Sometimes the things you don’t find in a study turn out to be as interesting as the things you do find. One very consistent “non-finding” concerns the effectiveness of the classic ROI message. We’ve asked customers to rate the effectiveness of the ROI pitch they hear and assessed reps and managers on their effectiveness at delivering this pitch, trying to link the effectiveness back to a variety of commercial outcomes. To our surprise, we’ve never found the delivery of the ROI message to have any significant explanatory power. And since zero correlation means no causation, this is a finding that deserves some exploration.
I’m reminded of a recent conversation with business owners at a software company, who developed a new way of thinking about certain data problems. Though customers generally agreed that this was a better way to handle the data problems, the solution spanned many departments, and the software company couldn’t convince customers that the hypothetical returns were worth the extra coordination efforts. Failure to generate a positive emotional response likely explains our non-finding with regards to the effectiveness of the ROI pitch.
It’s not that customers aren’t influenced by ROI calculations; it’s just that few people make complex business decisions based entirely on somebody else’s ROI calculations. Senior buyers are pretty savvy people – they know their own ability to derive a set of returns that will look sufficiently attractive. They also likely recognize that they are constantly pitched things that they are already inclined to like. In other words, buyers become perfectly cynical about value at the point at which the entire conversation becomes dominated by claims about value. It’s a subtle notion, but the hypothetical existence of value simply doesn’t challenge the customer.
This finding has profound implications for how marketers need to think about building the messaging and reinforces many of our findings around commercial teaching:
1) Challenge concrete customers assumptions. Everybody already assumes that we offer some hypothetical value; thus most people aren’t going to be very excited by the idea that you have value to deliver. You’d never be talking to them if they thought otherwise.
2) Lead to the value and unique strengths offered. The sales force still needs perspective on how the value is derived, but the calculations should be substantially built on how the customer has come to conceive of the problem. Ideally, Marketing shows Sales how to help the customer build this for themselves.
3) Use calculations to show why customers should care. Numbers can help you prove that the problems identified are worthy of the customer’s time. The absolute dollar amount, in other words, has to be worth the opportunity cost of solving that particular problem.
4) Show the sales force how to think about the sale. Show reps your ROI calculations to signal that the thing has been thought out and that it’s worthy of consideration, but make sure they end with the ROI pitch and that they don’t just start with it.
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