This was a great interview about what is so great with the consulting business. When you see parallel situations you can capitalize on, leverage and charge twice as much for, this is a great opportunity. We did the same thing; we came up with the reliability certificate and mailed it out to qualified prospects.
Before that we did some extra work on this one. We came up with a ‘return on investment’ comparison between our steam machine and the top competitors. We learned in the USP project that our steam machine lasted much longer in the field than all the competition. So we put together a little ‘return on investment chart’ that showed how much money our clients were saving by buying our steam machines.
It’s true we did extra work but that was the ‘key’ in helping us integrate this reliability and get the free report together. Now it is being offered on the web and by the distributors. This free report shows how our steam machine makes more money for customers than any other out there.
Now the sales people, four of them; inside sales people, are sending out free reports before they give any bids. They have dealers on the other end working with the end users and use that free report, plus the ROI analysis as part of the bidding process. That was huge integration in step 2. Getting those inside sales people sold on this report.
Then with step 3, the database. We started to get distributors using the report. We did more training around the USP and the ROI report. Alliances were also working with more distributors doing more marketing on their end. We went through the four steps and that finished about a year ago. Later Rich got an email from Jack the owner, and he said, “Richard, I just want you to know that we are having a record year because of our USP and because sales people are qualifying better, not wasting time on bids that shouldn’t be.”
So you see, a good USP is what you want. This helps eliminate prospects you shouldn’t be working with. What was happening here was the Steam people were getting burned out. Their engineering department, drafting, and design department was getting drained by bids that they should not have been submitting because these were all ‘price oriented’ buyers.
They didn’t care about an ROI on a steam machine. Once the ROI reports started being used by the sales people. For example; a guy would call and say; “I want a bid.” The sales person would say, “Before we do that bid, I need you to read this ROI report. Let’s go over it together first and see the advantages our machine has.” Guess what would happen if they didn’t fill out that report?
