TL;DR – Value alone doesn’t win deals – Differentiated value does

“Our SaaS solution will save them a minimum of $500k a year, but still, they won’t buy….”

 I heard this again on Friday from a startup founder I work with, and it inspired me to write a post about it. 

I understand the frustration from a sales perspective. But that doesn’t matter. 

The way to find a solution is to look at the problem from the other end.

Here’s the thing

Value is subjective. For one company, $500K can mean a 5% boost in profit; for another, it’s a rounding error. 

What matters is articulating how your solution creates differentiated value.

Let me explain 

When I was at Unit4, IDC calculated our solution would save a customer on average $300K per year because they’d need a much smaller team to manage business change than with alternative ERP solutions. 

Solid value. But no one cared.

What they did care about was what it meant to their business when they could avoid the adverse effects of rigid ERP systems…

• the negative impact on customer satisfaction
• constantly going dark on information
• the frustrating drops in efficiency
• delays in product launches
• impact on stock valuation
• And the list went on…..

For companies in a constant flux of change, avoiding this would save AND gain them 10s of millions and give them a clear advantage as a business.

As such, positioning this with the right type of customers sliced the length of our sales cycles (even in Government), increased our win rate from <20% to >80%, and the word discount magically disappeared from the conversations.

 

Question for you to reflect upon

What value does your SaaS solution deliver beyond the obvious cost-saving? What if you led with that in your positioning?

 

Be Remarkable

 

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