You thought your sales meeting went well; in fact, it did. You connected with the buyer and made a strong business case for why your solution can solve their problem. The thing is, it wasn’t enough.

More than half of buyers today walk away from deal cycles with no decision. If they can’t financially justify a purchase, they do nothing. The job of a sales rep is more than just presenting the business case to the buyer. They must also help the buyer communicate that business case in a compelling and consumable way to a growing number of risk-averse stakeholders. Considering the mountains of both selling and non-selling tasks your sales reps are faced with today, how are you supposed to make a business case FOR the business case? Hint: Ditch your spreadsheet.

For many organizations, spreadsheet-based ROI or TCO tools are the go-to solutions to help financially justify purchases to frugal buyers. While they may meet the requirement to deliver formal business case justification, they fall short. 

Value Selling Tools Deliver Where Spreadsheets Fall Short

As buyers’ expectations from sales engagements continue to grow, leaning on spreadsheet-based tools to build a business case might mean the difference between execution and extinction. I’m assuming you’ve never left a sales interaction and thought to yourself, “Wow. That spreadsheet really gets me.” Without bringing your buyer into the conversation, they’re just spectators in a show about your solution. Buyers not only need an interesting story to stay engaged (and awake), they need to be able to retell that story to move the deal forward. 

Here’s where your spreadsheet falls short: :

It’s High Maintenance: ROI and TCO tools are expensive to start and maintain.

It’s Intimidating: Even the words “financial justification” are intimidating. It’s difficult to get sales teams to actually use them. 

It’s (Literally) Out of Date: It’s impossible to keep versions up-to-date and it’s difficult to get customers, sales reps, and channel partners to download the latest versions and retire or replace older versions.

It’s Hard to Automate Data: ROI/TCO spreadsheets make it challenging to automate the collection of discovery data from each engagement, wasting incredible customer intelligence and insights.  

It’s Hard to Integrate: Spreadsheet-based ROI/TCO tools don’t properly integrate with existing systems and processes, like MAP or CRM solutions.

Usage is Hard to Track: It’s challenging to track usage and understand where and when spreadsheets are being leveraged in sales scenarios. 

It Lacks Credibility: Most ROI/TCO spreadsheets are homegrown and lack third party research, validation and ultimately, credibility.

Turn Your Spreadsheets Into Value-Driven Conversations

Mediafly Value360 empowers sellers to turn spreadsheets into collaborative conversations that resonate with economic-focused buyers. By advancing your current ROI/TCO spreadsheets to Mediafly Value360 tools, you can shorten sales cycles, drive better adoption, decrease the number of stalled opportunities in your pipeline, improve quota attainment, and more. Curious about what successful financial justification looks like? See how Databricks wins 6x more often using value selling tools from Mediafly.