Tom Pisello: The ROI Guy

New eBook: Product, Solution or Value - You Decide

2012-01-24T11:26:00.000-08:00

Joe, Sally and Greg are three sales professionals with a great sales opportunity. See how each one proves their worth, leverages marketing and gets the deal, in this fun and important story.

Product, Solution or Value - You Decide!

Predictions 2012 Roundup

2012-01-12T06:31:00.000-08:00

The fall of the mighty traditional white paper? The end of sales as we know it?

We have made some bold B2B sales and marketing predictions for 2012, and have rounded them up here so you can be ready:

Will the Return to Good Times Bring an End to Frugalnomics?

2012-01-12T06:07:00.000-08:00

With economic uncertainty still in play, it should come as no surprise that Executives’ top priority remains cutting costs / improving business efficiency versus growth. The research by the Financial Times and Doremus indicates that the focus on cost savings is significant, and even higher for larger organizations, where frugality ranks twice that of any growth priority.
This got me thinking, not about the current pessimistic economic outlook, but about a potential recovery and what it would mean for B2B sales and marketing strategies. After all, as the European debt crisis resolves, and the US election cycle unfolds, a recovery could indeed be in the cards. This would likely swing the priority from cutting costs back to growing revenue, opening new markets and launching new products. Or will it?

Indeed, as the economic recovery takes hold, innovative companies will be in a great position to potentially lead and catch the next wave, while agile companies will jockey for ways to capture early growth opportunities and execute on growth plans. However, as a result of the Great Recession, technology and several other factors, the world has changed. Even though the recovery will place more emphasis on growth initiatives, we predict that Frugalnomics, where businesses maintain a focus on costs and the bottom-line, will remain in effect.

The impact is that not just in the short term, but for a long time to come, buyers will remain more cost conscience, status-quo biased, price-centric and bottom-line focused. While B2B sales and marketing will face continued pressure to prove the cost of doing nothing, justify the superior ROI and quick payback on investments and quantify competitive value.

So why won’t the return to good times bring an end to Frugalnomics? There are a few reasons that we feel Frugalnomics will be a permanent part of B2B purchase decisions, and a continued sales and marketing challenge for years to come:

· The world is flat according to Thomas Friedman, and as a result, global competition makes it easier than ever to source quality solutions from lower cost / better providers, regardless of where they might be located worldwide. This continues to evolve the competitive cost structure of different businesses, business models and supply chains. As a result, an organization can no longer rest on current efficiency levels in such a competitive world, and must seek year-over-year to drive out costs and inefficiency. Efficiency is not just a near term requirement to achieve bottom-line performance in the face of revenue challenges, but a permanent challenge to be competitive in an ever flattening world.

· When trying to improve bottom-line performance, an executive can achieve this two ways, by increasing the top-line revenue, or by cutting costs. However, each dollar of incremental revenue earned is not the same as each dollar in cost savings as to how it contributes to the bottom-line. For every dollar of incremental revenue, there is a cost of good / service as well as variable SG&A that comes into play. So if you grow revenue by one dollar, it has a cost associated with it so is not worth that full amount, but instead the costs and margin needs to be factored. Typically this reduces the bottom-line impact to 30% or less of the incremental revenue. Improving the bottom-line with incremental revenue requires 3 to 5 times more revenue when compared to each dollar of savings / efficiency improvements. This fact alone means that cost savings will always be in vogue.

· When considering a new proposal that has many different types of benefits, such as revenue and cost savings, stakeholders view these benefits differently. In business case after business case, regardless of the macro-economic environment, we see that hard cost savings are viewed as more tangible and reliable in making the case than revenue focused benefits. Stakeholders want benefits they can count on, and history has shown that tracking and realizing revenue driven benefits is often difficult. As a result, even for revenue focused projects, the value of hard cost savings in any justification proposal outweighs the value of revenue improvements in almost all cases.

· As organizations are more risk adverse from the Great Recession, Finance has become more involved in procurement, both at the strategic and tactical level. In some organizations this has resulted in CFOs taking over formal control of several business groups including IT, HR, operations, marketing and more. Financial involvement has increased the level of economic diligence and justification on every proposed investment. As the recovery takes hold, Finance will likely remit some control, but is expected to remain more involved formally and informally for years to come. With the majority of financial executives focused on cost savings opportunities in good times and in bad, the cost consciousness, status-quo bias, price-centricity and bottom-line focus are here to stay.

Although a recovery may emphasize growth oriented value propositions vs. cost savings, a more cost-competitive world, the superior bottom-line value of cost savings and increased financial control and oversight means that buyers will remain empowered, skeptical and frugal, and Frugalnomics will remain in effect.

Therefore, it is relevant not just in the short term, but for long term success, that B2B sales and marketing teams develop and leverage provocative, value-focused content and tools. Oriented to help facilitate the buyer’s journey, these tools can be used directly by customers, or in sales-led workshops to help successively:

1.       Diagnose opportunities and illuminate priorities
2.       Overcome the status-quo bias, proving there is a cost of doing nothing
3.       Justify change
4.       Prove competitive value

The facilitation is best done via interactive tools, especially: provocative white papers, benefit estimators, diagnostic assessments, ROI justifications, and TCO competitive comparisons.

The Bottom-Line
A measurable and sustained economic recovery will be a welcome relief down the road, but our predictions are that it will not mean an end to Frugalnomics.

Buyers will still be challenged by worldwide competitive pressures to be more efficient, with permanent risk aversion, and more financial accountability. B2B sales and marketing will remain challenged connect, engage and sell to a more empowered, skeptical and frugal buyer. Imperative in such an environment to fight Frugalnomics by proving to the buyer that there is a tangible cost-of-doing-nothing, and justifying the superior ROI, quick payback and competitive value of proposed solutions.

When the economy changes, vendor proposals will need to evolve to help convince buyers that the proposed solution can help address the strategic need to grow revenue, launch new products and open new markets. But there will be a continued and important need to quantify, for permanently frugal buyers, the expected hard cost savings, efficiency improvements and bottom-line impacts for each and every significant proposal.

Ready for Continued Frugalnomics? Cutting Costs Remains Top Buyer Priority for 2012

2012-01-09T12:15:00.000-08:00

For those who thought 2012 might offer some much needed relief, a new survey uncovers Executives’ pessimistic sentiment going into 2012, indicating significant economic concerns and a strong focus on cutting costs and improving efficiency versus driving growth.

This latest survey of over 600 senior executives worldwide, published by Doremus and the Financial Times in December 2011, confirms that Frugalnomics, a business focus on reducing costs and the bottom-line, is increasing for the New Year.

Tracing the percentage of those expecting improvements for the coming year in the global economy, local economy, their industry and for their individual company, Executives reported a significant drop in positive outlook, returning to pessimistic levels similar to those of 2008 and the beginning of the Great Recession.

Respondents indicate that the current negative outlook is driven by persistent low consumer confidence, the European debt crises, potential impact of US debt and unemployment.

As a result of continued uncertainty and negative economic outlooks, nearly half of the respondents indicate that cutting costs and improving efficiency remains their top priority, especially among the largest companies, where cost cutting / efficiency is cited by more than twice as many Executives as are any growth priorities.

If the research is any indication, Executives will struggle with increased Frugalnomic pressures into 2012. More overloaded and risk adverse, Executives will struggle to find the time and stomach to consider new investments. And even when there is a will to make a new investment, there might not be a way, as budget constraints and more financial oversight drive increased justification requirements and higher hurdles.

Frugalnomics Requires New B2B Sales and Marketing Strategies
Over the past several years we have seen the impact of Frugalnomics on B2B sales and marketing, making it more difficult to connect, engage and sell to more overloaded, skeptical and frugal buyers. This has resulted in longer sales cycles, stalled deals, increased discounting and more competitive deals.

These are all serious issues to overcome, and with every challenge there are borne new opportunities, especially for those solution providers that can help fight Frugalnomics. Executives must deliver bottom-line results, and buyers need ideas on how to improve efficiency and drive success. The solution providers that can proactively help buyers diagnose and prioritize opportunities and justify the value of proposed purchases will be the clear winners in 2012.

To succeed, B2B sales and marketing should provide new diagnostic and value-focused content and tools to help facilitate the buyer’s decision making process:

· Help Overloaded Executives See the Light – most Executives have experienced cutbacks, and have been forced to do-more-with-less. As a result, there are fewer resources than ever to uncover new opportunities, consider new project proposals and assess purchase options. Proactively and provocatively diagnosing and prioritizing cost saving and other business issues and consultatively recommending the right solution can help make the Executive a cost-savings hero, and help your team get the deal.

· Break the Status-Quo - With limited funding for new projects, and higher perceived risks due to the economic uncertainty, for many it’s easier to forgo new projects / investments and maintain the current status quo than to commit to a new investment. With the right content and tools however, you can challenge the Executive that there is a “cost of doing nothing”, to outweigh the potential risk of a change and get the buyer to commit to and prioritize the proposed project.

· Prove Cost Savings – With the focus remaining on how to reduce costs, it’s crucial to show how your solutions can help the frugal buyer further drive savings and improve business efficiency. With financial considerations taking center stage on every purchase, it’s crucial to quantify the bottom-line impact, significant return on investment and fast payback of proposals to economy-focused Executives.

· Quantify Competitive Value – Today’s Executive remains cost conscious, and wants the lowest price / best value from each dollar spent. It is imperative to migrate the discussion beyond price and sure discounting demands by proactively proving lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and greater value than competitors.

The Bottom-Line
Economic gloom and doom is back, with Executives entering 2012 almost as pessimistic as they were at the start of the Great Recession in 2008. Low consumer confidence, the European debt crisis and other concerns drive Executives to remain focused on cost-savings versus growth, with Frugalnomics in full-effect.

For B2B solution providers, this means buyers remain challenged, more overloaded, skeptical and frugal than ever before.

Successful B2B sales and marketing, recognize that buyers are uniquely challenged and will deliver new marketing content and sales enablement tools to buyers diagnose and prioritize issues, quantify the cost of doing nothing, justify proposals and prove competitive value.

Implementing specific programs to fight Frugalnomics is essential for B2B solution providers to achieve better connections, engagements and sales performance, despite continued economic and buyer challenges into 2012.

Source: Decision Dynamics Report (Doremus and the Financial Times) –December 2011

Happy New Year! Maybe not for IT Sales & Marketing

2012-01-06T08:59:00.000-08:00

The New Year’s cheer didn’t last long for IT, as Gartner was quick to lower its global technology spending forecast, barely a week into 2012. With the financial crisis in Europe dragging on, natural disasters in the Pacific Rim disrupting component supply chains, and a Presidential election cycle in the US dampening any hope for optimism, Gartner lowered earlier forecasts to 3.7%, down almost a full percentage point from initial 4.6% growth forecasts.

Looking beyond 2012, Gartner also estimates continued headwinds, lowering future forecasts for 2015 downwards to 5% growth from earlier 5.4% predictions.

To put this in perspective, last year global technology spending grew at 6.9%, making 2011a standout year compared to earlier, and if you believe the forecasts, later years.

For IT executives, budgets will remain constrained, an environment of do-more-with-less. Frugalnomics is in full effect, leaving fewer resources to evaluate new opportunities and the organization risk adverse to change. More control is in the hands of finance, requiring more economic justification on each proposal. Serious budget constraints make even high ROI projects hard to get approved. Addressing the growing backlog, satisfying business needs, and justifying new projects will remain challenging for IT execs.

For IT solution providers, 2012 promises to be a challenging year, with buyers more overloaded, skeptical and frugal than ever before - making it tough to connect and engage to discuss new opportunities, and when engaged, making it more difficult to break the status-quo, justify purchase decisions, and close more competitive deals.

In every challenge though is a great opportunity, whereby the solution providers that can help facilitate this ever more difficult process will have a distinct advantage in 2012 and beyond.

So how can IT solution providers succeed in the face of Frugalnomics? The best way may be for IT solution providers to optimize their marketing content and sales engagement practices to help facilitate the buyer’s journey, working hand-in-hand with today’s more overloaded, skeptical and frugal buyer to break through the status-quo bias to identify and address important opportunities, justify investments and make valuable purchases.

Facilitate the Economy-Focused Buyer’s Journey with Right Content and Tools
The Buyer’s Journey represents a set of steps an organization needs to go through in order to make a purchase. These steps may vary based on the organization’s decision making processes and the type or size of purchase, but typical process steps include three different phases: Discovery, Consideration and Decision.

You can think of the journey as a complex change management process, a set of steps that can be difficult, frustrating and time consuming for the buyer to navigate.

The more facilitation provided by the solution provider to streamline and remove friction from the process, the better. And with the buyer having fewer resources than ever, consultative facilitation becomes crucial to winning deals.

Discovery Phase
In the first part of the buyer’s journey, decision makers need to be convinced that the current way of doing business is not ideal, and that the status-quo should change. Making this more difficult, the buyer must convince not just themselves, but many other stakeholders that the change is beneficial and worthy. And in today’s economy, finance is playing more of a key role in setting strategy and budgets – a risk adverse bunch that will need extra convincing.

With a current do-more-with-less environment, most organizations are doing all they can to keep the lights on, much less consider new projects. In such a stressed environment, buyer’s might be feeling pain, but not have the resources to address, and in many instances are not self-aware of what ails them. For those that are aware of issues, convincing the multitude of stakeholders in the organization and finance to make the necessary and precious investments can be a challenge. After all, for most organizations it is easier and less risky to do nothing, than to change from the status quo.

At this critical stage, defining the vision for the project, most buyers are researching options on their own, and not involving sales in the process. However, it is during this early phase that buyer’s indicate establishing strong provider preferences, with Forrester indicating that 65% of vendors who create the buying vision during these early phases of the journey getting the deal. For many solution providers, lack of engagement means a “failure to launch”.

Solution providers can help facilitate the decision making process during Discovery in a number of ways, including:

· Diagnosing issues – Through self-assessment tools and sales-led workshops, helping illuminate important issues of which the busy buyer might not have been aware, and helping the buyer to confirm that the known pains they are feeling are real and should be a priority to resolve. Helping buyer’s recognize important issues is often done via research and case studies, communicating that others are experiencing similar pains, that these issues should be a priority to resolve, and that solutions exist to meet the challenges. Diagnostic Assessments are even more provocative, surveying the buyer on spending, goals and priorities issues, capability and maturity to understand where they are currently, benchmarking them to best practice leaders and peers to identify and prioritize issues, and prescribing specific solutions to remedy the highest priority opportunities.

· Quantifying the cost-of-doing-nothing – many organizations won’t change unless they understand that maintaining the status-quo has a cost that greatly exceeds the investment / risks of change, and the cost-of-doing-nothing is high enough to make the project a priority. Research papers and case studies can be used to help convince buyers that not changing has significant cost, TCO Calculators can be used to quantify the current costs in comparison to costs post change, and Benefit Estimators can be used to quantify the savings and incremental value available, but not being realized.

Consideration Phase
Once a buyer has committed to change and prioritized the project, the decision makers need to research possible solution approaches and create a short-list of specific providers.

Empowered by the Internet and social media, but overloaded, it is difficult for buyers to wade through the copious amounts of research and marketing materials to understand the various advantages and benefits that each solution approach might provide.

Solution providers can help facilitate the Consideration phase, providing content and engagement tools to help:

· Provide Solution Demos and Trials – spoiled by consumer “try-before-you-buy” options, prove the capabilities of your solution versus others with demos and trials.

· Deliver Solution Guides and Comparisons – helping customers properly consider various solution considerations, options and competitive differentiators.

· Quantify the incremental benefits and TCO of various solution options – to help buyers understand the differences amongst various solution approaches, vendors should provide research, case studies and analysis tools to help buyers understand the various competitive options and advantages of different approaches, quantify the total cost of ownership (TCO) differences, and illuminate the incremental benefits of the solution compared to other solution alternatives.

Decision Phase
In the final stage of the buyer’s journey, the procurement team must reach consensus on a particular proposal, and gain selection approval from the many stakeholders involved in the decision making process. Finance in particular has become more involved in economic justification and the final vendor selection process, providing more price pressure and financial diligence.

The final Decision is a best-value bake-off, where Forrester indicates that 35% of vendor selection decisions are made. Even though the earlier phases drive 65% of decisions, many deals get stalled at this phase, with vendors failing to overcome objections and driving consensus, making it vital to effectively address.

To make it easier for stakeholders to grant approval, risk must be mitigated and justified, with the solution provider providing content and engagements to:

· Provide financial justification – providing the research, case studies and ROI tools to help quantify the required investment, benefits, ROI, payback and other key metrics that financial executives need to make the case for change.

· Quantify price / value trade off – delivering comparisons that prove competitive advantages of the selected product / service, especially quantifying the total cost of ownership (TCO) advantages, incremental benefits, and lower risks.

The Bottom-Line
Gartner indicates that IT buyers will continue to be challenged by the economy in 2012, making it more difficult to make investments and drive change. Buyers are looking for solution providers who can help facilitate the buyer’s journey, helping uncover and prioritize important opportunities for improvement, recommend the right solution options, justify decisions and deliver superior price / value.

Although the spending growth slowdown will be a challenge, solution providers have a unique opportunity to help facilitate this ever more difficult buyer’s journey with content and engagement practices to help facilitate and shorten cycles. Throughout the journey, marketing and sales engagements can provide content to help facilitate change and the decision making process, especially research insights, case studies, diagnostic assessments, benefit estimators, demos and trials, ROI business case and TCO comparison tools.

Source: Gartner Says Worldwide IT Spending to Grow 3.7 Percent in 2012, Eurozone Crisis and Hard-Disk Drive Shortage Impacting Spending

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Gartner-Says-Worldwide-IT-bw-2012840990.html?x=0

Is there a Way to Improve Sales Tool Adoption?

2012-01-03T12:18:00.000-08:00

In 2011 you worked hard to produce new value-focused tools, empowering your sales team to meet the growing challenges of today’s more empowered, skeptical and frugal buyer.

And you are not alone, as SiriusDecisions reports that the average company now spends a whopping $43K on marketing content and sales tools per salesperson per year. Yet, despite such enormous investments, results are mixed, as the American Marketing Association reports an amazing 90% of marketing deliverables are not used by sales professionals, squandering an estimated $38K per salesperson per year.

With such low adoption, it should not be a surprise that even though you’ve had some good wins, your new value-focused sales tools might not be garnering the anticipated usage.

So how do you get the much needed sales tool adoption to occur in 20012.

The More Things Change, the More they Remain the Same
When asked to change a certain behavior or practice, science tells us that people tend to resist change naturally, even when there is a compelling and logical reason to change. This is not imagined, but proven by research, and called the Status Quo Bias - a cognitive pre-disposition for maintaining the status-quo. As the results indicate, business-as-usual is a more comfortable state of mind, because we all tend to outweigh potential downside risks higher than significant and compelling upside rewards - a risk aversion that causes a natural resistance to change.

Most sales professionals will readily admit that buyers have taken control of the buying cycle, and are demanding a different more value-based sales approach. Yet we see time and again that sales professionals are having a difficult time abandoning their old product or solution focused sales methods, and adopting new strategies and tools remains difficult even when there is significant and compelling evidence that change is needed.

Is there a way to get sales to overcome this status-quo bias?

The answer is “Yes”, and the following nine status-quo busting practices are presented to help drive sales tool adoption success:

Step 1: All Sales Sees Is All There Is
The strategy of “Build it and they will come” might work as the basis for a movie, but rarely works in real life. So the first key question to address: Are the sales teams even aware that new sales tools exist? After all, if they don’t know about the tools, how can you expect the sales tools to be adopted?

To help improve awareness, a series of attention grabbing programs should be implemented to make sales cognizant that new tools are available. This can include:

· Scheduled introductory training sessions (no more than 30 minutes recommended) and on-demand recorded training sessions

· Introductory briefs in sales newsletters and e-mails

· Listings as a resource in sales portals and playbooks

· Road-show training to regional or national sales team meetings

The awareness building should include specific content to help drive initial usage and adoption, including:

· General description of the sales tool and its purpose,

· Information on when to apply the tools in the sales process, specifically where the tools best help facilitate the buyer’s decision making process,

· Basic overview of the tools operation, so that the sales team sees that it’s not hard to use and apply in the sales process,

· Links to access the tool, especially posting them in sales portals and into sales playbooks to make them easy to access.

However, there are a lot of new tools being introduced each week, so awareness building is only the beginning of the journey towards successful sales tool adoption.

Step 2: A Change is Gonna Come
As the science indicates, there is a status-quo bias to overcome, and, sales folks are not going to adopt change without being presented with significant and compelling reasons to overcome the more heavily weighted perceived risks of change.

Transformations, such as those you are trying to accomplish via the new sales tools, are never achieved when people don’t understand why the change is necessary. Although it may seem obvious to marketing why the old sales tools and techniques won’t cut it with today’s buyer, sales teams need to hear and understand the “why” behind the initiative.

It is important therefore to inform the sales folks as to why and how buyers today are different, more overloaded, skeptical and frugal than ever before (a condition called Frugalnomics), and how these changes have:

· Impacted when sales is being invited into the decision cycle,

· Elevated what buyers see as the value-add sales needs to provide in order to facilitate the decision journey,

· Made the decision cycle more complex and longer with more executive and financial scrutiny, more business stakeholders, and stiff competition from competing projects,

· Made each decision more competitive, driving more intense bake-offs and increased discounting.

It is important for sales to understand, as do you, that buyers need help fighting Frugalnomics, with sales using tools to facilitate the decision process, especially:

· Helping to uncover and prioritize opportunities,

· Proving there is a “cost of doing nothing”,

· Recommending a solution that can deliver significant ROI and fast payback,

· Quantifying superior price / value and competitive advantages.

It is for this reason that you have introduced new interactive white papers, benefit estimators, diagnostic assessment, and ROI /TCO tools, to fuel value-focused sales engagements and meet new buyer expectations.

Step 3: Where we are Going?
Understanding the “why” is important, but sales pros also need a clear vision of how the tools can be used to change the process, and deliver the desired outcome. Getting sales folks to visually understand how their lives will be improved via the sales tools is important.

Starting with the end in mind, paint a picture for the sales team as to how their customer engagements will evolve using the new sales tool. A connection, engagement and presentation scenario can help bring clarity to the necessary steps, and bring into focus how the sales tool can be easily used to help facilitate and drive the value selling approach.

As contrast is a powerful mechanism to promote change, demonstrate just how antiquated the current product-oriented speeds and feeds approaches are in reaching today’s buyer, and do so side-by-side with the prescribed value-based sales tool driven approach, for easy head-to-head comparison. This contrast can clearly illustrate how the old techniques just don’t work any longer, and the superior value-added nature of the new approach.

Step 4: Lean on Me
Many studies indicate that, more than any other factor, the key to sales success is coaching, yet how many sales enablement programs include a formal coaching plan and commitment to drive adoption, usage and change? For a program this important, formalized sales tool coaching is a requirement.

The sales tool coaching plan can utilize field sales managers and / or champions to work hand-in-hand with sales folks to guide them specifically on when the sales tools should be used, how customer engagements should be conducted, and how resultant analysis proposals should be presented.

While coaching provides guidance as to the when and how the sales tool should be used, support is also important. Much like you wouldn’t send a salesperson out to discuss technical details of a solution, you need to provide sales with diagnostics and justification support. This should include:

· Remote Support – to answer questions about the application and use of the sales tool, particularly around the questionnaires and data collection, calculations, defending and presenting analysis results.

· Deal Desk – for the larger deals, having an expert to assist directly in the customer engagement can be critical to success, and a deal desk can be called upon to provide on-line meeting or face-to-face sales tool engagement advice and support in customer meetings and presentations.

Step 5: Show Me the Money
The longstanding reputation is that sales folks know where the money is, and know how to get it. Misaligned incentives can surely lead to lower than expected adoption, so take advantage of this real or perceived reputation by making sure incentives are properly aligned with sales tool use.

To make sure tools are used, some organizations require sales tool usage on each and every deal, discounting deal incentives if the tools are not used and results presented as part of the sales cycle. However, tying tool usage directly to incentives may be too extreme for many, and the sales tools may not be appropriate for each and every deal.

A lighter approach would be to quantify what’s in it for the sales pro, so they know exactly how much sales tool usage could increase their success rate and incentive pay. Quantify the business case to the salesperson, proving that usage can drive tangible results, including how the sales tool usage can help:

· Engage higher and earlier with decision makers (where 85% of decisions are made),

· Shorten sales cycles,

· Increase deal size / reduce discounting,

· Increase win rates.

Some incentives are not tied to money, but instead relate to company goals, objectives and directives. Executive sponsorship and recognition (or the lack thereof) can be just as important to tool usage and can often be incentive enough to get reluctant sales folks to adopt and use the new sales tools and value-selling approach. Getting an executive to communicate that not using the tools is unacceptable, and impart that their job depends on it (because in the end, if they don’t change it really does).

Step 6: Birds of a Feather
When communicating the why, the vision, coaching and incentives, would the message be better coming from marketing, or perhaps from a respected and vibrant member of the sales team themselves?

After all, sometimes it’s not the message, but the messenger that can make all the difference in whether the communication is able to connect and engage the audience.

Utilizing a member of the sales “tribe” to help drive awareness, explain the why / vision / incentives and share success stories can be the best medicine to cure ailing adoption. Although marketing team members might think they are part of the same tribe, often they are seen as outsiders, and not part of the sales family. The tribe member is often best a respected sales professional or leader. Sometimes it can be a closely related teammate, such as a key sales support or enablement professional.

Step 7: Try It, You’ll Like It
When sales folks are presented with a new sales tool, it’s not too different than putting a different meal in front of a finicky five year old. You are guaranteed to hear, “I don’t like it”, even before they take a bite.

Not too dissimilar, sales teams often dismiss new tools with just a glance.

So it’s important to get the team to try it, not unlike getting that five year old to take a bite.

“Try it, you’ll like it” needs to be the mantra.

Step 8: Address the Naysayers
We all have them on our teams. The ones who say it can’t be done. The ones who always find something wrong in all that is right. More subtle are the helpers, those who say it would be perfect if it only had this one more benefit, or one more calculation, poking at the tools and being a cynic.

Get enough vocal naysayers and helpers and the perceived risk of the program gets elevated even more, making it almost impossible to overcome status-quo bias.

It is important to classify the criticism and rally the sales professionals on everything that is right with the tools and program, versus focusing on what is wrong and can be improved.

Step 9: Mission Accomplished?
With sales finally adopting and using the sales tools it’s easy to declare Mission Accomplished. However, experience tells us not to declare victory too soon.

There is a continuous need to drive awareness, and educate, after all sales turnover is higher than for many other groups. There are new sales team members joining all the time, many without the awareness, why, vision, and incentives needed to motivate value-focused sales tool adoption and use.

Even without turnover, continuous reinforcement via shared success stories and best practices helps to keep the team sharp, driving proper sales tool usage - in turn, driving superior sales performance.

The Bottom-Line
A new sales tool often represents a change in method and approach for most sales professionals, and change is not easy for anyone. Science tells us that when change is presented, the risks are amplified, while compelling benefits are heavily discounted, leading to a status-quo bias.

Overcoming this bias is important to increase sales tool adoption and usage, vital to meet evolving buyer expectations, facilitate buying cycles and fight Frugalnomics.

Applying these 9 status-quo busting tips can dramatically help overcome the resistance to change, and drive success:

1. Raise awareness

2. Sell the “why”

3. Lay out the vision

4. Implement coaching and deal support

5. Align incentives

6. Communicate success via members of the tribe

7. Try it to like it

8. Handle the naysayers

9. Don’t claim success too soon

Following these nine steps can help lead to better sales tool adoption, usage and successful return on investment.

Product, Solution or Value - You Decide! (Sandhill.com Feature Article)

2011-12-22T08:33:00.001-08:00

A sales team has learned that three prospects are in immediate need of tools for a critical building project. It’s been some time since such an opportunity has been available, and the sales team springs into action with three different strategies.

Read this story to find out which one succeeds and how all three learn a valuable lesson!

http://sandhill.com/article/product-solution-or-value-%e2%80%93-you-decide/

The Spotlight of Enterprise App Stores Can Help Fight Growing Shadow IT (Sandhill.com feature)

2011-12-22T08:33:00.000-08:00

If centralized IT departments think they are losing control, they are. Central IT budgets have been constrained for the past four years, resulting in a backlog of business projects. This has propelled business units to work “outside the system” to procure the applications they need to succeed, boosting what is commonly known as “Shadow IT.”

Fueling the rogue spending are the ease with which SaaS applications can be procured and delivered, and the proliferation of mobile devices, which have proven more difficult to govern.

How big is the problem, and how can IT fight back?

Click here to learn more>
http://sandhill.com/article/the-spotlight-of-enterprise-app-stores-can-help-fight-growing-shadow-it/

Infographic: Technology an Alternative for Business Travel?

2011-12-12T06:02:00.000-08:00

This time of year business travel is more painful than ever, especially with weather related travel delays, packed flights and holiday travelers.

Monica Liming-Hu from AT&T ponders some good questions about technology as an alternative for business travel.... Have you had a challenge convincing your boss that there are still ways to meet effectively face to face with a client, while staying in the office? Are you considering this an effective way to get the job done and still save the company money? Have you found yourself wanting to do the right thing and “do your part” by helping to reduce the production of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from your business travel?

Working with Alinean, we developed a tool for AT&T to help businesses quantify the value of technology which can provide a better solution than travel in many cases. The tool helps predict and measure savings both in terms of money and GHG, to help you convince your boss that staying grounded, yet still being able to meet face to face with technology, could indeed be a better option. Today’s technology can give the ability to collaborate, meet with important people and get the job done without all the traditional travel which uses a lot of time, money and effort, and this tool helps to build a quick, yet credible and comprehensive business case for reducing business travel with the right technology.

To get an example of some of the calculations in the tool, calculating the average savings you can expect, checkout the new AT&T Carbon Impact Assessment Infographic.

If these infographic results are compelling, go one step further and figure out what the savings could mean specifically for you by using the Alinean powered AT&T Carbon Impact Assessment Tool.

Content Investments Effective When Aligned to Facilitate Buyer’s Journey

2011-12-10T06:45:00.000-08:00

Marketers continue to invest a substantial portion of their marketing budget on content, with new research from the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs indicating that content currently consumes 26% of marketing budgets on average. According to the study of over 1,000 marketers, this spending is not only significant, but expected to increase for 60% of the respondents over the next year.

The large and growing investments highlight the important role content continues to play in the marketing mix, being used by most to fuel purchase decision making.

However, marketers do indicate that even with substantial and increased budgets in 2012 to support content development and distribution, their number one challenge remains producing the right type of content that effectively engages prospects and customers (41%).

And the challenges don’t end there. Results indicate a continued and decided crisis in confidence with content marketing, with close to half of marketers indicating that some of the most popular tactics are perceived as less effective or ineffective, including social media (50%), articles (49%), microsites (44%), and blogs(42%). The good news is that some tactics are perceived worthy, including tactics that involve direct interaction with buyers such as in-person events (78% effective) and webinars / webcasts (70%). More personalized and relevant content also ranked as more effective, including the use of case studies (70%) and videos (61%).

Is the lack of effectiveness due to the newness of content marketing compared to more traditional ways to connect / engage buyers, the challenges of producing enough relevant and compelling content, a lack of measurement and proof-points that the content is being used by prospects and customers and having an impact on purchase decisions, and / or a change in the target audience, with today’s buyer, being more empowered, skeptical and frugal than ever before? The research did not probe the answer to this important question, but did highlight the characteristics of best practice performers.

So what were the differences between average/ low performers and best in class? the results indicate that best-in-class marketers invest more of their budgets on content marketing (31% vs. 26% on average), and secure executive commitment and buy-in to support their efforts. Of greatest importance, the most successful marketers develop and segment their content based on the buying cycle (45%) to help facilitate decision makers along each step in the process. In this case, the content is designed to answer three key successive questions: Why change? Why now? Why the proposed solution?

Sources: 2012 B2B Content Marketing Benchmark, Budget and Trends Report – Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs

9 Cloud MythBusters: ROI, TCO and More

2011-12-10T06:28:00.000-08:00

Survey after survey of IT executives indicates that Cloud computing ranks as one of the top strategic technologies. This prioritization makes it important for IT decision makers to quickly and clearly understand the available Cloud solution options, design considerations, deployment requirements, economic impacts and more.

Cloud computing is also one of the most hyped new technologies, leading to a decided lack of clarity. Certain bold statements making the case for Cloud computing, like “The Cloud will definitely reduce your IT costs!” or making the case against Cloud computing, like “The Cloud is not secure” should not be taken at face value.

Like most dramatic statements, these are likely to gain attention, even headlines in the media, and then rise to the status of truth. Most likely there are some facts and more than a fair share of hot air behind these claims. In fact, many of the claims are baseless unless effort is made to create accurate research and economic-justification models, test them in the real world and prove when they are true and false.

A bold, unsubstantiated, widely publicized statement is a myth. This paper will explore a number of Cloud IT myths and shed some light on them.

Read the rest here: http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/1da05be3#/1da05be3/30

The Economic-Focused Buyer Drives Need for New B2B Sales and Marketing Strategies for 2012

2011-12-06T09:18:00.000-08:00

Frugalnomics makes it harder to connect, engage and sell without the right content and tools

Alinean, the leading creator of interactive content marketing and diagnostic sales tools for business to business (B2B) solutions, today announced its annual sales and marketing predictions for 2012 with serious implications. The much-sought economic relief in 2011 never arrived, setting the stage for a budget constrained, frugal 2012. This condition, termed Frugalnomics, means that buyers are overloaded and forced to do-more-with-less, uncertain about their budgets, and required to financially justify new investments. As a result, sales and marketing must quickly evolve engagement techniques to meet economic-focused buyer demands.

"Frugalnomics defines 2012, with buyers requiring that each investment deliver tangible bottom-line impact, superior ROI, and faster payback," according to Tom Pisello, the ROI Guy and Chairman / Founder of Alinean. "Successful B2B sales and marketing groups recognize the continued buyer's woes, implementing improved content strategies and tools to help facilitate purchase decisions and help buyers overcome these challenges."

Alinean predicts that the following five challenges will dominate buyers in 2012, with specific recommendations on how B2B solution providers can best capitalize on each opportunity:

1) Overload is Epic - Forced to "do more with less," buyers are currently consumed with maintaining and supporting on-going operations, which gives them less budget than ever to address issues and research potential solutions. At the same time, vendors are inundating buyers with irrelevant campaigns, with the average buyer receiving upwards of 15 sales calls per day and 200 marketing related emails from solution providers each week.

Advice: Position solutions to specifically help alleviate on-going operations costs, helping buyers shift spending to more innovative investments. At the same time, don't add to the overload with irrelevant cold calls and marketing messages. Instead implement better targeting, align content to facilitate the buyer's journey, and improve content relevance with intelligent and interactive personalization.

2) Budget Uncertainty Grows – The majority of buyers are allocating the same, or even less to new projects than in 2011, and of the meager new project allocations, only one in every four dollars is being pre-allocated at the beginning of the year. Buyers are in a wait-and-see mode about the economy, allocating on-the-fly for projects that are identified, prioritized, and justified based on needs.

Advice: Since allocations are not preordained, there is an opportunity to be provocative, proactively convincing a buyer that:

The status-quo won't do, and that there is a "cost of doing nothing"
A need for change exists, and the proposed project can help solve the issue and should be a priority
If the project is implemented, it could deliver tangible bottom-line impact, significant ROI and fast payback

3) Discount Demands Increase – With less budget allocation available to each project, initial purchase price dominates the decision-making process for over 64% of B2B buyers.

Advice: Discounts can be used to win business, and low-price providers will have an inherent advantage. However, most B2B providers are not discount-focused, and will have to defend higher purchase prices, best accomplished by using:

Total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis to quantify how much it costs to own the asset or service over multiple years vs. just initial purchase price
Benefit analysis to prove the incremental business value of proposed solutions

4) Skepticism Reigns – Buyers are taking more time to make each decision and are using a wider variety of sources to help drive decisions compared to just 12 months ago. And while vendor content is one of the key sources being used in this lengthened decision making process, buyers are three times more likely to trust content from peers and industry analysts.

Advice: Instead of just providing vendor generated content, sales and marketing should leverage content developed / contributed by industry pundits, research analysts and peers. As well, adding social sharing capabilities to all content can help, making it easier for buyers to share, comment, discuss, and even contribute to the content.

5) Economic Justification Required – Each proposed solution is subject to more financial scrutiny by senior executives, raising the level of financial justification required. Formal business cases are now a requirement for over 90% of purchases.

Advice: Buyers need help preparing financial justification for planned purchases, and vendors need to provide tools to help quantify investment requirements, savings and business benefits, return on investment and payback in order to win the business.

To help B2B solution providers understand the research behind these challenges, and implement best practices to address these opportunities, Alinean has created the Fight Frugalnomics™ Resource Center at: http://www.fightfrugalnomics.com.

How will the Economy Affect the Buyer’s Decision Process in 2012?

2011-11-30T06:47:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has driven a corporate purchase decision knows that it can be a frustrating and long process, one which many buyers wish they could streamline. However, continued economic uncertainty will make this desire hard to fulfill.

Frugalnomics is in full effect, leaving few resources to evaluate opportunities and the organization risk adverse to change, giving more control to finance and requiring more economic justification on each proposal. Serious budget constraints make even high ROI projects hard to get approved.

Solution providers that can help facilitate this ever more difficult process will have an advantage in 2012. So let’s review each stage of the process, how the current conditions are making the journey more difficult, and how B2B solution providers can optimize their content and engagement practices to help facilitate and shorten cycles.

Optimizing Content to Facilitate the Economy-Focused Buyer’s Journey
The Buyer’s Journey represents a set of steps an organization needs to go through in order to make a purchase. The steps may vary based on the organization and purchase, but a typical process includes a set of phases, especially Discovery, Consideration and Decision.

You can think of the journey as a complex change management process that can be difficult, frustrating and time consuming for the buyer, therefore, the more facilitation provided by the solution provider to streamline and remove friction from the process, the better.

Discovery
In the first part of the buyer’s journey, decision makers need to be convinced that the status-quo should change, and the buyer must convince not just themselves, but many other stakeholders that the change is beneficial and worthy.

In today’s do-more-with-less environment, most organizations are doing all they can to keep the lights on, much less consider new projects. In such a stressed environment, buyer’s might be feeling pain, but not have the resources to address, and in many instances are not self-aware of what ails them. For those that are aware of issues, convincing the multitude of stakeholders in the organization and finance to make the necessary and precious investments can be a challenge. After all, for most organizations it is easier and less risky to do nothing, than to change from the status quo.

At this critical stage, defining the vision for the project, most buyers are researching options on their own, and not involving sales in the process. However, it is during this early phase that buyer’s indicate establishing strong provider preferences, with Forrester indicating that 65% of vendors who create the buying vision during these early phases of the journey getting the deal. For many solution providers, lack of engagement means a “failure to launch”.

Solution providers can help facilitate the decision making process during Discovery in a number of ways, including:

· Guiding understanding and prioritizing of issues – helping the buyer to confirm that the pain they are feeling is real and should be a priority, and helping illuminate issues of which they might not have been aware. This can be done best via research and case studies, helping the buyer realize that others are experiencing similar pains, that these issues are a priority, and that solutions exist to meet the challenges. Diagnostic assessments are even more provocative, surveying the buyer on spending, goals and priorities issues, capability and maturity to understand where they are currently, benchmarking them to best practice leaders and peers to identify and prioritize issues, and prescribing specific solutions to remedy the highest priority opportunities.

· Quantifying the cost-of-doing-nothing – many organizations won’t change unless they understand that maintaining the status-quo has a cost that exceeds the investment / risks of change, and the cost-of-doing-nothing is high enough to make the project a priority. Research papers and case studies can be used to help convince buyers that not changing has significant cost, TCO calculators can be used to quantify the current costs in comparison to costs post change, and benefit estimators can be used to quantify the savings and incremental value available, but not being realized.

Consideration
Once a buyer has committed to change and prioritized the project, the decision makers need to research possible solution approaches and create a short-list of specific providers. During this phase it is difficult for buyers to wade through the copious amounts of research and marketing materials to understand the various advantages and benefits that each solution approach might provide.

Solution providers can help facilitate the Consideration phase, providing content and engagement tools to help:

· Quantify the incremental benefits and TCO of various solution options – to help buyers understand the differences amongst various solution approaches, solution providers should provide research, case studies and analysis tools to help buyers understand the various competitive options and advantages of different approaches, quantify the total cost of ownership (TCO) differences, and illuminate the incremental benefits of the solution compared to other solution alternatives.

· Provide Solution Demos and Trials – spoiled by consumer “try-before-you-buy” options, prove the capabilities of your solution versus others with demos and trials.

Decision
In the final stage of the buyer’s journey, the procurement team must reach consensus on a particular proposal, and gain selection approval from the many stakeholders involved in the decision making process. Finance in particular has become more involved in economic justification and the final vendor selection process, providing more price pressure and financial diligence.

In the final Decision best-value bake-off phase, Forrester indicates that 35% of vendor selection decisions are made, making it more important to get connected and engaged in earlier phases. However, many deals get stalled by a failure to overcome objections and drive consensus during this phase, making it vital to effectively address.

To make it easier for stakeholders to grant approval, risk must be mitigated and justified, with the solution provider providing content and engagements to:

The Bottom-Line
Buyers continue to be challenged by the economy in 2012, making it more difficult to make investments and drive change. Buyers are looking for solution providers who can help facilitate the buyer’s journey, helping uncover and prioritize opportunities for improvement, recommend solution options and justify decisions.

Solution providers have a unique opportunity to help facilitate this ever more difficult buyer’s journey with content and engagement practices to help facilitate and shorten cycles. Throughout the journey, marketing and sales engagements can provide content to help facilitate change and the decision making process, especially research insights, case studies, diagnostic assessments, benefit estimators, demos and trials, ROI business case and TCO comparison tools.

CFOs are Large and in Charge of Buying Process in 2012

2011-11-30T06:28:00.000-08:00

The financial relief most expected in 2011 never came, as the European debt crisis and US credit rating downgrade renewed pessimism, and may even be driving us to another recession. The continued economic uncertainty may define 2012, as “Frugalnomics” remains in full effect driving companies to be more spendthrift and risk adverse. To better manage spending and risk, finance is playing a more active role in most purchase decisions, this according to a recent study by CFO Magazine.

According to the 570 US executives surveyed, CFO Magazine reports that three-quarters of the organizations surveyed have increased the involvement of finance in the buying process, with the survey indicating that the top areas of involvement now include:

1. Developing/reviewing business and functional requirements (98%)

2. Preparing/reviewing financial justification and ROI analyses (95%)

3. Speaking with and evaluating prospective vendors (85%).

Of particular note, not only is the finance team involved in assuring business alignment and financial due diligence, but has advanced to now being involved in the evaluation and selection of vendors. And the criteria finance uses to make the vendor selection is different than most. Of 13 different factors, the most critical vendor selection factors indicated in the executive survey includes:

1. Vendor attention to the firm’s specific problems and needs (67%)

2. Price/value relationship (60%)

3. Proven performance/reliability (functionality, efficiency, productivity, ROI, etc.) (57%)

Clearly the role of finance teams has increased, with involvement throughout the decision making and selection process, particularly playing a more active role in final decisions.

The increased involvement requires vendors to build strong marketing and sales relationships with these finance executives, providing key sales and marketing content and engagements to help fight Frugalnomics, particularly diagnosing and illuminating opportunities and needs, quantifying the price / value advantages of proposed solutions, and delivering financial justification.

According to survey results, CFO Magazine recommends that vendors must improve the way the communicate with finance executives, particularly dumping the product speak and technology jargon to instead listen to and diagnose customer needs and provide a clear ROI business case. As pricing tends to be an issue in tougher times, survey results indicate that vendors need to be proactively transparent on pricing, proving total cost of ownership (TCO) and incremental ROI advantages, and helping illustrate the price / value for the expenditures.

With ROI being so important to the finance teams selection criteria, the CFO Magazine survey revealed a broad set of tangible and intangible factors that finance uses to judge vendor success, including:

1. Direct Cost Reductions or Purchase Avoidance

2. Labor Savings/Increased Speed

3. Increased Revenues

4. Enhancements In Productivity/Efficiencies

5. Acceptance/Use by Staff & Customers

6. Ease Of Use

7. Whether Performance was Achieved as Promised

Best Practices for Connecting, Engaging and Selling to Finance Execs

Vendor sales and marketing teams can achieve better effectiveness and competitive advantage if they are better able to connect, engage and sell to the finance executive. With the importance of finance in the selection process, the following five best practices can help drive better success in 2012:

1. Specific problems and needs – implement content, tools and engagements designed to uncover and diagnose specific problems and needs, helping to illuminate and prioritize unique opportunities, and codifying how recommended solutions specifically align to the opportunities and address the need;

2. Prove the Cost of Doing Nothing - Since many organizations are frozen in times of uncertainty, it is important to help the buyer understand that the status-quo won’t do, providing tangible evidence that there is a “cost of doing nothing”;

3. Provide ROI justification – prove that the proposed solution can deliver substantial cost and labor savings, improved productivity and efficiency, and/or incremental revenue, providing a substantial ROI and quick payback;

4. Quantify price / value relationship – buyers are looking for deals, and can fixate on purchase price if not careful. Therefore, it’s important to proactively prove that the proposed solutions represent a lower total cost of ownership and good competitive value;

5. Prove ROI and success post deliver – finance is focused not just on the pre-sales selection process, but assuring that delivered solutions netted the promised ROI with measurable savings, improvements and value.

The Bottom-Line
With the economic uncertainty continuing into 2012, finance will maintain a strong and increasing involvement in purchase diligence and vendor selection. Finance is less emotionally involved in the purchase decision, requiring proof that your proposals show a clear understanding of the buyer’s challenges and issues, can deliver tangible bottom-line impact and ROI, and deliver superior competitive value. New content and engagement techniques need to be evolved to provide the diagnostics, ROI justification business case, superior value proof points and post-delivery success measures.

Sources:

CFO Independent Research Study: The Senior Finance Team and Corporate Purchasing Decisions - The online research project, sponsored by CFO Magazine, was conducted independently in July, 2011 by Martin Akel & Associates (Chester, NJ, USA). The study reflects the opinions and activities of 570 U.S. corporate executives. http://www.aba.com/NR/rdonlyres/9B9355AC-FB65-4680-8602-9CCCB99D29AB/74235/CFOPublishingWP_Nov2011.pdf

Additional articles and research regarding value selling and marketing can be found at http://www.fightfrugalnomics.com

Iron Mountain Cost Savings Advisor Interactive White Paper

2011-11-29T05:11:00.000-08:00

Iron Mountain needed to better connect and engage with busy executives, to help these prospects understand the potential risk mitigation and costs savings from improving eDiscovery best practices.

Alinean worked with Iron Mountain subject matter experts to create the Cost Savings Advisor Interactive White Paper.

A few questions answered by the prospect produces a completely relevant, personalized and compelling 6-page white paper.

The Alinean powered Interactive White Paper campaign produced more qualified leads, better opportunities and shorter sales cycles than traditional white paper campaigns.

You can try the Interactive White Paper for yourself by clicking here.

4 Ways to Optimize Content for the Economy-Focused Buyer in 2012

2011-11-23T10:17:00.000-08:00

Businesses entered 2011 with optimism that an economic recovery was at hand and anxiously put plans in place for much-needed new projects, a return to growth and innovation.

As we know, 2011 is best characterized by the recovery that never came. The Greek crises and European woes, U.S. debt downgrades, and budget conflicts all conspired to put a damper on the year and set a pessimistic stage for 2012.

Read this compelling Content Marketing Institute article to learn how the continued economic troubles drive our content marketing & sales enablement predictions for 2012:
http://www.contentmarketinginstitute.com/2011/11/content-for-the-economy-focused-buyer/

Alinean Translates Fight Frugalnomics Momentum into Strong Third Quarter 2011 Performance

2011-11-17T05:15:00.000-08:00

Demand for Interactive White Papers, Diagnostic Assessments, ROI Calculators and TCO Comparison Tools Drives Growth.

For 2011 Q3, we are delighted to announce the addition of six important new customers, two major partnerships, and several significant awards during the third quarter of 2011.

Building on demand for its Fight Frugalnomics movement, an initiative to arm sales and marketing with value-focused sales and marketing tools , Alinean added several new customers including NetSuite, IGT, Falconstor, Palo Alto Software, Xirrus and Lifesize. During the quarter, Alinean also expanded its partner community to include leading IT publisher IDG, and leading marketing automation firm Marketo.

"As the economic malaise continues through 2011, Frugalnomics remains in full effect, with more buyers continuing to guard budgets and demanding quantifiable business benefits from any new investments," said Tom Pisello, Chairman and Founder of Alinean. "Savvy B2B solution providers recognize that new value-focused marketing content and sales tools are needed to connect, engage and sell to these more empowered, skeptical and frugal buyers."

As the demand for value-based sales and marketing tools grows, Alinean continues to expand its significant customer and partner base, proving to be the preferred value-based interactive content marketing and diagnostic sales tool provider.

Accomplishments by Alinean this past quarter includes:

The Inc. 500 / 5000 listing Alinean for the second year in a row as one of the fastest-growing U.S. private companies, ranking 299 among the top Advertising & Marketing providers and 3,354 overall, recognizing it’s 55% revenue growth over the last three years;
The Orlando Business Journal awarding Alinean as an Outstanding Small Business;
The Launch of Interactive Content Connectors, enabling the integration of Alinean’s value-based sales and marketing solutions, and the rich customer intelligence these tools collect, with CRM / marketing automation solutions including salesforce.com, Eloqua and Marketo;
Being featured at Eloqua’s Markies Award ceremony where Alinean was recognized as a "Must See" for its innovative approach to interactive, personalized content for lead-gen campaigns;
Launch of the Ask the ROI Guy FAQ with over 100 blog / video resources to the most common questions marketers / sales enablement professionals have about implementing value-based sales / marketing tools and campaigns.

Thank you all for joining us in the Fight Frugalnomics movement, and for your continued support!

Integrate Value Marketing & Selling with CRM & Marketing Automation

2011-11-17T05:08:00.000-08:00

Easy integration of value marketing & selling tools with CRM and marketing automation systems is essential to properly connect, engage and sell to today’s more empowered, skeptical and frugal buyers. With this integration, intelligence can be shared and leveraged, campaigns can be better targeted, and prospects can be better nurtured and engaged.

To empower this integration, Alinean announces the availability of a new version of the XcelLive platform (v5.3), adding Interactive Content Connectors (ICCs) to provide streamlined data exchange between Alinean sales & marketing tools and external applications, especially marketing automation & CRM systems.

The functions include Data-In, Data-Out, Single Sign-On (SSO), and Registration services, used to:

• Pre-populate profile data in Alinean tools

o Feed profile data from CRM / marketing automation system, registration, or web page

o Reduce user data entry requirements

o Automate analysis / report development

o Save users time and improve accuracy of reports

• Collect rich data from Alinean tool users:

o Automatically collect and feed valuable profile, configuration, opportunity, solution, assessment and value / ROI results into CRM and marketing automation systems

o More knowledge means better targeting, nurturing, and sell through

• SSO: Enhance and expedite security

• Leverage existing registration systems to capture prospect data

For more information on Alinean XcelLive, click here: http://www.alinean.com/XcelLive.aspx

Recovery Makes Selling IT Much Easier into 2012? Fahgettaboudit!

2011-11-14T15:33:00.000-08:00

They said 2011 was going to be the year for IT execs to refocus on revenue growth versus cost savings, loosen budgets for backlogged / new projects, and return to innovation and growth. But that was then, and this is now. The now is after the U.S .credit ratings debacle, the European debt crises, renewed pessimism worldwide and, perhaps worse, a double-dip recession.

As 2011 unfolded, pundits’ predictions for significant IT spending growth were dashed. Forrester, originally estimating worldwide IT budget increases north of 7% at the start of the year, have now revised their predictions downward, as have many other analysts.

How can you align your IT sales and marketing strategy with these downward revisions to achieve sales and marketing success in 2012?

Click here to read this SandHill.com feature article:
http://sandhill.com/article/recovery-makes-selling-it-much-easier-into-2012-fahgettaboudit/

SMBs a Bright Spot for IT Sales and Marketing into the New Year?

2011-11-14T09:14:00.000-08:00

Hopes for the much anticipated economic recovery in 2011 were recently dashed as the European debt crisis proved worse than anticipated, and the US credit downgrade added additional uncertainty. As a result, several analyst firms have dropped their spending outlooks, and are predicting tight IT budgets for the New Year. IT solution providers are quickly reacting to the pessimistic forecasts with a sales and marketing strategy rethink – trying to appeal to today’s more stressed and frugal buyer.

But the news is NOT all bad. According to SpiceWorks latest State of SMB IT report, there was a 9% increase in second half 2011 budget forecasts, the highest planned budget uptick over the past two years. Despite all of the negative worldwide economic news and sentiment , and decided impact enterprise IT spending, small and medium business leaders are optimistic enough to grow IT spending further.

According to the 962 respondents, SMB IT spending on hardware, software and services has increased from an average of $108K per organization in 2009, to a planned $143K in the second half of 2011. Hiring demands are increasing at the same time, from a low of only 20% planning staff additions in the latter half of 2010, to 31% currently planning staff additions. These findings are leading some to predict that the ability to attract and retain talent will quickly become a major IT challenge.

SMBs are leveraging more cost efficient and agile IT strategies to be frugal, but at the driving business operating efficiency and effectiveness. As a result, SMBs have invested more in certain infrastructure areas, especially virtualization, up 7% from prior period, and cloud computing, nearly doubling every six months, especially in storage and backup services. Spurred by mobility and usability demands, the survey revealed that tablets are taking SMBs by storm as well.

SMBs Ready to Celebrate Good Times?
Even though growth is evident for SMBs, pressures remain to drive IT and business operations cost savings, while creating a more flexible / mobile environment for business success.

Here’s where we think the SMB challenges will be for 2012, and tips for how IT solution provider sales and marketers can best succeed in addressing these opportunities:

1) Do More with Less – SMB IT has to wear many hats, and although budgets are increasing, likely the innovation and service demands on IT are outstripping the modest increases. As a result, SMB IT will struggle just keeping the lights on, having little time to investigate new opportunities, and struggling to find the time and budgets for new and innovative projects.

Tip#1: Be Provocative – SMB IT leaders are looking for consultative help to identify issues and opportunities they might not have been aware of, and prioritizing key issues/ opportunities of which they are readily aware, but having a hard time convincing frugal senior management to address. Leveraging research white papers, case studies and diagnostic assessments, sales and marketing can help increase opportunity awareness and prioritize that important IT infrastructure or business solution.

2) Risk Adverse – small businesses have to get the most out of every investment, and although they are more optimistic than larger enterprises, remain risk adverse, fearful that they might make a wrong project bet. For SMB IT leaders, and the senior business managers and owners they report to, it is often easier to maintain the status-quo, than to take a chance and risk change.

Tip #2: Prove that there is a “cost of doing nothing” – armed with research, case studies and tools, sales and marketing can help quantify that the status-quo is costing the organization more than expected. This can importantly prove that the SMB is spending more than they should be on IT or business operations, wasting money with poor business processes and productivity inhibitors, or losing key business opportunities.

3) Price Focused – As one might expect when times get rough and budgets are constrained, price dominates the decision making process for the vast majority of buyers, with some 64% of 448 small and medium business respondents indicating such in a TricomB2B / University of Dayton survey: The Considered Purchase Decision.

Tip #3: Elevate the Discussions beyond Initial Purchase Price: In a price-focused environment, discounts will gain attention and often can be enticing to frugal buyers. Appealing to the discount shopper in us all can prove successful; however, most solution providers need to elevate beyond the “discount dance”, elevating the discussion so that buyers understand that lower initial price might actually be more costly. Research, case studies and tools to quantify lower total cost of ownership (TCO), the cost to own and operate the asset or service over the useful life, can help move the focus from up-front price. As well, quantifying the incremental business value of the proposed solution can help SMB IT understand the ROI and payback of perhaps paying more up-front .

4) Need to Leverage and Empower Business Resources – Most small and medium businesses have limited human capital and business assets by which to succeed. They need to get the most out of each and every resource, and technology is often utilized as a potential multiplier of business efficiency.

Tip #4: Prove Business Value: With the current economic-focus, it is important to help quantify how IT could potentially be leveraged to improve business productivity, streamline processes and drive resource utilization improvements. White papers, case studies and tools that can help IT quantify the value of proposed business-focused IT investments can help to economically justify and prioritize such projects.

5) Need to Serve Customers Better and Innovate to Gain Competitive Advantage – Most markets are experiencing more empowered customers with heightened expectations, more pressure from competitors to keep customer relationships secure and market pressures to capture and grow limited new revenue opportunities. There is more pressure than ever to improving customer relationships and competitive advantage via social, marketing, sales and service technology.

Tip #5: Prove Customer / Competitive Value: Each SMB has unique and growing customer and competitive challenges. Providing the research, white papers and tools to tie solutions and proposals to addressing these key goals, and quantifying the value of improved customer relationships (such as increased customer retention and lifetime value) and competitive market share improvements, can help to justify and prioritize proposed customer / competitive focused IT projects to frugal senior managers / owners.

The Bottom-Line
Even though good economic news is hard to come by, SMBs might represent the one bright spot for IT vendors in 2012.

However, even with the proposed budget increases, SMB IT leaders are still forced to do more with less, remaining quite risk adverse and price-focused. Business, customer and competitive demands all remain high, likely outstripping the modest expected budget gains. This presents unique challenges for IT solution providers seeking to capture more SMB opportunities in the New Year.

Successful sales and marketing groups will recognize the spending bright spot, putting in place the content marketing and sales enablement strategies to help facilitate SMB IT to address the challenges of modestly increasing budgets in tough times. This should include:

1) Being provocative to help consultatively uncover and prioritize opportunities;

2) Helping prove to buyers that there is a “cost of doing nothing”;

3) Educating the buyer that initial purchase price should not be the only decision factor, instead elevating the discussion to include total cost of ownership (TCO) and incremental value

4) Quantifying the business value of solutions, particularly how IT can be used to improve business efficiency;

5) Proving the customer / competitive advantage of proposed solutions, especially how IT can be used to drive business effectiveness.

Sources:

State of SMB IT 2H 2011, SpiceWorks

Are you CIO Worthy?

2011-10-31T07:44:00.000-07:00

Gartner says CIOs are spending too much time with vendors - laying down gauntlet to vendor sales to add more value, or get lost.

Gartner thinks CIOs are spending too much of their precious time with vendors, and advises to significantly curtail this activity. According to a poll of 1,300 organizations as reported by Linda Tucci (TechTarget) from Gartner Symposium/ITxpo this past month, a total of 13.5% of total IT time is spent on vendor management and procurement.

As most CIOs have been forced to do more with less, this time allocation is more precious than ever. As a result of the significant amount of time spent, and the apparent lack of value-add , Gartner recommends vendor time be significantly reduced.

“Your time is very expensive. Your employees need that time. Your executives need that time — and vendors are consuming that time,” Gartner analyst William Snyder said. “Time is squandered.” If you thought getting that executive IT meeting was hard before, this won’t make it any easier!

Of course Gartner does understand that some vendors are more strategic, indicating that: “It’s important that you meet with the vendors that make a difference to your organization.” Unfortunately, most IT executives don’t view the average vendor salesperson as strategic. Don’t think this applies to you, that you are CIO worthy and your sales engagements are viewed as strategic and value add?

According to IDC, buyers clearly indicate that sales readiness is on the decline, with 29% unprepared for meetings, and 36% somewhat prepared. A little more than 1 in 3 sales professionals are indicated as well prepared.

From Forrester, as reported in their Sales Enablement Forum earlier this year, buyers can easily categorize salesperson agendas, with:

· 27% only wanting to tell the buyer about their products / solutions (transactional focused) at over 27% of the time;
· 41% listening for a keyword or two so they can give a prepared pitch (buzz word solution focused).

This leaves only one in three sales professionals as strategic: truly focused on helping buyers find the right solution and focused on assuring the outcome / or value the recommendations can provide.

So, how can you make sure you are viewed as strategic, or can migrate your relationship quickly from tactical to strategic in order to earn their precious time and attention, maintain and grow CIO opportunities?

Here are our top five recommendations that can fuel more strategic engagements with CIOs:

1. Strategic knowledge – you need to know the overall strategic direction of the prospect, and current performance against goals. With established customers, this means cultivating relationships that can openly share with you strategic goals, performance and insight. For new prospects, this means staying up to date on the latest news and reports for the prospect making sure you have read the annual and quarterly financial filings, listened to quarterly earnings calls and has reviewed the latest press releases and coverage. Social media can sometimes prove valuable, listening for opportunities and issues, or even posting questions and collaborating.

Goal: Use this research on goals and opportunities to develop and prioritize your proposals to help address strategic goals. Use inside knowledge to help facilitate the buying process for the CIO, providing content that helps them address stakeholder concerns and overcome objections.

2. Industry and competitive knowledge –strategic insight requires that you not only know the customer, but know the marketplaces they are playing in, and the competition. Are the customer’s market opportunities increasing, or challenged? Are their pressures on their business model and operations? How are they performing versus competitors? Are their new competitors that are changing the game?

Goal : Use this knowledge to position proposals to address industry / competitive challenges, or use the knowledge to provide unique insight to the CIO, developing unsolicited proposals with ideas on how new solutions can meet these challenges.

3. Diagnostic Assessments –A diagnostic capability and maturity assessment can often be used to assess current practices, comparing the current practices against best-in-class and peer benchmarks in order to help buyers better classify and prioritize known opportunities, with third-party evidence that the issues are real and important, and illuminating important issues they didn’t even know they had.

Goal: Provide a consultative framework for progressive improvement. Move beyond the normal product / solution approach to a consultative diagnostic engagement, helping the buyer competitively benchmark performance, uncover and prioritize important issues, and tying recommendations directly to the highest priority issues.

4. Relevant Success Stories – CIOs are risk adverse, and knowing that others have achieved similar success, especially those of similar industry / size and opportunity can help mitigate risk fears. Proactively sharing relevant success stories can seed ideas and promote important improvements. Enhanced case studies with video / audio can be more effective, providing evidence of success in the customers own voice / image.

Goal: Help CIOs realize that others are addressing similar opportunities with tangible success. Overcome risk by proving that similar companies have successful implementations and achieved promised outcomes.

5. Financial Justification – For today’s risk adverse and budget constrained CIO it is often easier to do nothing, than change. As a result, CIOs are financially focused, with over 90% requiring ROI proof for any new projects. However, these same CIOs have opportunities to address and goals to be achieved. From a recent IT buyer survey, Demand Creation Specialists indicate that over 50% of new project / discretionary budgets are allocated, not at the beginning of the year, but dynamically for projects that are justified. Proving financial rewards for proposed projects can help prioritize thigh reward / low risk projects over others that deliver less growth opportunities / savings and bottom-line impact.

Goal: Provide a business case for high value projects to help make the case for change. Proactively help CIOs recognize higher ROI projects and proactively acquire budgets to fund these rewarding proposals.

The Bottom-Line
CIOs are being urged to spend less time with IT vendors, particularly those that are not strategic. At the same time, more buyers report a decided lack of sales readiness and that two out of three salespeople are tactical vs. strategic, adding little value-add.

IT solution providers should not take IT executive relationships for granted, as many will head Gartner’s advice, closing the door to vendor access and opportunities.

Sales enablement and capabilities investments must be made to add value to each engagement, migrating relationships from tactical to strategic. This includes improving the ability to gather and communicate strategic, industry and competitive knowledge, perform and deliver diagnostic assessments, share relevant success stories and make the case for change with financial justification business cases.

Sources: A CIO’s time is expensive; not every vendor relationship deserves it, Linda Tucci, TechTarget, October 27, 2011

Innovate or Die: Actions IT Solution Providers Can Take To Help IT Leaders Meet the Number One Challenge for 2012

2011-10-22T06:05:00.000-07:00

Each year over 8,000 CIOs and IT Leaders gather in Orlando for Gartner’s Symposium and IT Expo to discuss the latest research from Gartner analysts, and the sessions are never short on predictions, insight and even controversy, all helping to shape the top IT priorities and investments for 2012 and beyond. The 2011 sessions did not disappoint, with analysts urging “creative destruction” as one of the most important strategies for IT executives to embrace.

“For the IT leader to thrive in this environment, IT leaders must lead from the front and re-imagine IT,” according to Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president at Gartner and global head of Research. “IT leaders must embrace the post-modern business, a business driven by customer relationships, fueled by the explosion in information, collaboration, and mobility.” According to Gartner, this new era brings with it urgent and compelling forces including the cloud, social, mobility, and an explosion in information”.

This recommendation, to re-imagine IT, in many cases may include “tearing down” current IT before building it back up, and can have a profound and significant impact on the way IT solutions are marketed and sold, providing both an opportunity and significant challenges.

According to Gartner, over 70% of IT spending is dedicated to “keeping the lights on”, leaving an inadequate budget for innovation. The allocation comes at a time when users are spoiled by consumer innovation including tablets, mobile applications, social networking, application stores / marketplaces and more, with users expecting corporate IT to deliver similar solutions and experiences.

“Most IT organizations have 70 percent or more of their time, money and mindshare locked into reliability, keeping things going,” said Tina Nunno, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “Yet demands for game changing IT capabilities are growing every year. IT leaders must transform their businesses, products, services, and value proposition to the external customer, and challenge traditional ways of thinking.”

With scant budget and resources available to adequately address these demands, IT leaders are looking for guidance on how to “do more with less” in maintaining and supporting the existing infrastructure, allowing more to be spent on innovation. As well, IT leaders are looking for ways to implement innovative consumer-like solutions with less mess, faster and less expensively for their ever-more demanding user base.

And this is where the opportunity lies for IT solution providers, delivering proactive consultative advice to IT executives to help them overcome this number one challenge, to Innovate or Die, including:

1) Evaluating current infrastructure spending and providing cost savings ideas to lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) of current hardware, software and services, freeing up more budget for innovation;

2) Helping CIOs with creative destruction to “re-imagine IT” – developing plans and business cases to more easily challenge the status-quo and reconstruct IT to better support user’s “consumerization of IT” demands;

3) Aligning solutions and value propositions with major strategic focus including cloud, social, mobile and information;

4) Making investing in innovative solutions easier and less risky, delivering consumer like experiences in devices and solutions, but with enterprise class change management, service management, security and governance.

Gartner analysts say “IT leaders must destroy perfectionism and embrace calculated risk. CIOs tend to be perfectionists who are highly detail-oriented. It’s what has made so many of them good at their jobs. However, it can sometimes lead to issues with risk and uncertainty.” “Never taking risks means you are predictable and an easy target for your competition,” According to Ms. Nunno, CIOs should “Strive to take calculated risks and surprise both your business and the competition.”

IT solution providers need to recognize the unique challenges facing today’s CIOs, helping them overcome risks and providing tangible solution sets to deliver on these three recommended programs, and empower sales and marketing to engage and sell using these methodologies.

The Bottom-Line
IT is challenged like never before – forced already to do more with less, saddled with a legacy infrastructure that is expensive to maintain and support and doesn’t meet user’s consumer-like expectations. Solution providers that provide the proactive consultative advice and solutions to help IT meet these new challenges and embrace change will be the winners in 2012 and beyond.

Sources:

Gartner Says Now More Than Ever Is the Time to Re-Imagine the Role of IT -http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Gartner-Says-Now-More-Than-bw-875686904.html?x=0&.v=1

Gartner Says Worldwide Enterprise IT Spending to Reach $2.7 Trillion in 2012 - http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Gartner-Says-Worldwide-bw-1170062785.html?x=0&.v=1

Alinean Introduces Interactive Content Connectors for CRM / Marketing Automation Integration

2011-10-21T11:39:00.000-07:00

Captures rich customer intelligence for superior lead nurturing and accelerated sales cycles

Alinean introduced Interactive Content Connectors at the Eloqua Experience event, helping integrate Alinean-value sales / marketing tools with CRM / Marketing Automation solutions, including salesforce.com, Eloqua and more.

As prospects and sales professionals use Alinean-powered Interactive White Papers, Diagnostic Assessments and ROI / TCO Calculators, much intelligence is collected during the engagement. This includes customer profiles, current asset configurations, priority pain points and opportunities, solution requirements and recommendations, competitors under consideration, proposed solution costs and benefits and ROI potential. Using the new Interactive Content Connectors, this rich intelligence is captured and integrated centrally within the CRM / Marketing Automation solution, enriching the lead nurturing and sales engagement process.

Joe Payne, Eloqua Chairman and CEO Introduces Alinean Interactive Content Connectors at

Eloqua Experience 2011

“Incented with personalized white papers, diagnostic assessments and business case reports, customers are willing to share important information about their opportunities and requirements that they wouldn’t otherwise.” says Jefre Futch, CEO of Alinean, Inc. “Using the Alinean-powered tools with content connectors, this information can be collected and integrated with existing CRM and Marketing Automation solutions to help marketers and sales professionals better understand buyer needs and better facilitate their buying process.”

Interactive Content Connectors can be used in many ways to help streamline customer engagements and improve intelligence, including:

· Using customer profile information from the CRM / marketing automation solution to pre-populate Alinean tools, reducing user data entry requirements and automating analyses / report development;

· Automatically collecting and feeding valuable profile, configuration, opportunity, solution, assessment and savings / ROI results from the Alinean tools into CRM and marketing automation systems;

· Single Sign-On, to control sales tool access, enhancing and expediting security.

Interactive Content Connectors are a key new feature of Alinean’s XcelLive, the first SaaS platform for the development and delivery of interactive content marketing and diagnostic sales tools without requiring any application programming.

“More knowledge means better targeting, nurturing, and sell through” says Jefre Futch, CEO of Alinean Inc. “This knowledge is delivered with the integration of Alinean sales and marketing tools and Marketing CRM and Marketing Automation solutions.”

More information about new Interactive Content Connectors and other features of Alinean’s XcelLive sales and marketing tools platform can be found at: http://www.alinean.com/XcelLive.aspx

Demand-Gen Report Interview on Need for New Sales Enablement Tools

2011-10-05T07:17:00.000-07:00

A Demand-Gen Report interview with Thomas Pisello, The ROI Guy, Chairman & Founder of diagnostic / ROI sales tool provider Alinean Inc.

1. Can you speak to how the changing buyer has increased the need for sophisticated sales enablement solutions?

First, today’s B2B buyer is more empowered than ever before. Before sales is even invited to the table, the typical buyer has already used the Internet and social media to research and prioritize opportunities, investigate potential solutions, reviewed relevant case studies, quantify potential benefits, investigate prices and analyze competitive offerings. Buyers are in control, with almost 70% indicating they don’t think sales is adding enough value-add to their engagements (Forrester 2011).

Second, although buyers are more empowered, under current budget constraints they have been forced to “do-more-with-less” and as a result, have less time than ever to fully understand their issues / opportunities, and research / deliver solutions. There is a greater need for consultative insight to help close this gap.

Third, continued and significant negative financial conditions have caused buyers to be more economic focused. Today, over 90% of B2B buyers require proof of bottom-line impacts / ROI on any significant investment, with over 81% expecting vendors to provide financial justification to earn the business (IDC 2011).

Buyers are more empowered, overloaded, skeptical and frugal than ever before, a condition we have termed “Frugalnomics”. In order to “fight” Frugalnomics and maintain sales effectiveness, sales needs to be armed with a new value-oriented, consultative methodology, training and tools.

2. How do sales enablement solutions reflect the “people, process, technology” mantra to help sales do their job more efficiently?

We know that buyer’s want a consultative / outcome focused engagement, pushing salespeople to advance their methodology, skills and tools over the past 3 decades, from product selling to value selling:

Product Selling: The sales organization sold products based on "feeds and speeds". Technology solutions were new and exciting, and sales lived on the cutting edge of technology. Customers bought "products."
Solution Selling: Rather than buying products, customers looked for solutions - usually a functional combination of hardware and software to solve a technical problem. Acronyms such as ERP and CRM were common, and the services industry exploded. Customers bought "solutions."
Value Selling: The financial pressures of the recent and continuing recession changed customers. They now align business investments with technology costs. Customers want "outcomes."

Yet despite these demands, the majority of sales is not ready to meet the challenges of today’s B2B buyer, using the same old antiquated techniques. Forrester indicates that buyers can easily classify salespeople, in most cases in quite unflattering terms, with:

· 27% still product selling focused, only wanting to tell the buyer about their products / services,

· 41% only slightly more advanced, being buzzword focused - listening for a keyword or two so they can launch into the standard product pitch.

Almost 70% are adding little to no value according to this research, with only 1 in 5 have advanced to a solution selling approach, with only 6% advancing further to be consultative and 6% truly outcome focused (ideally where buyers would like sales to be).

Frugalnomics changes everything. All B2B solution providers must recognize that the sales and marketing landscape has fundamentally changed, and that customers are looking for consultative / outcome-focused partners to help them proactively uncover opportunities that many are unaware they have, quantify and drive bottom-line impacts, and deliver more value than competitors offerings.

The end of sales as we know it, this shift in buyer requirements will require a significant sales enablement investment in people (training), process (engagement methodologies) and technology (sales tools).

3.    Can you explain in detail the problems and objectives your organization helps sales teams solve?

We help sales teams advance their value selling skills, with a library of value-focused diagnostic tools, value selling training and buyer facilitation methodologies. The process and tools work throughout the buyer’s journey to help facilitate the buyer’s decision making process:

1)    Discovery: Early in buying lifecycle help buyers loosen the status-quo and understand potential solutions, by helping them to illuminate issues, and that there is a "cost of doing nothing". This is often best addressed using diagnostic assessment tools to survey current practices, benchmark versus peers and leaders, and intelligently develop improvement roadmaps based on highest priority issues;

2)    Consideration: In the middle stages, to help justify the right solution, by quantifying the savings, business value, return on investment and fast payback. This is often best accomplished using ROI sales tools to help identify current costs and opportunities, intelligently recommend the right solution configuration and quantify potential benefits, investments, risks, ROI, payback and other key financials;

3)    Selection: In the later stages, to help validate the decision, by proving that the selected solution competitively has the lowest total cost of ownership, best value and lowest risks. This is often best done using TCO comparison tools.

4.    What are some of the key benefits of sales enablement technology?

Looking at sales enablement overall, shows how beneficial sales enablement programs can be. A recent IDC Sales Advisory Practice article indicates that a part of the growth issue is B2B companies' inability to get sales enablement "in gear", costing typical companies upwards of 10% or more of revenue per year. For example, this 10% sales enablement challenge is a $100 M incremental revenue opportunity for a $1B company.

To analyze the potential further, we have worked with IDC to specifically measure the impact that our value-selling approach has, with the following significant improvements. The survey revealed that the average Alinean-powered sales enablement program delivered:

· An ROI of 810% (for each $1 invested in an Alinean program, $8.10 in incremental benefits was generated);

· A payback of less than three months from deployment.

These benefits were achieved with:

· A reduction in sales cycles by 20% via sales teams driving initiatives more proactively with prospects, and by the automation of business case development;

· Reduced discounting and increased deal size for direct sales by 20% or more from the migration of sales from features, function and price selling to business value selling;

· A reduction in the amount of time it takes to develop credible business cases – from days or months to hours;

· A more than 10% increase in the success rate of competitive sales engagements as a result of sales teams acting as more as strategic partners than as conventional salespeople;

· 23% higher channel partner retention rates from a more differentiated value-selling approach and demonstrable ROI services;

· A net savings of 25% in consulting, licensing and internal labor costs based on a reduced ad-hoc investment in homegrown benchmarking, assessment, ROI/TCO tools and programs via standardization on a single provider, along with the elimination of internal SME burdens.

5. Can you provide a snapshot of some of the companies utilizing your solution(s) and for what improvements they have realized?

Yes, the Unified Communications market is extremely competitive, and in order to move the discussion forward with today's more skeptical / frugal buyer, ShoreTel needed to quantify and prove the head-to-head cost advantages and superior value compared to competitive offerings.

To address this opportunity, Alinean developed the ShoreTel TCO Tool to compare total cost of ownership (TCO) for various unified communications systems, and quantify.

Partners and enterprise sales professionals have adopted the tool significantly more than prior in-house developed programs, driving significant multi-million dollar customer deals.

Hear firsthand the value this tool has had to ShoreTel and it's partners, as Tamara Taylor, BTI Group Director of Sales discusses the benefits of the ShoreTel TCO Tool (powered by Alinean):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYOjwEuG2Mk

View the ShoreTel TCO tool (powered by Alinean)

6. Are there any interesting trends that you’re seeing develop on the topic of sales enablement from a technology and/or user standpoint?

We are at a turning point – literally the end of sales as we know it…. This does not mean necessarily the Death of a Salesman, but unless value can be added / delivered …..

Buyers have come to expect the experiences they have as a consumer when they are shopping now for business solutions. Just as buying music and books changed significantly over past 10 years in the B2C space, similarly we are in a ten year consumerization of B2B sales.

7. Is there any research or resources on this topic you would point to?

We have compiled some of the most important research on sales enablement:

The Big-O: Outcome Selling: http://blog.alinean.com/2011/03/big-o-outcome-selling.html

Boost Sales 10% with Sales Enablement Investments? IDC Says Absolutely - http://blog.alinean.com/2011/02/boost-sales-10-with-sales-enablement.html

Spring Has Sprung, And So Should New Sales & Marketing Processes - http://blog.alinean.com/2011/03/spring-has-sprung-and-so-should-new.html

Additional research & insight articles can be found at: http://www.fightfrugalnomics.com

This interview was included as content in the Demand-Gen Report Article: Shifting Sales Environment Creating New Role for Sales Enablement Solutions - http://www.demandgenreport.com/archives/feature-articles/933-shifting-sales-environment-creating-new-role-for-sales-enablement-solutions-.html

Case Study: Windows Azure TCO Tool

2011-09-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

The Windows Azure team needed to prove that its cloud platform made fiscal sense, comparing the TCO savings of its cloud platform to existing on-premise options.

To address this opportunity, Alinean analysts worked with the Azure team to create the Azure TCO Calculator, determining that in most configurations, at least 40% can be saved with SaaS, along with service level, performance and scalability improvements, making it a perfect choice in frugal times.

Using the tool, customers can assess unique opportunities and savings, obtaining a 20+ page business case analysis. The tool has been used on average in hundreds of key selling situations to help promote Azure migrations.

See a Microsoft training session featuring the Azure TCO Calculator:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNuqIxc8Mko&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLAFC53E855261C466

View the Windows Azure TCO tool

Case Study: ShoreTel TCO Tool (powered by Alinean)

2011-09-21T11:15:00.000-07:00

The Unified Communications market is extremely competitive, and in order to move the discussion forward with today's more skeptical / frugal buyer, ShoreTel needed to quantify and prove the head-to-head cost advantages and superior value compared to competitive offerings.
To address this opportunity, Alinean developed the ShoreTel TCO Tool to compare total cost of ownership (TCO) for various unified communications systems, and quantify the advantages of ShoreTel's solutions.

Partners and enterprise sales professionals have adopted the tool significantly more than prior in-house developed programs, driving significant multi-million dollar customer deals.

Hear first hand the value this tool has had to ShoreTel and it's partners, as Tamara Taylor, BTI Group Director of Sales discusses the benefits of the ShoreTel TCO Tool (powered by Alinean):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYOjwEuG2Mk

View the ShoreTel TCO commitment program

View the ShoreTel TCO tool (powered by Alinean) - access restricted to ShoreTel sales professionals and authorized partners

On-Demand WebCast: Optimizing Content Marketing to Facilitate The Buyer's Journey

2011-09-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

Although research indicates a significant 26% of annual marketing budgets are allocated to content marketing, only 41% find that the efforts are effective.

Why the crisis in confidence and how can you insure that your content marketing investments are effective?

This webinar, looks for answers to the crisis, discussing the latest research and uncovering the prove strategy and tactics for optimizing content return on investment.

For marketing executives, content marketers and others responsible for developing content and marketing strategies, this webinar will help you answer the following questions:

How much are your peers spending and what strategies / tactics are they using?
How are the top-performers different, and what best practices are they using to drive better content marketing effectiveness?
What tools are available to help you easily benchmark your spending, measure effectiveness and drive a content marketing optimization roadmap?
What new interactive / value-focused content can help improve marketing and sales enablement performance?

Click here to access this on-demand webinar and/or download the presentation:
https://alinean.webex.com/alinean/lsr.php?AT=pb&SP=EC&rID=48580867&rKey=61578490579b32cb

B2B Buyers: It’s all about the Benjamins

2011-09-19T12:15:00.000-07:00

Over 2/3rds of B2B buyers indicate that immediate purchase price dominates their buying decisions 60% or more of the time. This according to new research, The Considered Purchase Decision, a survey of 448 b2b buyers across a broad range of industries, confirming that as the economic malaise continues, Frugalnomics remains in full effect.

The research revealed that price dominated in 64% of purchases, delivering great news for price leaders - those focusing on initial pricing advantages versus higher priced / often more feature-rich solutions.

Certainly these results present a challenge to premium providers, who based on these results, need to steal the focus from initial purchase price, to tangibly prove lower lifecycle costs (considering all the costs over the useful lifetime of the purchase vs. just the initial purchase price), lower risk and superior value (incremental benefits of your solution vs. competition).

And these pricing discussions need to be proactive. The survey reveals that even if the buyer is not discussing the financial differences between you and the competition; know that these discussions are happening behind closed doors and driving the purchase decision.

Sales and marketing a higher-priced supplier requires proactive transparency, differentiating the higher initial price versus a superior solution with lower costs over the useful lifecycle, more business value / bottom-line benefits, and / or lower risks.

The good news in the survey results was that although initial purchase price dominates, consideration was given to lifecycle ownership costs / total cost of ownership (TCO). In the survey, more than half the survey respondents (56%) indicated that at least 60% of the time, the total cost of ownership (TCO) had been calculated in considered purchase decisions in which they were involved.

Moving beyond just initial price, TCO was more important to savvy Sr. executives / owners with 67% of Senior Execs/Owners say that TCO was considered.

The survey reveals that machinery and equipment-intensive industries (e.g., energy-related and process industries) were the most likely to calculate TCO in the considered purchase process.

This confirms that for premium solutions, moving the discussion beyond initial purchase price to the consideration of TCO can have a competitive impact in fighting Frugalnomics.

One way to do this is to arm your web site and sales teams with a TCO comparison tool - one that can proactively, quickly and credibly create a personalized total cost of ownership comparison report - differentiating for this particular buyer the unique lifecycle cost, incremental value and lower risks of your proposed solution versus named competitors.

The Bottom-Line
With Frugalnomics in full effect, purchase price is still dominating B2B buying decisions. Although good news for price leaders, the ability to move beyond initial purchase price is critical for so many sales and marketing engagements, where shooting-it-out on price alone is a losing proposition.

Proactively positioning against the competition with regards to initial price versus lower TCO, superior business value and lower risks is essential to connecting, engaging and selling to today’s frugal B2B buyer.

The good news is that most buyers, and particularly senior level executives/ owners are receptive to TCO and other more value-focused factors.

Unless you are always the price leader, proactively moving the discussion beyond price will be essential to win more deals and grow sales into 2012 and beyond.

Source: The Considered Purchase Decision What Matters, What Doesn’t And What It Means For B2B Marketing and Sales by TriComB2B / University of Dayton School of Business Administration http://www.cmo.com/conversion/purchase-survey-finds-price-total-cost-ownership-most-important

Does Alinean guarantee results / ROI investing in / using your tools? Do you help us measure and prove program success / improve if not achieving goals?

2011-09-15T08:01:00.000-07:00

Yes, we do guarantee that you will achieve an ROI from using our tools.

To assure value achievement, we work with your team pre-launch to confirm the business case and key performance indicators (KPIs) that represent success.

Every 6-12 months, depending on your needs, we review performance versus these KPIs and benefit metrics in order to gauge success. Reports are provided so that you can communicate your success to senior executives.

If the results are falling below our goals, we recommend specific remediation plans / programs with your team to overcome any shortfalls, and continue the review / remediation process with you to drive success.

Can you help us support the use of the Alinean-powered sales / marketing tools in deals?

2011-09-15T07:59:00.000-07:00

Yes, we have a services program called ROI Deal Desk, where Alinean ValueExpert™ Consultants work with your field team to collect data and prepare / present analyses. Offering these services to the field can be invaluable for conducting workshops with larger clients, and driving superior results.

These engagements can, and often do include direct interaction of our team with the customer. This can help dramatically increase the consultative value of the engagement, third-party credibility and overall effectiveness of the engagement.

Several Alinean Deal Desk engagements have been responsible for $20M+ individual deals for our clients, with over $400M in total value.

Does Alinean provide direct phone / email support to sales / marketing tool users?

2011-09-15T07:57:00.000-07:00

As standard, we provide direct support to your tool program office, helping the core team address technical support issues, and answer questions about tool use cases and analyses. This is done via phone / email support.

Direct user and technical support can be optionally provided worldwide (additional fees apply).

Do you have sales training to help our sales team and channel partners better adopt and use the Alinean-powered tools?

2011-09-15T07:56:00.000-07:00

Yes, Alinean provides a thorough 4 hour or 8 hour customized ValueExpert™ training class and certification on your specific tool. The training session includes important information about the buyer’s journey and where sales tools fit in the process, economic justification / financial selling methodologies, and specific situational sales training and workshops using your sales tool(s).

At the end of the training class and certification, your sales team will have consultative proficiency and practical experience to use the tool effectively with frugal executives.

How can I get my sales folks to best adopt the Alinean-powered sales tools?

2011-09-15T07:53:00.000-07:00

The first challenge is awareness. Sales professionals and channel partners need to know that these tools exist, and have clear recommendations on where to best use them in the sales process / to help facilitate the buyer’s journey.

Building awareness can include:

· Introductory Webinars

· E-mail / Newsletter Notifications

· Postings to Sales Resource Centers

· Inclusion in Sales Playbook

· An internal Blog from an influential executive

· Tool user support – typically e-mail support by your team, via a centralized alias, to get answers to basic access / use questions

Second, the sales team needs to have a proficiency using the tool as part of a consultative sales process. This needs to include more education, as well as more support services:

· Webinar to provide more advanced training beyond simple awareness

· Inclusion and mapping to Sales Training Methodology

· Deal desk support – an expert to help run the tool workshop with prospects and prepare business case reports (both virtually and on-site)

· Sales Success Case Studies – posting scenarios where the tool delivered incremental success

As part of both awareness and proficiency, metrics should be targeted and tracked, to assure that the established number of users are registering for and using the tools as planned. Alinean Success Workshops help map and track these metrics for you, proactively on initial launch, and every 6-12 months depending on your requirements, tracking success and driving necessary improvements.

Can the Alinean-powered assessments / analysis be fed data from other tools to jumpstart or automatically create analyses?

2011-09-15T07:51:00.000-07:00

Yes, the Interactive Content Integration service can be used to feed information from CRM /marketing automation solutions or other applications into the Alinean tool, where this information is then used to intelligently populate key entries and jump-start the analysis for the user.

The Alinean tools even supports a special mode that allows the tools to be proactively fed data and run in the background to produce and share / hand back report / results.

Can the user information captured with the Alinean-powered marketing tools be shared with CRM / marketing automation solutions?

2011-09-15T07:49:00.000-07:00

Yes, we have an Interactive Content Connector service that supports seamless integration with CRM and lead management / marketing automation solutions such as salesforce.com, Marketo, Eloqua, SilverPop and more.

The integration can be used in multiple ways to help streamline user interaction, capture and enrich leads.

When a user runs an Alinean powered-tool, via the service, the registration information from your own registration system can be fed into the Alinean tool, pre-filling in key profile information.

When registration information is captured from the Alinean tool, the service interacts to capture and share the registration information, as well as information beyond the registration profile, to include current opportunities, assets, costs, configurations and key analysis results. This rich information is invaluable for sales & marketing understanding the prospect better, and for guiding more precise / relevant action / follow-up.

How do we protect the IP within the Alinean-powered sales / marketing tools?

2011-09-15T07:47:00.000-07:00

Access to the Alinean-powered sales / marketing tools can be restricted to specific registered users and domains. A full identity and access management system and administration console is provided to automatically control access options and rights.

For those with access, the interactive tool itself does not expose formulas, proprietary models, pricing or other important content, other than that content which the team chooses to use on screens to collect customer profiles, visualize and communicate results, and in printed reports.

Do the Alinean-powered sales / marketing tools provide help to guide a user?

2011-09-15T07:46:00.000-07:00

Multiple levels of help are provided, including:

· Tool overview, providing an introduction to the tool, and getting started guide

· For most questions / prompts tip help is provided – in-line help to guide a user on what questions are being asked, the source of the default data, and where the information may be used in the analysis

· Benefit and cost descriptions are provided to describe what is included in each benefit and investment line item

· System Help, to describe various tool operations such as various menu options including how to save analyses, how to share analyses, how to adjust currencies, how to manage identity and access, and more.

Is there an administrator console for managing users of the Alinean sales / marketing SaaS platform?

2011-09-15T07:44:00.000-07:00

Yes, an administrator console is available to help review and manage tool users, set identity and access, configure tool options, develop usage reports, manage connectors and manage data mining.

Are usage reports available from the Alinean-powered sales / marketing tools?

2011-09-15T07:42:00.000-07:00

An integrated usage report system is available so you can run reports to track the number of tool visits, new registrants, new analysis, new reports and more over select time periods for current reports and trending. Special reports for top regions, top users and more are included.

These reports are valuable in helping to track and drive conversion on demand-gen tools, and adoption for sales enablement tools.

Can the Alinean tools assessment / analysis data be mined to further understand customer responses and analysis results?

2011-09-15T07:35:00.000-07:00

All user entries, and even key results, are saved into a database. This data can be mined and analyzed to understand customer responses, report on average results, and more.

The mined data is exported into spreadsheet format for easy sorting and analysis.

I want to develop / deliver multiple Alinean-powered sales / marketing tools – will these be integrated on one platform?

2011-09-15T07:33:00.000-07:00

Yes, one of the unique elements of the Alinean platform is that it was designed to support from one tool, to an entire library / catalog of demand-gen and/or sales enablement tools. All hosted and managed / delivered from a single standardized tools platform.

What service level guarantees do I have with the Alinean sales / marketing tool SaaS service / delivery?

2011-09-15T07:31:00.000-07:00

Alinean’s XcelLive platform is governed by a Service Level Agreement, outlining all key criteria for support, availability, reporting, and remediation. This agreement is part of your SaaS license contract, and an important part of our services and commitment to your use of the application.

The target service level availability for the software services is 99.0% or better. Availability is calculated as the percentage of uptime for the server platform and supporting network access, excluding scheduled maintenance windows. Availability is reported monthly, and trending analysis is available on a quarterly and annual basis.

Support requests and responses are managed on a priority basis, all with specific requirements, as detailed in the SLA.

What security policies do you support with the Alinean sales / marketing tool service / delivery?

2011-09-15T07:30:00.000-07:00

Alinean provides a highly secure software-as-a-service platform. Alinean engages an independent security firm to conduct regular audits to ensure Alinean’s environment complies with security standards aligned with the highest industry standards such as SAS70, PCI, and ISO/IEC 27002.

Our digital security includes:

· Identity and Access – XcelLive provides roles based security and require passwords meeting minimum security criteria. Passwords are stored using a salted hash.

· Network and Systems Management – All XcelLive communication is handled via SSL. All XcelLive infrastructure is regularly monitored and receive timely updates of all security patches.

· Network Intrustion Detection – Application and host firewall and IDS/IPS software monitor traffic and block anomalous activity while logging the actions taken. Critical security logging events are alerted in realtime and reviewed

· Vulnerability auditing is performed via Virtual Security Research, LLC (third party vendor) to assess application penetration risks and perform external network vulnerability assessments. The XcelLive infrastructure is regularly monitored and maintained by UnbreakableIT (third party vendor).

· Data / Database Security – Data is located in a secure data center. Data is backed up (encrypted) nightly and archived offsite with Iron Mountain weekly

· Disaster Recovery – All application server and database information is backed up regularly and regularly archived offsite. Critical systems are configured using redundancy and hot standby configurations.

Alinean’s XcelLive platform is hosted at a the TimeWarner co-location facility located in Orlando, Florida. This site is physically secured with the following features:

· Physical access to systems – physical access is controlled by 4 security checkpoints requiring separate validation

· Hardening and Protection – hardening and protection guidelines are based on CIS and NSA standards and are reviewed regularly

· Power security / redundancy – Power is conditioned for spikes, surges, brownouts and other impairments that may affect equipment and is tested quarterly. Power continuity is provided by battery backups and diesel generators.

· Network security / redundancy – Network is isolated and protected by leading firewall, switching and load balancing hardware.

Will the Alinean sales / marketing tool development and delivery require IT involvement?

2011-09-15T07:27:00.000-07:00

Since the solution is a turnkey Software as a Service (SaaS), IT involvement does not need to occur, or is minimal.

In some instances, IT will review service level agreements, security and data protection policies. We have as some of our customers the largest IT firms in the world, and have passed their scrutiny and audits in each of these areas, with documentation available upon request.

If the tool data optionally needs to be integrated with existing CRM / lead nurturing systems, our team will work with those groups and our Interactive Content Connector services to easily specify, customize and deliver the necessary integration.

Do the Alinean sales / marketing tools support multiple languages?

2011-09-15T07:26:00.000-07:00

Yes, the Alinean sales / marketing tools support multiple languages, including double-byte formats.

The platform itself has been translated into 10+ languages.

Each tool has custom content in the user interface and reports that needs to be translated separately.

Do the Alinean sales / marketing tools support multiple currencies?

2011-09-15T07:20:00.000-07:00

Yes, the tools support over 120 different currencies and formats.

The user, upon registration, can establish a default currency to use on all analyses they create. As well, currency can be changed on the fly in any analysis.

What additional information can Alinean capture about the user or analyses from sales / marketing tools?

2011-09-15T07:18:00.000-07:00

When the tool is run by a user, various prompts are used to collect detailed information about the customer’s opportunities, practices and current costs. As well, the tool can also help recommend solutions and provide cost-benefit analysis (depending on the type of tool).

All of this rich information is captured and available in a number of ways.

First, the information can be passed to your current CRM / lead nurturing system using an integrated Interactive Content Connector service.

Second, the information is stored in the Alinean tool database, and can be mined for analysis.

Can we collect lead / registration information from marketing tool users?

2011-09-15T07:15:00.000-07:00

The Alinean powered tools are built / hosted on Alinean’s XcelLive platform, which has a number of lead capture options and connectors to integrate this information into your CRM / lead nurturing system.

The tool has its own registration form, which can be customized, or it can pass registration to your own registration form / system.

As well, any survey data that is captured, key results, along with the registration data, can be fed to your lead management / marketing automation system. This is rich data that will dramatically help with lead nurturing and follow-up.

If you already have the user as identified and registered prior to accessing the Diagnostic Assessment Tool, upon linking to the assessment tool, this information can be fed to the tool in order to avoid re-registration and pre-populate key profile data to streamline the engagement process.

Can I share my analysis / assessment results with others on my team, or even customers?

2011-09-15T07:13:00.000-07:00

Yes, the tool supports collaboration with other users.

You can invite any user to collaborate with you on an analysis. They will receive an invite as a result. If they are registered already, they can access and review the analysis you sent them, providing input as appropriate.

If they are not already registered, the tool prompts them to register, and makes sure there are no access restrictions in place before allowing them to collaborate on the analysis.

What print options are available for customer reports from the Alinean sales / marketing tools?

2011-09-15T07:12:00.000-07:00

Printing is done via templates, which the analyst / tool author uses to specify what is in a specific report, and install in the system for all to utilize.

Using the print function, the user of the tool can choose to have the report developed and sent to them via e-mail, or downloaded for review and printing.

For any tool, multiple templates can be provided to support printing in different formats, such as Word, PDF or PPT, or for supporting different purposes, having a report that is just an executive summary or a full report.

The report content is based on the user entered data and analysis, and is intelligently controlled based on these two factors – presenting only the relevant results. With this, various report sections are included / inhibited and customized based on user entry and results.

We have a new value selling / marketing tool that needs to be developed? Can we learn to do the authoring / development of a new tool ourselves?

2011-09-15T07:10:00.000-07:00

Yes, we have several customers and partners who are authoring their own sales and marketing tools. Anyone with basic spreadsheet / Word skills can be taught how to create and publish any number of sales and marketing tools on the Alinean platform.

A special ValueExpert™ Authoring training class and certification provide the skills your team needs to proficiently develop and maintain your sales / marketing tools using the Alinean XcelLive™ platform.

A value selling / marketing model needs updating – can we do the maintenance / update ourselves, or do we need to go to you to get these updates made?

2011-09-15T07:08:00.000-07:00

It is very easy for us to continue to evolve and maintain the content, benchmarks and intelligence within any of the Alinean powered tools.

No software application development / programming is needed to edit / evolve the user questions, benchmark comparisons, financial benefit / cost models, configurations and pricing, recommendations and advice or report content. An analyst simply edits a spreadsheet and / or Word / PPT template to change the questions, metrics, rules and personalized report content.

Although we normally maintain and evolve the tools for you as a service, if you would like to maintain the tool on your own, your experts can be trained to do so, sharing or transferring the maintenance and evolution to suite your needs / budget.

A special ValueExpert™ Authoring training class and certification provide the skills your team needs to proficiently maintain your sales / marketing tools using the Alinean XcelLive™ platform.

I have a spreadsheet based tool to convert into an online sales / marketing tool – can this be done directly?

2011-09-15T07:06:00.000-07:00

Yes, the Alinean can uniquely take your existing spreadsheet based tools, and using our XcelLive™ platform, directly create a sales / marketing tool with NO software development needed.

The Alinean analyst works with your team to enhance and enrich the content in the spreadsheet, and then applies some special formatting and controls so it can be properly read and interpreted by the platform. With a push of a button in an administrative console, the spreadsheet is loaded into the platform, and a tool is automatically developed and delivered to users.

Along with the spreadsheet, printed reports are created and specified in a similar fashion, with an Alinean analyst using Word or PPT to create the report, using XML to pull key results and specify charts and graphs for inclusion.

Should the team want to update the user interface, metrics, report or other tool elements, an update and republish into the XcelLive™ platform of the spreadsheet, Word and/or PPT template are all that is needed – with NO software development needed.

More information on the platform can be found at: http://www.alinean.com/XcelLive.aspx

Can I have a product “configure” visually in the Alinean sales / marketing tools?

2011-09-15T07:03:00.000-07:00

Yes, Graphics within the Canvas area of the tool, the tab area where the prompts and results are displayed, are dynamic, and can support visually representing different selected solution sets, or dynamic configuration builds.

The rules can be controlled based on user selections, sizing, formulas and data.

Can graphics be included in the Alinean sales / marketing tools to "dress them up"?

2011-09-15T07:00:00.001-07:00

Graphic images can be placed into the tool frame or canvas to help dress up the tool. And make it very visually appealing.

Graphics within the Canvas area of the tool, the tab area where the prompts and results are displayed, are dynamic, intelligently displayed based on user input, configurations, or results.

Can the Alinean sales / marketing tool reports be customized to look like our typical white papers, proposals or presentations?

2011-09-15T06:59:00.000-07:00

Yes, the reports are based on standard Word and PPT templates, making it easy to exactly match the style and format you require.

Matching the current style provides for continuity with existing marketing and sales collateral. Developing a unique style makes the white papers and presentations the tool develops stand out for third-party positioning and enhanced credibility.

Can the Alinean sales / marketing tools be branded to match our website / branding style guide?

2011-09-15T06:57:00.000-07:00

Yes, the tool’s frame, canvas and many other elements can be customized to match your branding / style requirements.

Various elements such as logos, fonts, graphics and other visual features are customizable to deliver the look you need to satisfy branding requirements and “wow” prospects.

Can we author our own ROI / TCO Calculators / Sales Tools using the Alinean platform?

2011-09-14T13:57:00.000-07:00

Yes, we have several customers and partners who are authoring their own ROI/ TCO Tools. Anyone with basic spreadsheet / Word skills can be taught how to create and publish any number of sales and marketing tools on the Alinean platform.

A special ValueExpert™ Authoring training class and certification provide the skills your team needs to proficiently develop and maintain ROI / TCO Tools and other sales / marketing tools using the Alinean XcelLive™ platform.

How are the Alinean ROI / TCO Calculator / Sales Tools updated, for changes such as pricing, research updates, etc?

2011-09-14T13:52:00.000-07:00

It is very easy for us to continue to evolve and maintain the content, configurations and pricing, value propositions and calculations, default metrics and more within the ROI / TCO Calculators / Sales Tools.

No software application development / programming is needed to edit / evolve the survey questions, benchmark comparisons, recommendations or report content. An analyst simply edits a spreadsheet and / or Word / PPT template to change the questions, cost and benefits engine, default metrics, financial calculations and personalized report content.

Although we normally maintain and evolve the ROI / TCO Tool for you as a service, if you would like to maintain the tool on your own, your experts can be trained to do so, sharing or transferring the maintenance and evolution to suite your needs / budget.

A special ValueExpert™ Authoring training class and certification provide the skills your team needs to proficiently maintain ROI / TCO Tools and other sales / marketing tools using the Alinean XcelLive™ platform.

We already have an ROI / TCO spreadsheet. Can you convert this into an online ROI / TCO Calculator / Sales Tool?

2011-09-14T13:50:00.000-07:00

Alinean can uniquely take your existing spreadsheet based tools, and using our XcelLive™ platform, directly create a sales / marketing tool with NO software development needed.

The Alinean analyst works with your team to enhance and enrich the content in the spreadsheet, and then applies some special formatting and controls so it can be properly read and interpreted by the platform. With a push of a button in an administrative console, the spreadsheet is loaded into the platform, and a tool is automatically developed and delivered to users.

More information on the platform can be found at: http://www.alinean.com/XcelLive.aspx

Prospects can be skeptical. How do I get my prospects to believe and “own” the ROI / TCO Calculator / Sales Tool results?

2011-09-14T13:48:00.000-07:00

This is often a multi-step process:

· First, buyers tend to trust analyst groups and peers more than vendors. The first way to gain trust is to indicate that the sales tool you are using has been developed by Alinean, a trusted third party, created by Gartner benchmarking / economic justification experts with over 20 years of experience

· Second, the defaults in the tool have been researched and validated by a third party firm, Alinean and the other indicated / documented sources

· Third, the tool is not a “black-box” calculator that always produces positive results. Any and all assumptions in the tool are available for review and can be changed / edited to match your own specific costs, opportunities and estimated improvements.

Review and editing is encouraged, and presents the best way ultimately for prospects to “own” the results.

How long does it take a user to interact with the ROI / TCO Calculator / Sales Tool and generate an analysis report?

2011-09-14T13:45:00.000-07:00

ROI / TCO Calculators and Tools require the user to answer questions, review results, and prepare a report. Interaction time is dependent on the number of questions that need to be answered, and the time it takes to review results online.

This can range from 2 to 10 minutes for on-line calculators with just a few questions, or 10-20 minutes for more complex sales tools.

Is ROI /TCO Analysis too complex for sales people to handle?

2011-09-14T13:38:00.000-07:00

Over 90% of today’s B2B solution buyers require a business case prior to approved purchases, and over 81% expect the solution provider to develop and deliver the business case for them. Their frugal sentiment – if you want to sell us something, you, the sales professionals, need to provide quantified economic justification.

You can’t afford to not have your sales people proactively develop and deliver credible business cases for proposed solutions. However, we know that although improved, research shows that only 6% of sales professionals are truly outcome / value-selling focused.

ROI / TCO Analysis tools should be designed knowing that sales professionals are evolving their value selling engagement methodology and skill sets. The tools should be easy to use proactively with clients, not requiring much data input to create quick-engagement results initially, with more ability to review and alter assumptions in subsequent client workshop engagements. The results should be presented / visualized clearly in a non-complex manner, helping the sales professional bridge the gap to a credible CFO presentable report, and easy / clear defense of the assumptions and calculations.

Is using an ROI / TCO Calculator too difficult to let buyers do this themselves from our web site?

2011-09-14T13:36:00.000-07:00

ROI / TCO Analysis Tools can be designed specifically for self-service use by prospects / customers from your web-site or marketing portal.

Self-service tools are simplified to provide prospects / customers with a credible analysis, but one which can be produced with just a few minutes of interaction.

These tools are used to help connect and engage, communicating and educating the potential buyer on the quantified value that their organization can gain from proposed solutions.

Tom Pisello: The ROI Guy

New eBook: Product, Solution or Value - You Decide

Top Blog Posts of 2011

Predictions 2012 Roundup

Will the Return to Good Times Bring an End to Frugalnomics?

Ready for Continued Frugalnomics? Cutting Costs Remains Top Buyer Priority for 2012

Happy New Year! Maybe not for IT Sales & Marketing

Is there a Way to Improve Sales Tool Adoption?

Product, Solution or Value - You Decide! (Sandhill.com Feature Article)

The Spotlight of Enterprise App Stores Can Help Fight Growing Shadow IT (Sandhill.com feature)

Infographic: Technology an Alternative for Business Travel?

Content Investments Effective When Aligned to Facilitate Buyer’s Journey

9 Cloud MythBusters: ROI, TCO and More

The Economic-Focused Buyer Drives Need for New B2B Sales and Marketing Strategies for 2012

How will the Economy Affect the Buyer’s Decision Process in 2012?

CFOs are Large and in Charge of Buying Process in 2012

Iron Mountain Cost Savings Advisor Interactive White Paper

4 Ways to Optimize Content for the Economy-Focused Buyer in 2012

Alinean Translates Fight Frugalnomics Momentum into Strong Third Quarter 2011 Performance

Integrate Value Marketing & Selling with CRM & Marketing Automation

Recovery Makes Selling IT Much Easier into 2012? Fahgettaboudit!

SMBs a Bright Spot for IT Sales and Marketing into the New Year?

Are you CIO Worthy?

Innovate or Die: Actions IT Solution Providers Can Take To Help IT Leaders Meet the Number One Challenge for 2012

Alinean Introduces Interactive Content Connectors for CRM / Marketing Automation Integration

Demand-Gen Report Interview on Need for New Sales Enablement Tools

Case Study: Windows Azure TCO Tool

Case Study: ShoreTel TCO Tool (powered by Alinean)

On-Demand WebCast: Optimizing Content Marketing to Facilitate The Buyer's Journey

B2B Buyers: It’s all about the Benjamins

Does Alinean guarantee results / ROI investing in / using your tools? Do you help us measure and prove program success / improve if not achieving goals?

Can you help us support the use of the Alinean-powered sales / marketing tools in deals?

Does Alinean provide direct phone / email support to sales / marketing tool users?

Do you have sales training to help our sales team and channel partners better adopt and use the Alinean-powered tools?

How can I get my sales folks to best adopt the Alinean-powered sales tools?

Can the Alinean-powered assessments / analysis be fed data from other tools to jumpstart or automatically create analyses?

Can the user information captured with the Alinean-powered marketing tools be shared with CRM / marketing automation solutions?

How do we protect the IP within the Alinean-powered sales / marketing tools?

Do the Alinean-powered sales / marketing tools provide help to guide a user?

Is there an administrator console for managing users of the Alinean sales / marketing SaaS platform?

Are usage reports available from the Alinean-powered sales / marketing tools?

Can the Alinean tools assessment / analysis data be mined to further understand customer responses and analysis results?

I want to develop / deliver multiple Alinean-powered sales / marketing tools – will these be integrated on one platform?

What service level guarantees do I have with the Alinean sales / marketing tool SaaS service / delivery?

What security policies do you support with the Alinean sales / marketing tool service / delivery?

Will the Alinean sales / marketing tool development and delivery require IT involvement?

Do the Alinean sales / marketing tools support multiple languages?

Do the Alinean sales / marketing tools support multiple currencies?

What additional information can Alinean capture about the user or analyses from sales / marketing tools?

Can we collect lead / registration information from marketing tool users?

Can I share my analysis / assessment results with others on my team, or even customers?

What print options are available for customer reports from the Alinean sales / marketing tools?

We have a new value selling / marketing tool that needs to be developed? Can we learn to do the authoring / development of a new tool ourselves?

A value selling / marketing model needs updating – can we do the maintenance / update ourselves, or do we need to go to you to get these updates made?

I have a spreadsheet based tool to convert into an online sales / marketing tool – can this be done directly?

Can I have a product “configure” visually in the Alinean sales / marketing tools?

Can graphics be included in the Alinean sales / marketing tools to "dress them up"?

Can the Alinean sales / marketing tool reports be customized to look like our typical white papers, proposals or presentations?

Can the Alinean sales / marketing tools be branded to match our website / branding style guide?

Can we author our own ROI / TCO Calculators / Sales Tools using the Alinean platform?

How are the Alinean ROI / TCO Calculator / Sales Tools updated, for changes such as pricing, research updates, etc?

We already have an ROI / TCO spreadsheet. Can you convert this into an online ROI / TCO Calculator / Sales Tool?

Prospects can be skeptical. How do I get my prospects to believe and “own” the ROI / TCO Calculator / Sales Tool results?

How long does it take a user to interact with the ROI / TCO Calculator / Sales Tool and generate an analysis report?

Is ROI /TCO Analysis too complex for sales people to handle?

Is using an ROI / TCO Calculator too difficult to let buyers do this themselves from our web site?