• March 10, 2013
  • Mark LaCour
  • 0

Learn that price doesn’t matter, why value propositions suck and see why your logo slides are ignored.

 

Transcript of Session –

Hey. It’s Mark LaCour. Let’s learn some more about the oil and gas industry.

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All right. So today, we’re going to answer some e-mails. First one. You say the oil and gas market is not as price sensitive, yet we get beat up overprice all the time. What gives?

What gives is you’re not solving a business need. It sounds like you’re playing in a commodity field which of course you get beat up overprice. Any business leader in oil and gas that has a pressing need, if you can solve that problem that price becomes less important. So, if I was you I would re-evaluate the people that you talk to and the strategy you’re using to show how your product or service addresses a business need and then go try again ‘cause I promise you this industry is not as price sensitive as most verticals.

Number two. Any tips when writing a value proposition for the oil and gas industry?

Yeah. Don’t. A value proposition is basically your way of telling the client why they should do business with you. That’s not what works with these large companies. What works is listening. You should not be telling them why they should use you, you should be listening to what’s going on in their business and see if you can fix something they’re struggling with. So in my world, value props don’t work at all.

Third. The logo slides that my sales team uses seems to be ignored by our prospects. Why?

This kind of goes into the one I just talked about previously. Logo slides are typically put up in the beginning of a presentation when you’re trying to impress a customer with other clients that you have worked with in the past. Honestly, a business leader doesn’t care. What he cares about is what’s going on his world right then and there. Later, if they decide they want to do business with you, they may have a curiosity of who you’ve done business with in the past, at that point the logo slide is worthwhile.

But, I see it way too often, the beginning of a presentation will start off with the salesperson trying to show who they’ve done business with, where they are, where their locations, what’s their global footprint. Skip all that bull. Go straight to the heart of the matter, show the client the problems they’re having and show how your product or solution addresses that. I promise you that will go much further than trying to impress them.

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