By Reuben Silvers, Senior Consultant, Kotler Marketing Group
It is now more critical than ever for enterprise technology vendors to demonstrate and defend the value of maintenance and support.
To help SSPA members meet this challenge, Kotler Marketing Group has partnered with the SSPA to develop a first-of-its kind package of sales tools and training. Our process for improving companies’ ability to sell the value of maintenance and support consists of the following three steps:
- Benchmarking sales and renewal practices;
- Developing a customized “ROI calculator” renewal sales tool;
- Training the sales and renewal teams.
Each step is described in more detail below.
Step 1 - Benchmarking the Renewals Process
This initial phase will draw upon Kotler Marketing’s best-practice research conducted in partnership with the SSPA. This research found that companies who successfully defend maintenance and support fees excel in three key areas:
- They arm the right set of people with the right data to defend the “value story” at point of renewal.
- They set intelligent, enforceable sales compensation and marketing policies that discourage discounting from occurring.
- They maintain a strong focus on and commitment to service delivery execution.
In this phase, we will benchmark your maintenance and support organization against best-practice companies in each of these areas. This assessment and benchmarking exercise will cover areas including:
- Service performance metrics;
- Renewal team composition;
- Renewal business systems;
- Renewal team compensation policies;
- Customer communications and renewal sales tools.
Findings will be compared to similar companies involved in our research. Industry benchmarks may also be drawn from Kotler Marketing research with customers on ROI selling.
Step 2: Developing Custom ROI Sales Tools
Kotler Marketing develops custom “ROI calculators” that enable sales and renewal teams to document the value of their maintenance and support offerings, and communicate this value to customers.
- Each ROI tool is a customized and enhanced version of Kotler Marketing’s VQ™ for maintenance and support. The VQ™ uses an ROI framework developed in partnership with SSPA and its members. It is based in MS Excel, and includes a license to Kotler’s library of VBA modules for quickly adding and customizing common sales-tool features, including automated reports in MS Word.
- Each calculator’s design and printed reports are consistent with your corporate design standards and brand guidelines.
- SSPA research provides a rich source of supporting benchmarks to use in the ROI calculations, and Kotler Marketing can work with you to supplement this with key metrics gathered in-house.
Step 3: Sales & Renewal Team Training
You can do everything right when it comes to developing ROI sales tools, but still fail to get the anticipated results if your renewal team is not properly trained to use them with customers. That is why Kotler Marketing is developing a sales training program specifically to help sales and renewal teams defend the value of service, support and maintenance. The program, “Selling the Value of Maintenance & Support,” covers topics such as:
- Identifying renewal situations where ROI-based selling is most advantageous;
- Getting customer cooperation and buy-in;
- Using the custom ROI tools from Step 2;
- Investigating customer business goals;
- Understanding ROI, NPV and other financial metrics;
- Negotiations and objection handling.
During this final phase of the project, Kotler Marketing customizes the curriculum to include the custom ROI tools, and to fit with your existing sales process and methodology.
About Kotler Marketing Group
Kotler Marketing Group is a consulting firm that specializes in marketing management and strategic marketing. Founded in 1988, our philosophy is based on the work of Dr. Philip Kotler, the world's leading strategic marketer. Our mission is to help our clients engineer profitable growth.
ROI Services
Over the past six years Kotler’s ROI Services Practice has built a track record of success at helping companies implement value-based sales and marketing strategies. Our ROI consultants help clients to document and demonstrate the value of innovative technologies. We have advised dozens of clients on ROI strategy.
Kotler’s ROI consultants have published reports on ROI sales and marketing practices, including our 2004 ROI Best Practices Survey, and have published articles in Line 56, Business 2.0; Selling Power, Marketing News, and have been quoted in Business Week and the Wall Street Journal.
Leading technology companies that have already trained their personnel on Kotler Marketing Group’s value-based sales and marketing approach include SunGard, Adobe, IBM, British Telecom, Ascential Software and Interwoven, among others. |
