Fight Frugalnomics and driving B2B sales effectiveness via value selling, provocative diagnostic assessments, ROI calculators and TCO competitive comparison tools.

1. Boost Sales 10% with an Investment in Sales Enablement?
Research firm IDC Says Absolutely!
As the economy recovers, many organizations are turning their strategic focus from cutting costs towards
growing revenue; however, most organizations continue to struggle to hit growth targets.
A recent IDC Sales Advisory Practice article indicates that a part of the growth issue is B2B companies' inability
to get sales enablement "in gear", costing typical companies upwards of 10% or more of revenue per year. For
example, this 10% sales enablement challenge is a $100M incremental revenue opportunity for a $1B
company.
According to IDC, the drivers of this continued misstep in strategy include:
1) More Leads to Make Same Sales: a poorly performing lead pipeline requiring 2,000 to 5,000+ contacts at
the front of the pipeline to yield 1 closed deal over a 17 month average buying cycle. (i.e., for B2B, large
revenue deals, from marketing through to sales);
2) Lack of Value: An inability for sales reps to engage their clients in a strongly desired dialogue by buyers to
solve their greatest problems.
This insight, sourced from IDC's Sales and CMO Advisory Service research, has trended as such consistently
over the past several years.
Best Practice Recommendations
So how much would you invest in sales enablement best practices to generate a 10% revenue boost? Alinean
recommends the following best practice investments to directly address these primary sales enablement
challenges:
1) Buying Facilitation: Too often sales focuses inwardly, on the steps sales takes to move deals forward, the
typical sales funnel, versus the process the buyer goes through to make a buying decision. In today's Internet
fueled self-service buying environment, traditional selling no longer works, as indicated by the metrics.
Understanding the steps in your customers' buying lifecycle, and knowing the right sales content / tools to
apply along the journey, can help sellers focus on facilitating and streamlining buyers decisions.

2. Most sales organizations are too focused on the buying cycle, and not focused enough on facilitating the steps a buyer must go through to make the
purchase. Focusing on buyer facilitation can reduce friction and stalled deals.
The need for buying lifecycle alignment is highlighted in our article - Diametrically Opposed Forces: Selling
Value in a Buyer Controlled World.
2) Outcome-Based Selling: In recent research by SiriusDecisions, the most cited reason for failure to achieve
quota performance was "inability to communicate value effectively to buyers", matching IDCs findings as one
of the greatest sales enablement opportunities. In the face of two economic downturns in past decade, today's
buyers are more frugal / skeptical than ever, and require proof of bottom-line impact on most solutions. It is
more important than ever to arm sales with the tools they need to implement outcome-based selling in a
methodical and automated fashion with prospects.
This important sales enablement investment opportunity is highlighted in our article: Alinean Research Reveals
Best Practices to Fight Frugalnomics
Driving Sales Effectiveness with Outcome-Based Selling
In order to implement Outcome-Based Selling, sales needs to have the right sales tools and content, at the
right stage in the buying lifecycle, in order to properly connect and engage with today’s ever more frugal /
skeptical buyer.
This includes:
1) Early in the buying lifecycle, helping buyers loosen the status-quo and understand potential solutions, by
illuminating issues, and proving that there is a "cost of doing nothing". This is often best addressed using
diagnostic assessment tools to survey current practices, benchmark versus peers and leaders, and intelligently
develop improvement roadmaps based on highest priority issues;

3. 2) In the middle stages of the buying lifecycle, helping justify the right solution, by quantifying the savings,
business value, return on investment and fast payback. This is often best accomplished using ROI sales tools to
help identify current costs and opportunities, intelligently recommend the right solution configuration and
quantify potential benefits, investments, risks, ROI, payback and other key financials;
3) In the later stages, helping buyers validate their decisions by proving that the selected solution
competitively has the lowest total cost of ownership, best value and lowest risks. This is often best done using
TCO comparison tools.
Tools can be used throughout the customer buying lifecycle to help facilitate buying decisions. Early in the cycle by helping diagnose issues and change
the status-quo, in the middle of the cycle to justify potential solutions, and later in the cycle to validate the value of selected solutions.
The Bottom-Line
With major goals now focused on revenue growth, the 10% incremental sales enablement opportunity
represents perhaps the greatest ROI opportunity of recent times.
Implementing Buying Facilitation and Outcome-Based Selling can target the two largest opportunities, and
help the organization recapture this lost revenue.
To quote Abraham Maslow (of Maslow Hierarchy of Needs fame), "If the only tool you have is a hammer, you
tend to see every problem as a nail." Clearly we need to invest in some new tools to see the problem
differently, and help our sales professionals meet the frugal / skeptical B2B buyer challenge and capture the
great 10% revenue reward.
Click here for information on Alinean Sales Enablement solutions.
About Alinean
Alinean, the leading provider of dynamic sales and marketing tools, empowers B2B vendors to better sell to
today's economic-focused buyer. Alinean-powered interactive white papers, assessments, ROI calculators and

4. TCO comparison tools create more compelling value-based connections, workshops, presentations and
proposals — delivering customized diagnostics, benchmarks, solution recommendations, benefits,
investments, ROI, payback and TCO advantage proof points.
Leading B2B firms leveraging Alinean tools include: HP, IBM, Microsoft, EMC, Dell, Intel, IDC/IDG, AT&T,
Siemens, Unisys, Thomson Reuters, NetApp, Citrix, Symantec, Novell, Cisco, Oracle, Sybase, and CA.
Learn more: at the Fight FrugalnomicsTM Resource Center http://www.fightfrugalnomics.com, by visiting
http://www.alinean.com, or calling 407.382.0005.
©2010 Alinean is a trademark of Alinean, Inc., in the United States. All other brands, products or service
names are or may be trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of, and used to identify,
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