ROI is king

Welcome to the new world of sales. Now more than ever, your customers expect major bang for the buck. They want to know up front whether their investments will pay for themselves by delivering increased revenue, profits, employee loyalty or customer loyalty. And they won’t just take your word for it anymore. You have to justify their investment by proving you can deliver ROI.

These days, the salespeople who close deals are the ones who can demonstrate the business impact of their solutions. They don’t wait for their customers to ask about ROI. They lead with it. Throughout the sales cycle, they strive to translate expected business results into ROI early and often.

The typical scenario: You conduct a great meeting with a business prospect, engage in intelligent, goal-oriented conversation and exchange new and exciting ideas. The prospect gives you every buying signal you’ve ever heard of, and you leave feeling confident that the deal is done. You write a proposal, review it with your team and include detailed pricing and timelines. Then you send the proposal to your prospect along with a well-written email.

But then, instead of the quick response you expected, you get radio silence. What happened? It could be many things, but the first thing you should ask yourself is whether or not you demonstrated ROI. Did you engage the prospect in an ROI discussion and show him how he would be able to evaluate the ROI of your solutions? Did you make a compelling case for choosing you?