Are you using all of the tools in your tool box to help speed up your customer’s decision-making process?
This isn’t about how your customers pay for equipment. Whether your customers pay cash or finance is immaterial if they aren’t convinced they need the equipment to begin with.
So the crucial issues to address are:
- How do you convey what automation will do for your customer?
- Who are you presenting the machine solution to?
The key to answering the first question is to begin with the second question.
Who do you really need to convince?
Your contact in operations is a good start. After all, they use the equipment and can understand the impact of automation.
Unfortunately, operations contacts aren’t usually the ones holding the purse strings.
Financial decision makers – CFO’s, Controllers, owners, finance/accounting departments – are the ones who have to bless equipment acquisitions.
…And this is where projects often stall – Your list of pending quotes can attest to that.
Because the finance department doesn’t work with or understand the equipment, they don’t intuitively grasp the impact automation will have on the business. Your quote is probably only one out of many they have to consider for budget allocation. They will mainly focus on the cost you are quoting.
So this brings us back to the first question:
How do you convey what the machine solution will do for your customer?
One of the fundamentals of selling is to understand your audience. What does the finance department live and breathe? Numbers.
Instead of concepts conveyed second-hand through your operations contact, use real numbers to get your point across.
Quantify the concepts you sell on into dollars using an ROI analysis.
It’s cliché but true – money talks. Which has more impact? Telling your customer “This is going to save you on labor/reduce machine downtime/increase productivity”? Or showing your customer “This machine solution will save you $x,xxx per month?
Make your life easier.
At this point, you are probably thinking “I’m busy enough – I don’t have time spend on yet another step.” or “I don’t want to deal with complicated spreadsheets.”
These are valid points – Which is why we have made generating an ROI analysis so simple and easy you can do it in less than a minute.
Remember – Whether your customers pay cash or finance is immaterial if they aren’t convinced they need the equipment to begin with. That is what the ROI analysis is for.
Even better – it’s free and accessible online.
Proactively and consistently provide an ROI analysis for both your pending and new quotes.
It’s a powerful tool in your tool box that will help speed up your customer’s decision-making process and maximize opportunities. It’s a minimal time investment that will yield a huge gain. It’s a tool you can’t afford not to use.
Check out the tool here: ROI Tool Link
If you have any questions, we’re here to help. Call us at 888-692-6722.