Displaying articles for: 07-08-2012 - 07-14-2012
What Service Customers Care About - 12 points of value
As someone that spends a lot of time in the field and with customers, I am always interested in understanding why we win and why we lose deals. And by the way, my view is that the lessons learned apply somewhat universally regardless of what it is you are selling. Not surprisingly, I frequently hear that we win based on the relationship with the customer and that we lose based on price. But is it really this simple? I think not……
This is why one of my favorite questions for a sales rep is “what specific elements of differentiated value – in CUSTOMER VALUE TERMS – did you articulate in your proposal and how did these compare to other alternatives available to the customer?”
There is actually a lot more to this question than you might think. It requires that the sales rep: (1) Understand the customer’s business, know what matters to the customer and why; (2) Understand what we have to offer that aligns with the customer’s value points; (3) Know what the competition is offering and why we are better; and (4) Understand how price and value align in the eyes of the customer.
Within HP Technology Services, we have spent a significant amount of time investing in our business to ensure that we can answer the higher level questions about what matters to our customers and then articulate why HP has a superior set of capabilities in each area that customer’s value. How did we come up with our list of focus areas? We paid attention to our customers, solicited external analyst opinions, collected field experience, and conducted our own internal research. The result is something we call the 12 Points of Value framework. This framework reflects what we know customers consider when selecting a Technology Services provider:
Discover 2012 Wrap-up: Master Technologists Chris and Greg Tinker
