Reply to LO13649:
> On Tue, 13 May 1997 mbayers@mmm.com wrote: (LO13601)
>
> > But lately we have begun to get questions along the lines of, 'Well, this
> > was certainly enjoyable but my manager will never buy this unless I can
> > show some hard dollar returns. I have to show some tangible benefit.
Very appropriate choice of words here .... "benefit"; and the mental
model of ..."dollar returns."
and Ed Brenegar responded in LO13618:
> >Michael, On how to answer the "bottom-line" question, particularly when
> >the charge is "show me the money,", I think of at least two responses.
> >First, no one really functions on that level .....
...and...
> >... everyone defines that bottom-line differently, even when they use
> >numbers. I'd be surprised if even all supervisors and managers accept
> >projections for improvement uncritically.
Eric Opp responded in LO13649:
> I would strongly beg to differ with Ed **and** give an example. I
> recently completed a class in the selling process at a local university
> with a very forward thinking professor. The basis of the selling process
> was **all** psychological and inter-personal.
..and..
> In terms of more generic problems, there will always be some quantity,
> that you can associate a cost with - lost labor hours, cost of borrowed
> money to cover inventory, lost sales due to lack of inventory etc. If you
> have created a real systems model ala iThink, then each of the levels in
> the model has the potential of having some kind of dollar amount
> associated with it.
I see no large disagreement here and find a common theme among the
replies.
> Even the levels that are intangibles such as "level of
> quality" or "good will" can be quantified. Any higher level manager, who
> understands financial models, will look closely at your analysis even if
> you could only make some intuitive stabs at cost factors for intangibles.
One of the fundamental of selling is:
Show the Features,
Describe the Advantages,
& Tell the Benefits.
People want to buy the benefits.
--Dennis Keibler djkeib01@homer.louisville.edu Health Sciences Biostatistics Center University of Louisville
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>