor solutions in a live production environment. By interviewing a 50/50 ratio between customers selecting your solution and prospects not selecting your solution, we ensure that perception is reality.  Using 50 attributes, actions and questions, the trademarked APA process transforms the disparate sales, marketing, product management and company DNA residing throughout your organization into a common messaging system available corporate-wide to all stakeholders pledged to the success of your sales cycle.

How does SCAI make solution-centric selling work?
Good question. McKinsey & Company reminds us that 75% of the sales training initiatives do not return their investment. Why do you think that is? Solution-centric selling models require responses, yet, do not provide: Articulation of your competitive differentiation; Common and appropriate messaging to the right buyers; Understanding of the buyer needs or mapping of your solution to those needs. Expectations should be tempered because solution-centric sales training is not responsible for client training results, changes in buyer perception, “eagle” performer efficiency or performance improvement, misaligned products not meeting buyer visions, buyer alignment with your selling cycle, and competitive differentiation.  To be effective, these items must be researched in advance of any solution-centric training initiative or SCAI companion solutions (APA service and SCD subscription service) should be acquired. SCAI provides the essential pre-verification of competitive differentiation, message effectiveness, and attribute ownership. After the solution-centric sales training, SCAI deploys an iterative process to diagnose sales cycle performance, align buyer activity, verify buyer decision criteria and synthesize your sales and marketing strategies.

Can we conduct post-decision interviews ourselves?
Absolutely. When researching outsource candidates make sure that they understand your business, there isn’t a conflict of interest (up-sell other products to your prospects), they have a reasonable annual interview-interviewer ratio (500:1), and that the deliverable is actionable (not statistical). On the other hand, the odds are stacked against most organizations trying to internally conduct post-decision interviews because of the inaccurate spike in ratings, difficulty in achieving objectivity, inaccuracy of self-diagnose, lack of continuity metrics and discretionary priorities of conducting win-loss analysis. Albert Einstein’s quote, “The significant problems we have cannot be solved by the same level of thinking with which created them,” suggests that outsourcing post-decision interviews is best, so Sales Cycle Analytics offers its Sales Cycle Diagnosis subscription service to enable organizations with the tools to be successful when electing to extract prospect knowledge themselves.

How long does it take to collect APA results?
Pragmatically, we don’t control your prospect’s calendars and we are asking for valuable time during the implementation of the complex solution just selected, however, SCAI will schedule a presentation of findings within 6-8 weeks of receiving the valid list of the previous 3-6 months worth of prospects.

How long is a typical prospect interview?
SCAI always asks prospects for 20-30 minutes and, depending upon the interviewee’s
focus, willingness to participate and ability to articulate responses, it could extend another 15-30 minutes. Many individuals may not have been intimately involved with the interview topic, so, we typically approach multiple interviews with users, evaluators, decision makers and approvers in each prospect targeted for review.

Why would a prospect invest time to interview?
SCAI introduces itself as having been retained by your firm to discover how you can improve your pre-sales performance and that you have nominated the interviewee whom you thought could provide a wealth of knowledge. SCAI always asks for 20-30 minutes (morning, noon or night) over the next several weeks that would be convenient to gain the interviewee’s insights into the sales process. We receive an approximate 60% response rate because of two dynamics: A new customer feels an obligation to help their newly selected vendor as validation of their “smart” decision; Prospects not selecting our client’s solution participates as a closure process and, out of guilt, that they rendered a negative verdict preceding a vendor’s sales cycle investment.

How many prospects do you interview?
SCAI customer volume (sales representatives, decisions per sales representative) mandates the number of ongoing prospect interviews required for statistical validity. Specifically, SCAI categorizes our clients into small, medium, and large sales opportunities. SCAI requires a minimum validation sampling of twenty (20) interviews per quarter, so, a client with 1-50 sales representatives may have 10 to 500 annual prospect decisions, so SCAI would interview 80 to 200 prospects per year or 40-50% of the decisions. Conversely, a client with a large sales force of 500-5,000 sales representatives may have 5,000-50,000 annual decisions, so SCAI would interview 500 prospects per year or 1-10% of the decisions.