Leading B2B companies know and understand how to effectively sell the value of their products to customers. Yet selling multiple products or modules together to create complete solutions for the customer presents its own unique set of challenges. In return for giving you, the supplier, all of their business, customers expect a volume discount. But in fact, for many vendors, the ability to offer complete solutions to customers can be an important competitive differentiator. And instead of capturing their fair share of that value, salespeople continue to get beat up on price, often giving away those highly-sought discounts for customer loyalty.
In reality, bundled solutions translate into high efficiency and productivity gains because, after all, who would want to deal with multiple suppliers, contracts, etc. when you can get it all faster and easier with just a single source supplier? From a value perspective, bundled solutions deliver more value than the mere sum of its parts; here, 1+1=3.
Now that you understand and sell the value of your individual products, you must do the same for your bundled offerings. With the introduction of Merged Models in LeveragePoint, this is now easier than ever before. Merge two or more distinct value models to create a package that not only demonstrates more customer value, but also helps you tell your value story, and capture your value in the marketplace! And by replacing your spreadsheets with a cloud-based tool, you can visually demonstrate the combined value of your solution and identify additional value drivers that enhance your value proposition.
Below is an example of a value model from the chemicals industry that shows the value of a highly differentiated product, the specialty catalyst on the left. The product increases efficiency, product quality (leading to fewer replacements), and includes technical support.. And let’s say your customer is also evaluating a more mature, commodity-like catalyst on the right. It has some differentiated value based upon your corporate value proposition, but the product itself can be sourced from a number of suppliers. Most customers would expect a discount when purchasing both because they are adding volume to their purchase. But in this case, as the supplier, you are able to demonstrate even more value with a bundled solution. Not only do you retain the value from the differentiated features of each product, but now there is an additional value driver from providing a single, reliable source of supply, which reduces customer operational costs and risk.
By proactively quantifying this impact for the customer and using those numbers to engage in a discussion around value rather than price, they are in a better position to mitigate discounting without risking losing part of the contract to a low-cost competitor.
