lenges: (1) the company’s PCs are plagued with Internet viruses,
and the IT staff is consumed by inspecting and repairing them; (2)
configuring and loading the company’s software onto each newly
installed PC takes considerable time; and (3) the IT staff has
uncharacteristically high turnover.

The salesperson could convey the value of his company’s

offerings in each of these three areas. First, she would describe the
profits or savings that the offering generates for the customer.
Then she would develop a quantitative formula to estimate the
dollar amounts of the profit or savings.

Model

How do the salesperson’s offerings create value for this customer?
What are some specific ways that her products and services can
increase the customer’s revenue or decrease its costs? Let’s take
one of the customer’s needs—reducing the cost of computer virus-
es—and one of the company’s solutions: outsourced security serv-
ices. Now, let’s list a few bullet points that describe in qualitative
terms (that is, in words rather than numbers) how the customer
could obtain value from the company’s outsourced security solu-
tion (Figure 10.1).

Now, let’s take one bullet point from that list and quantify it

(Figure 10.2).

This is a very powerful calculation that can be made right in

front of the customer, on the back of an envelope, or on a white
board. The best salespeople actually ask the customer to provide
the figures for the assumptions, so they are immediately bought in.

Obviously this example shows only the benefit side of the

equation, and not the cost of the outsourced services. There’s a
reason for that: We’ve only explored one area of value creation.

76

Create

FIGURE 10.1

Value description.