March 19 (Customer Value Mapping Webinar)

How to Map Customer Value

So Customers Will Buy Now and Pay More

Guidebook Launch Webinar

Thursday March 19, 2009, 3:00pm Eastern Time

How the voice of the customer can reveal
the right value propositions throughout
the customer’s life cycle

I’m Michael Webb, and I'm the author of "Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way" (Kaplan, 2006). My team and I have helped dozens of companies such as MAQUET, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Marriott, WaterFurnace, DDI, and many smaller companies to identify bottlenecks, change behaviors, increase close ratios, and improve forecast accuracy by applying the concepts of lean and six sigma to their sales and marketing departments. I delivered the keynote addresses to the first two conferences ever held on applying Six Sigma to marketing and sales and have extensive sales training facilitation and field coaching experience with hundreds of sales people and managers in the U.S. and Canada.

Do customers seem to care less about the value you offer them?

If you are like many companies, your customers aren’t simply indifferent to your products. The problem is deeper than that.

For example, prospects attend trade shows and give out business cards, even though they almost never intend to buy. They ignore advertisements and promotions. Traditional ways of marketing to them no longer seem to work. They consume salespeople’s time for months. Further, they seem willing to renegotiate longstanding relationships at the drop of a hat, or even reopen closed bidding at the last minute.

The financial crisis is part of the problem, yet there is more to it. The sea change we are seeing is caused by shifts in market conditions that affect how companies now do business:

• oversupply of high-quality and (relatively) low-cost manufactured goods
• globalization of competition in many markets
• ubiquitous availability of information, thanks to search engines

Customers are Buying Differently Now

Even with all the control customers now have, they still need to solve problems; they still need to buy things.

They’re changing the way they buy only because forces around them have changed.

And if that is true, ask yourself: “Whose job is it in our company to improve the way we sell?”

Unfortunately, in most companies, the answer is: nobody.

Your products may be researched and tested. They may be priced well.

Yet they will fail in the market if the sales process is wrong.

Customer Value Mapping: A Key to Making Sales Easier

In this webinar, Michael Webb will present the latest rendition of his “Customer Value Mapping” approach:

• The simple logic for identifying what customers value
• A framework of templates for organizing and structuring value information
• How to apply VOC to the customer’s journey
• How customer value maps are used to design value propositions, selling tools, and overall sales processes

Executives will receive immediately actionable information that will change the way they manage marketing and selling organizations. Marketers will receive fill-in-the blank templates for creating sales tools and marketing collateral that salespeople will actually use. Salespeople will receive short-hand techniques for researching their customer’s business and formulating compelling offers.

You’ll gain a perspective on new selling methods and techniques that are possible, and how to determine what your organization needs. The content in these calls will be excellent for anyone who is analyzing their sales process/organization to determine what kind of outside help might be needed.

The webinar is free to members of SPIF! – the Sales Performance Improvement Forum.

Non-members may attend the webinar for a fee of $47.00. Registered attendees will receive access to the recorded versions of the presentations.

Membership in SPIF! (optional) provides access to all previous webinars, the Print SPIF! newsletter, and private bulletin board forums.

Act now to reserve your spot for this facinating and insightful event.