Ventana software support forum

Posted: **Fri Jan 02, 2004 9:23 am**

>1. establishing and maintaining a preferred supplier position
>2. developing a relationship of trust with the customer
>3. the offering itself
>4. price

Congratulations on the contract. All of the above impress me as
attractiveness multipliers in their own right in which each of their
respective contributing variables (vA*vB*vC*vD, etc.) are stocks or table
functions that rely on stocks. Whether or not they are interdependent on
each other is hard to say with the information provided. Assuming that
their decision was made "up or down" from the final bides, all of the above
four variables may form the determining attractiveness multiplier (1*2*3*4).

Bill Braun
From: Bill Braun <medprac@hlthsys.com>

Posted: **Fri Jan 02, 2004 10:14 am**

I have just completed several months of work on a very large government bid
in the UK.

We won, but I have a very inadequate model of how we did it.

I did an informal survey of key participants, and the factors they said
were important were:

1. establishing and maintaining a preferred supplier position

2. developing a relationship of trust with the customer

3. the offering itself

4. price

There are a number of interesting questions about these:

which are stocks and which are converters?
what are the underlying resources that influence the trajectories of
each?
what are the interdependencies among them?
where are the management levers?

Does anyone know of resources that might help me develop these ideas?

...george...
From: George A Simpson <gsimpso4@csc.com>

Dr. George Simpson, Principal Consultant, CSC
Royal Pavilion T3 floor 2, Wellesley Road, Aldershot, Hampshire GU11 1PZ
United Kingdom
office +44 (0)1252 536523, fax +44 (0)1252 534132, mobile 07814 623 518

Posted: **Tue Jan 06, 2004 11:13 pm**

A few thoughts - in many cases we are concerned with getting people to
switch from one state to another - in your case from not especially
favouring us to favouring us enough to give us the deal. I think
theres good behavioural psychological evidence to support a model that
captures accumulating emotions to favour us (which may be multiple ...
e.g. like the offering, trust the people, acceptable price etc.). When
enough of these accumulating stocks hit trigger levels, then the
decision swings our way.

A wrinkle on this is that some such stocks may be hygiene factors
(only a price of less than X is acceptable) and others motivators (trust
the people at least to level Y).

One implication of this is that required decisions (e.g. we must decide
on date XXX amongst available alternatives) could depend on sub-optimal,
but risk-minimal decisions - I dont trust them enough, but at least
their price is less than X.

Kim Warren
From: "Kim Warren" <Kim@strategydynamics.com>

Posted: **Wed Jan 07, 2004 2:49 pm**

Hello George,

I assume your question refers to the recent Inland Revenue deal.

I used to work for EDS, who lost that deal, and who used a "strategic
selling" process.
No doubt CSC uses something similar, and the answers to your questions are
really hidden/contained within whatever sales process you followed.

I think the problem is that although the factors (or meta-process) may be
the same in every deal, the priorities (or actual process, what works and
what doesnt) are very different in every case.
This means that even if you could model the last deal perfectly, that would
not help with selling the next one.

Hence, in sales terms, a successful sale always requires a combination of a
good process (aka System) and a good sales person.
And in Systems terms, the selling process straddles the line between "System
Dynamics" and "Complex Systems".

However, nobody seems to be answering your specific question, namely: "Does
anyone know of resources that might help me develop these ideas?"

The best resource I can recommend is the top 10 Sales People in your company
worldwide (and/or the "Sales Managers" with the best track records).

Hope this helps,

With regards,
Finn Jackson
From: "Finn Jackson" <Finn.Jackson@Tangley.Com>
Guildford

Posted: **Fri Jan 09, 2004 5:54 pm**

Finn,

You pointed out some of the considerable pitfalls of using a systematic
method to solve generic problems. But there is an up side. It is usually
beneficial for us to characterize the systems we work in/with. The selling
example is great. We should be aware of the generic components to consider
in such a system and even more, we should know which parameters the system
results are most sensitive to. So, even though we have a winning method for
this campaign it may not work in the next because the subjects are
different and have different switch points.

This diversity does not kill the deal, it only suggests the need to
understand the client before offering a deal. This means that the system
parameters need to be better characterized prior to presenting a proposal or
maybe as late as attempting to close a deal. The model can be used to
determine what you really need to know to make the sale.

Additionally, we can see that we can not know the true value of a system
parameter and, due to measurement noise and sampling, we may not know the
value of the current state of the system or the value of an input or output.
But we still have to make decisions on how to proceed. So the task is to
maximize our likelihood of success based upon the statistical properties of
our system (and the corresponding measurements).

Sure, we can not guarantee a sale, but by doing our homework, we can
maximize our likelihood of success or minimize our likelihood of failure, or
maximize the expected value our long term profitability or . . .

Raymond T. Joseph, PE
RTJoseph@ev1.net

Aarden Control Engineering and Science

Posted: **Mon Jan 12, 2004 9:42 am**

Ray Joseph gave me some specific feedback on what I said about Models for
Winning Business.

I think that I agree with nearly all of it!

For sure, as he says, "we can not guarantee a sale, but by doing our
homework [into how the system works], we can
maximize our likelihood of success or minimize our likelihood of failure, or
..." whatever.

The key point, I think, is that we cannot truly know what the parameters of
the system are until (in this case) the client has decided whether to accept
our proposal or not.

We may think that "Factor X" is going to help us win the deal, but we can
never know for sure until *after* the client has decided who to buy from. (A
bit like "Schroedingers Cat".)

This means that each deal can help us build a better understanding of how to
win the *next* one (which will be different). But it can never help us win
the *current* deal.

And that, in turn, means that we always have to rely both on systems *and*
people.

Perhaps getting *that* balance right is itself a critical success factor in
the (sales) process or System!

With regards,
Finn
From: "Finn Jackson" <Finn.Jackson@Tangley.Com>

Posted: **Tue Jan 13, 2004 7:14 pm**

Having heard the previous discussions and the response by Finn Jackson, and
appreciating the conclusions reached -- it still may be said that there has
been a lot of practical and, less often, verifiable research done on the
sales process. Whole books have been written on what makes a good
salesperson successful.

Years ago, while I worked at Wilson Learning (a corporate training firm),
our research department did some verifiable (and, subsequently, verified)
work on what they called "source credibility" as it applied to the initial
stages of a sales relationship. This research led to some practical
suggestions for a salespersons behavior -- suggestions that, when followed,
actually did increase the prospective clients perception of the
salespersons "credibility." These perceptions, in turn, correlated pretty
well with subsequent buying behavior. In fact, "credibility" and the
"trust" it engenders (on the part of the prospective client) explained a
whole lot of what has been commonly found in business -- that there is a
"salesperson factor" which nearly overwhelms almost every other variable in
explaining whether customers buy.

Interestingly, the single factor which constituted a huge portion of
perceived "credibility" was what we termed "intent" -- the customers
perception of the intentions of the salesperson. (The two ends of this
"intent" scale could be described: "Do I think the salesperson is in this
strictly for themselves, to maximize the amount of money they or their
company make? Or do I think the salesperson has my best interests in mind,
and believes that by serving my interests she/he will maximize the amount of
their own benefit?")

None of this, of course, was dynamically modeled -- it was all correlational
research -- but suggestive of potentially important model variables I think.

From: "John Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com>

Posted: **Sun Feb 01, 2004 12:07 pm**

Finn has brought us another opportunity with the comments:

"And that, in turn, means that we always have to rely both on systems *and*
people.

Perhaps getting *that* balance right is itself a critical success factor in
the (sales) process or System!"

The opportunity seems to be in coordinating the machine and experienced
operator (sales person) aspects of the decision process. So how can a
machine help us make a sale? Well, how does a person make a sale? These
questions will (probably) produce a vision of the offer
development/acceptance process which can be parameterized. We would find
that client-owned parameters need to be identified in order to shape an
offer to fit their needs.

Somehow, the machine is going to help us make decisions that will support
developing a winning offer. When the sales team sees the machine suggested
needs-prioritization, there is an opportunity to re-quantify and
re-prioritize.

The sales process is typically composed of ongoing interactions suggesting
that the parameters can be re-evaluated on a regular basis by both the
machine and the team. If we were to incorporate this combined effort into
the model itself, we might be able to identify how well the team performs
(in general) or maybe how it inhibits success.

...
J.J.L.,

This seems to address the question of how to present a tool to a client
rather than what tool to use or how to use it.

....
Jack brings this together well. Businesses are typically looking for a
solution not a technology.

Raymond T. Joseph, PE
RTJoseph@ev1.net

Aarden Control Engineering and Science

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