ebookletbeyondviabetterway edited 09032012 2: case study: commercialization of new software service...

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Copyright 2012 by Beyondvia Technologies, LLC, Atlanta, Georgia For more information, visit http://www.beyondvia.com. Company and product names mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. All rights reserved.

Accelerating Growth …Go Beyond via …Better Closing …Better Progression …Better Communication …Better Decision Making

…Better On Line Operations …The Better Way

Accelerating Growth by Mark Grace, Beyond Via

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Table of Contents

Introduction 3

Chapter One: Deciding You Want More Growth & Getting Better 4

You can do it

Focus on making the basics better

Progress and integrate with customer

Chapter Two: Examples of Those Who Progressed 5

Chapter Three: Five Approaches To Get You Better 7

1) Better Closing – The Leave Behind™ and clear action statements

2) Better Progression – Be part of their product selling in their supply chain

3) Better Communication – Show them your stuff

4) Better Decision Making – The should do, do, check approach

5) Better On Line Operations – Real time information feeds all systems

Chapter Four: Sequencing the Five Approaches 15

Chapter Five: Take the Steps to Get Started 16

Chapter Six: Leadership and Support 17

Chapter Seven: Beyond the Better Way – Maximum Change 18

About the Author – Mark Grace 18


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Introduction It has been almost 20 years ago, yet I clearly remember the day I was brought into the “all hands on deck” leadership

meeting of a Fortune 100 company to determine how to grow the company’s sales and profits. We needed to

identify some good growth strategies that would positively impact our profits and stock price. After an all day

meeting, we really came up with nothing that would lead us to make a significant step forward. I bet you have been

in one of these meetings too. I did not sleep at all that night, thinking we had no way forward to really grow.

That was the last time I ever felt like that. I have spent the last 20 years successfully growing companies, and in this

ebooklet I summarize the five best approaches to dramatically grow your company. The bottom line is they work. I

do not want you to be without a strategy to dramatically grow your business. So, go ahead and grow. Use the five

approaches of the Better Way.


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Chapter One: Deciding You Want More Growth & Getting Better Just say, “I want to grow.” Not just a little. But say, “I want to grow two to four times what I am right now.” That is

a doable goal. Because of the number of questions that initially arise, the first step always seems the hardest step.

Where to start? Should I focus on what is wrong and improve that? Should I focus on something new? Do I have

the right people or support or resources? What happens if I mess up and we get worse? And all these questions lead

to a potential negative scenario, so drop the questions and get them out of your mind. Instead, demand you get

better. Yes, you can do it—easily!

Simply focus on the basics and build on them, and you will easily reach this growth goal. The basics are the most

important. You do not have to reengineer them, fire them, or dramatically change them. In fact, do not focus on

reengineering or “re” anything—rather, focus on building. Just figure out what the basics are and add to them,

invigorate them. We think the basics that allow you to dramatically grow are as simple as what you say to the

customer (Better Closing and Better Communication), how you live with the customer (Better Progression), and

how you make and improve your decisions (Better Decision Making and Better Online Operations). It’s that simple.

We will talk about five better step-by-step approaches that will allow you to dramatically grow and efficiently

deliver to your customer base.

Most companies focus on themselves and how they can better deliver to their customers. This is a good approach in

a world where you ship products for customers to use and make all those supportive processes efficient.

Yes, you can have your personnel onsite at the customer site doing work side-by-side with customers, leading them.

This could include accounting work, or it could be making sure your product or service fully integrates into theirs, or

you could be training them, and so on. Or it could even include going with their product to their customer to ensure

their customers are using all the products perfectly. When you are part their products both physically and socially

with their customers, you are one with your customer, growing as they grow and adding to their growth as they

grow. So, you grow with your customers.

In today’s world where customers want unique, highly differentiated solutions with high value, you must figure out how to fully integrate into your customer every second and be with them—or as I like to say, “to live with your customer.”


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Chapter Two: Examples of Those Who Progressed Many times, companies try to grow by creating a product features and benefits story and they build an organization

to take that story to potential customers. This sounds good and may lead to some success. But what if growth

stalls—what do you do next? Hire more people or go back to the basics and make them better. Go back and figure

out the real “after” that customers need to have to be successful. Then, show them that “after” and get their “yes” on

how to move forward.

Here are two examples of doing better with the five basic approaches.

THE SITUATION:

A leading R&D organization invested more than $170M over seven years to build a new product line focused on

changing how fluid products are made, dramatically saving customers money and improving their product quality.

Many Top 50 corporations joined the effort and added money to develop the product, yet no commercial product or

organization was created. Frustration levels were very high. Competition was becoming successful at installing pilot

scale-based systems. The organization needed to transform into a commercial organization capable of delivering the

physical product and integrating it into customer operations.

THE GOAL:

Finalize and package a capability to commercialize a pilot ability to deliver to the customer and create the new

commercial organization. Beyondvia was hired to commercialize the product and build a service business using the

Five Approaches of the Better Way.

GOING BEYOND VIA …

Initially Beyondvia evaluated the capabilities of the physical product and the personnel to support the product and

work directly with customers. The organization possessed very limited understanding and had very little experience

on transferring a product from R&D to commercial pilot testing. Beyondvia developed a clear Better Progression

strategy to evolve both the organization and the customer to be successful on a pilot, delivering and managing the

product at the customer site.

Beyondvia then used the Better Closing approach to develop the customer “leave behind” and within several months

five global brands signed on to evaluate the pilot device. Beyondvia used its proven Better Decision Making

approaches to build the successful internal onsite services organization that installed and operated the device at the

new customers’ sites.

Example One: Case Study – From R&D to Deliverable Products and Services


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And Beyondvia used Better Communication to deliver the message across eight different industries. The new

business was successfully launched.

THE SITUATION:

A Global 50 corporation invested over $100M over five years to expand into a software service orientated business

in the energy utilities industry where they were an established manufacturer of basic equipment. Utilities were

modernizing and moving toward the “Smart Grid” where how they analyzed data and made real-time decisions was

paramount. The traditional approach to win customers by using solution selling and Power Point presentations from

50 sales reps did not land a customer. The software development team also was bogged down in an ever-expanding

word specification with no clear deliverable in site. Yet, the creation of this unifying service was critical for the $2B

division. Competition was making successful inroads, so immediate corrective action was required.

THE GOAL:

Move from an old line manufacturer to build the software product and a new customer orientated organization that

delivers software service to new customers in quick time. Beyondvia was hired to commercialize the new software

service.

GOING BEYOND VIA …

Initially Beyondvia assessed the current product “specification” and “go to market” strategy and found a “features”

heavy organization unable to clearly articulate to its customers. In the first month, a clear “Leave Behind” was

created and implemented via Better Closing techniques at customers who immediately saw the before/after value

and customers entered into “how we do business” discussions.

Based on the initial customer discussions and using the Better Communication visual strategy, Beyondvia was then

able to move the internal organization into a more service-orientated approach and redefine the software

“specification” to clear visual deliverables for each customer. This required eliminating the past development team

and bringing in a successful team who delivered in three months, versus the previous five years. Now, the successful

development team used Better Online operations to integrate into customers.

Lastly, the entire team successfully delivered Better Decision Making tools to the customer in less than one year.

The new business was successfully launched.

Example 2: Case Study: Commercialization of New Software Service


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Chapter Three: Five Approaches to Get You Better The two examples in the previous chapter point to a Better Way to get the basics right and be successful. There are

five key approaches to get better:

1) Better Closing – The Leave Behind™ and clear action statements If you want to increase revenue, you simply have to close more deals. There are so many “selling” and sales tools

and techniques that can help you sell more. To truly double or triple your sales, you have to act differently and

understand how your customers make buying decisions (Better Closing) and how they grow their own business

(Better Progression).

Because today’s world is filled with a tremendous amount of choice and information, people feel compelled to talk

with others before they make key buying decisions. This happens both at the office and at home. Very few people

make buying decisions alone. So no matter how you sell to them and no matter what you say, they have to repeat

your message to their bosses, peers and friends, and get their approval to make a “buy” decision. Your audience has

to be as good as you are about describing your product, its impact, and your way of working and doing business

with them. That is a tall order to ask of them—to expect your potential customer be as good as you in just one or two

conversations. The tall order gets worse when you consider the impact of the telephone game where they tell your

message to someone else, who in turn tells the story to someone else, and so on. So your message must be carried

along through a maze of storytellers and then hopefully come back to you with a “yes I will buy”.

Sale tools and sales programs focus more on “selling” your initial contact. Better Closing focuses on assisting those

you talk with on how to talk with others. Remembering what you said and then repeating the essence of what you

said is not easy to do, and in fact, over 50% of your message will be lost each time it is repeated from memory. So,

physically give your message to them so they to do not have to remember it, but they can repeat the essence clearly.

After they repeat the message, they can give the message physically to their audience, so they, in turn, can

physically repeat it. Now, this physically repeating the message is much easier for them to do. We call this physical

manifestation of your message the Leave Behind.™

We believe, and our experience shows, you can dramatically improve your odds of closing the deal by creating a

Leave Behind that you show, markup, explain, and give to them so they can repeat your important message. The

1) Better Closing – The Leave Behind™ and clear action statements 2) Better Progression – Be part of their product selling in their supply chain 3) Better Communication – Show them your stuff 4) Better Decision Making – The should do, do, check approach 5) Better On Line Operations – Real time information feeds all systems


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Leave Behind is one page and you hand it to them (or webex them through it) after you fully explain it (or you can

use social media to tell the Leave Behind story).

Each of the four parts is crucial to the customer to make their decision to move ahead. If one part is missing, you

will most likely have to come back and address that with the customer and then they make the decision, adding

much more precious time (maybe months) to the buying cycle. Each part is very flexible and can be adjusted and

improved based on dialogue with the customer and understanding their questions, issues, and short-term action

needs.

Part 1 explains, “who you are” in terms of your relevant experience to what your customer does (or needs to do) and

why you are uniquely qualified to do it. Part 1 is important, but not nearly as important as Parts 2 and 3 where you

must understand how you fit into their strategic and tactical plans (Part 2) and you implement what it looks like

“after”—both in action and intuitive monetary value that they calculate.

In Part 2, you list the top strategic or tactical issues they face related to what you might be able to do for them. So

you can have a very important dialogue with them on which issues they feel are currently important to them, that

they want to focus resources on right now (and probably have a budget for or will soon). When they point out which

issues are most important, circle them and communicate your understanding, or add it to the list (if it is not on it)

and cross off the ones that do not apply (per their suggestion).

Part 3 clearly shows them how you will impact their organization, highlighting the real physical changes and the

resulting value—let them visualize this and add their vision to what you have, and write this on the Leave Behind.

Having you say that you will save them $1M or such is not an “after” picture they usually agree with—they need to

make the calculation themselves from the “scalar’ list you give them. You can show them the “before/after” in

pictures:

The Leave Behind always has at least four separate parts:

1) The “who you are”

2) The “key trends” strategic for you customer

3) The “before/after” or “day in the life” value visualization

4) The “how we do business” together


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In Part 4, you highlight ways to do business together, and give them options, and circle the option they like best. For

example, do you sell a product, offer a service, use a SAAS approach, or what?

The Leave Behind approach is different than the normal PowerPoint presentation and pitches because it makes sure

that you will SUMMARIZE the four key points for them. You will provide the physical summary so they can talk

and give it to others involved in the group decision-making process. You do no rely on their skill to summarize,

remember or repeat (because they would probably do it wrong and lead to the wrong conclusion). You give them

their adjusted and specific summary to repeat.

If they agree with your way of doing business (Part 4) after your discussion, and they are good at showing the Leave

Behind to their peer group of decision makers, you may have closed a deal. If you did not close that quickly, at least

you will know what issues they have. If they want you to hit a certain milestone first, be careful, this may take a lot

of resources from you. A major purpose of the Leave Behind is to understand their issues AND to make them

responsible for certain actions before you expend significant resources hitting milestones or “proving” to them.

We’ll discuss importance of responsibility assigning later.

In addition to the Leave Behind, you can make two clear short statements to a customer that script the customer 1) to

take action, and 2) to collect the value you say. In one of my businesses I would say to them “Aim Higher” and so

you “Achieve More.” This tells them an action to do, and then you can follow that with the value they will receive.


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2) Better Progression – Be part of their product selling in their supply chain If you are only a cost to your customers’ business, you will eventually be negotiated to the lowest commodity cost

possible, by your customer and your competitor’s unrelenting efforts. This commoditization easily happens with

physical products for which they pay you, or simple services, which are easily duplicated by the competition.

The way out of the commodity product cycle is to build a plan and a progression where your product becomes part

of their product or service, so they involve you in their product planning process and real first product creations. In

fact, we suggest you have full-time personnel at their location working with them to improve your product and

theirs. This is called Better Progression. Once you are part of their product, you can even sell to their customers and

they sell your product in theirs.

You can tell if your company has progressed to this point if you have full-time people at your customer site, or you

can see your product at their customers’ site, whether in their product or yours with theirs.

You also can tell where you are in your customer progression by how you talk:

- Technology talk – is about features and specific technical details and uniqueness

- Product talk – is on simple value or solutions you provide

- Business Model – is how we do business together and integrate to the highest value and efficiency in their

supply chain

If you are in the Business Model phase, you are well on your way to integrating

into your customer through Better Progression.

Like the “before/after” in Part 3 of the Leave Behind, you can make an

example “day in the life” scenario of you progressing with specific types

of customers specifically, in different ways. Each “day in the life” can be

discussed with your customer (in Leave Behind format) and you can

decide on how to progress forward. You can use the Leave Behind to sell

and close the plan for each new progression.

Below is a sample article written on Better Progression for the printer industry.


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3) Better Communication – Show them your stuff Seeing is believing and buying. People normally do not buy something if they do not see it. You buy what you like –

and “like” usually means you can see yourself using the product or service in your lifestyle. So show your product or

service in various lifestyle settings for different types of customers. How do you show your product—use imagery

and send pictures to your customers and have a visual dialogue with your customers. Statistics show that

comprehension and recall are doubled with images versus words (Google study).

You can see how this is accomplished at visualtalking.com. Visuals are being used more and more in our everyday

communication. So use your product visuals everyday in direct communication with your customers and let them

talk with images back to you.


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In this sped up world, we can use Visual Talking communication at the fast speed that customers use, with all the

visually dense information they need to make the buying decision. Here is a published article on how to use Better

Communication and Better Closing together in the food industry.

4) Better Decision Making – The should do, do, check approach We have seen with Better Closing and Better Progression and Better Communication how we can dramatically raise

revenue. When you double your sales using the Better Way, you will need to dramatically improve your operations

from the Decision Making standpoint and a real-time efficiency standpoint. As you grow sales so fast, you will need

to keep up the pace with operations.


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To make Better Decisions using real-time information, we have a flexible should-do, do, check model that works for

all company functions—from finance to accounting to operations to sales to marketing to executive KPI reporting.

If you plan what you “should do,” and then go “do” it, you can easily “check” using real-time information how well

you did compared to the “should-do.” So often we get stuck in doing the same things, in the same way over and over

again. As we grow, we must use data to overcome being stuck. Here is an example where to focus your attention in

the model depending on what type of function you are in the company.

You can create an easy-to-use business model for each function. We have 30 years experience to help you do this.


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5) Better On-Line Operations – Real time information feeds systems Machines can now talk to machines. Websites and ecommerce can talk to each other and share with social media

and order products on many digital platforms. Online can talk to online. Real-time data can feed your operations

system, your inventory system, your CRM system, your accounting system, and you can be fully linked and

connected in your private or a public cloud. Everything can be digitally linked and connected…are YOU?

Reach out to your customers and connect to their online systems and put your personnel on their site to ensure all is

well and they know how to use all your features to the maximum potential. Customers do not naturally use your

product or service to full advantage. If you link with them and do it for them, they will optimize.


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Chapter Four: Sequencing the Five Approaches Most companies want to at least double sales first and then get the process moving on building operations efficiency to handle the dramatic increase in sales. Here is a sample Better Way sequenced approach:

A) Prepare your Leave Behind for your target audience B) Articulate your new value statement and customer action statement (i.e., script their action) C) Show the “after” and “day in the life” using a visual talking communication program D) Begin discussion on what new ways you can integrate into your customers products and their supply

chain (Better Progression)

Follow the above approach if you feel you have not fully got the word out about your current products. If you feel you have saturated the market, then start with Better Progression and go to your current customers and ask questions like the printer article. Then develop new integrated products and services. And then add Better Decision Making when you have traction with doubling sales…. You can also start with your “day in the life” and improve that…


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Chapter Five: Take the steps to get started We have described how to dramatically grow using the Five Better Approaches to make your basic skills better. We focused on communicating with your customer so you can have them be your prophets and you can better understand how to progress with them and integrate into them for a generation. The first steps are easy. Create your first draft Leave Behind for a specific type of customer and enable them to create the Leave Behind they will use to be your prophet. Follow-up and understand how they want to do business with you and how important you are to them and their strategic initiatives. From here, you can work with your customer to integrate with them, using the sample questions from the printer industry article reprint. Once you have success with your first targets, you can expand to other markets. On the operations side, you can explore the should do, do, check decision model and begin to understand how to integrate the model into your organization and your customers. It just takes the first step to get started on your growth path:


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Chapter Six: Leadership and Support We have experienced that internal leadership is required to keep the organization focused on the new approach. Key points to reinforce are: -Use the Leave Behind so the customer can tell your story and be your prophets -Use imagery to show your products and associated lifestyles for customers and talk with the customer using imagery -Strive to progress to become part of your customer product and be in their entire supply chain, living with them -Make better decisions using real time, shared data Your leadership should also share how fun it is to “live” with your customer. Take every opportunity you have to be with those living at your customer and show them how important they are, and how you (and everybody on the team) supports them. Tell stories of the best that you have that live at your customers’ sites. As you support customers more, and your customers show you they really like your onsite people, they may want to hire your best onsite people. That is great. Support your customers hiring your people. You can always hire more and train them even better in your image. And, it is good for you to have those you trained working for your customer.


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Chapter Seven: Beyond the Better Way – Max Change Using the Five Approaches of the Better Way will more than double your sales. Is that good enough? Let’s reach for more. To reach for more calls for unique ways to improve each of the five Better Way approaches. One way is to focus on Better Progression and create, develop, and deliver new services and business models in your customer supply chain. We encourage you to have special sessions using Visual Talking imagery to see new services. We have a special method called Visual Brainstorming and we add burst thinking where we stimulate the appropriate senses and continue Visual Brainstorming. About the Author Mark Grace is a successful professional who has cultivated profitable relationships across several industries and is well-known for his ability to implement “game changing” improvements in record time. As a recognized inventor, entrepreneur, educator, speaker and writer, Grace has worked with global brands, as well as startup companies, leading them to new growth levels. As the Leader of Beyondvia Technologies, Mark teaches companies “The Better Way,” five approaches that help companies accelerate sales, increase profitability and drive operational efficiency. Grace is also the founder of Visual Talking, a visual language Web 3.0 portal, and Thinkage LLC, which revolutionized food supply chain management. Other roles included executive leadership positions with GE Energy, BOC and Exxon, where Grace launched numerous products and businesses ranging from a utility asset optimization software suite to non-cryogenic nitrogen to specialty refined oil products. He holds an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis, MO and a B.A. in Chemistry from St. Louis University.

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