How to be Approval Ready with Bruce Scheer and Todd Snelgrove

Bruce Scheer: Welcome to the ValuePros Show where value pros get value ready. I'm your host, Bruce Scheer. In this episode, we're diving deep into the critical phase of driving execution with a special focus on being approval ready. I'm thrilled to have Todd Snelgrove joining us in this episode. Todd is not just a true value expert. He's one of our key affiliate consultants at valuepros. Io and a powerhouse in the world of value based selling and pricing. As the former global vice president of value at SKF, Todd brings over 15 years of experience in understanding, presenting, calculating, pricing, and purchasing based on total cost of ownership and total profit ad, something he's trademarked. His work has been featured in publications from leading business schools, including Harvard, MIT Sloan, and the London Business School. Todd has also led sessions on value at executive MBA courses at prestigious institutions worldwide. In this episode, Todd will be sharing his expertise on being approval ready. We'll explore the intricacies of working with procurement, debunk some common misconceptions, and uncover strategies to make your value proposition irresistible. From understanding the buyer's journey to mastering the art of value quantification, This episode is packed with actionable insights that will transform your approach to B2B sales. So whether you're a seasoned sales professional, just starting your journey in value based selling, get ready to level up your game. Let's dive in. Well, Todd, I'm just so excited about this episode with you. This is a continuation of what we've been talking about in terms of showing up value ready, where value professionals can show up value ready, ready to connect the dots so the buyers can buy. And we had introduced a value ready assessment that you guys can find off of valuepros.io. Under resources, you're gonna find our assessment there where you can assess yourself on where you are against these 4 key phases. And underneath these key phases, the 10 key value ready dimensions that you need to really get good at to master so you can help that buyer buy. 1st, we're building trust. We're earning that right to engage with them. Secondly, we're understanding needs and there's some disciplines and best practices and science behind how to do that. Thirdly, we're delivering insights where we're connecting the solution we have to the value we're gonna drive for that client. And then finally, we're driving execution with the the underlying value ready disciplines there being approval ready, negotiation ready, and impact ready. So Todd is going to be covering the 3 different dimensions, approval ready, negotiation ready, and impact ready under drive execution. I couldn't be more excited. Todd has more experience and value than anyone I've ever met in my life. This is gonna be awesome. Todd, welcome to the show.

Todd Snelgrove: So let me just set a baseline here, and this is for the world that I come from and B2B markets. So business to business, we always want the user of the product or service to want to buy us. They were the ones that will receive the value that we deliver. And when I started 25 years ago, we were told to hide from procurement and purchasing. Nothing good would ever happen if you talk to them. They only cared about lowest price. So I just wanna be clear. What we're gonna talk about in this session is always make sure the user sees the value. We understand the value. We're gonna deliver to them, but we also need to engage with the financial team, the procurement team because they have power in that discussion. So So it's in the addition of another set of eyes into the group that we need to make sure is going to also see value or understand the value.

Bruce Scheer: Kinda so funny, Todd. I just to add in here, I've even had one sales expert in the world say, hey, never deal with procurement, and he even proclaimed in this huge conference setting I was in. I refuse to even talk to them. If my client's gonna run something through procurement, I I say, hey, Sorry. I'm not going there. And, you and I know on some of the bigger deals and you wanna win some of these big deals, you avoid procurement, and it's at your own detriment. You really need to engage. I'm excited for you to talk about this.

Todd Snelgrove: I'll leave you with a quote that came from a chief procurement officer of a Fortune 500. And he said, and I'm paraphrasing because he was Scottish and he had an accent, but I might not give you an award that business doesn't want to give you. If they hate you and they don't want it, I can't, but I sure as heck can take an order away from you if there's 3 people that meet the requirement. And if you don't talk to me, I going to assume there's no value, and you're using relationship and all these words that I don't understand what they mean. So I'm gonna go against you. I always make sure that we're having a discussion with the right words. So, you know, they're simple words, price, costs with the s, and value. All five letter words, they mean 3 dramatically different things. But when I'm trying to start the discussion with a client, I'm saying, we're here to talk about how I can reduce your costs, how it can make you more profitable, how I'm going to increase the value you deliver to your business. The assumption that a lower price is gonna make them more profitable is an assumption. So I used to say, I could be the highest price with the lowest cost. And true story, Bruce. I've been at procurement conferences and they will say, I will go back to sales teams and say, how will you reduce the cost of this proposal? And they would say 90% of sales teams come back with price or terms and condition reductions. I said costs. Now, not to sound arrogant, but if a customer says, how will you reduce the price? I then say, how about I reduce the costs? We'll talk, I think in, the next module that I had 428 drivers I could measure. So now we're gonna argue which drivers, how much they worth, do they care about them? But I will not just focus on price. And then I smile because I live in Michigan now, which is famous for the automotive industry, and 3 companies to buy things cheaper than anybody else in the world. 2 of them went bankrupt. So you got the lowest price, but those price savings never got to the bottom line. Cost savings get to the bottom line.

Bruce Scheer: Great point. Yeah. Absolutely. You gotta think beyond price and continue. I'm sure you're gonna push into that. But, yeah, it totally makes sense.

Todd Snelgrove: So at this point, I'm just gonna challenge you, Bruce, and on behalf of the listener base, I mean, we all know we bring value, but I think there's an inherent mindset that procurement might not care about value. I will show you over the next 3 episodes that is not true, And we'll close the final episode with how do we address these? But, Bruce, why do you think the average salesperson might say, This is great. I deliver value. The client that's buying the product or service gets value, But when procurement gets it, they don't care about value.

Bruce Scheer: Well, I I can just speak from experience. You know, one of the largest system integrators in the world, Infosys, I had an agreement for about a $150,000 contract and client and I were set on our vision, what we wanted to occur, the outcomes we wanted to drive for and thought, hey, we've got the right chemistry, we've got the right, focus and and let's go make this happen. And then my client says, oh, and by the way, unfortunately, Bruce, we have to go through this procurement process. And I get on with procurement and first thing they say is, hey. You need a lower price. What what's the best you can do? And just start getting into this negative, what I call the zero sum game where, you know, let's beat up the vendor and see and try to take value away from the the vendor. And it didn't matter that I had a sponsor that's excited to move forward, but it's time to do the price negotiation. I see that very often. I don't know if that helps answering your question, Todd, but that's kind of the normal default that I've been exposed to in my long selling career.

Todd Snelgrove: I've got to work with a lot of procurement people around the world. So this is doesn't isn't a salesperson's opinion. This is some major procurement people saying, you were the reason why I do that is because most of you will give me the same value at a lower price. You don't you trade off. You'll just say, okay. Or he goes, why wouldn't I get the same value and pay you less? Because price is part of total value. But if I push, you seem to drop. So I've asked this question for 20 years around the world in conferences, in journal sessions, and it's been a variation of the following. ProcureLink says price is measurable, value is not. A €100, whatever the courtesy is. I can measure 1, I can't measure the other. This actually came from a big US steel company. I'm worried about this quarter, this year, not making a machine that last 12 years, last 50. Will be bought and sold three times. I'll be retired. Who cares? Price is guaranteed. Value is soft. Maybe a combination of another thought. But I mean, I can take a rebate check to the bank. Value is a warm and fuzzy feeling you guys, you, salespeople talk about relationship, ease of response, all these words, they're soft. Does it hit my bottom line? This actually came from a client that said, value programs take work. If I have to sit with you, do discovery, talk to you about what my pain points are, all that takes time and effort. Yelling at you and threatening you to give me a discount takes no effort. One procurement person said in Europe, they had the same standard letter for every types of goods that has changed the category. Office supplies, travel, MRO, legal services, and sent it out saying, drop your price. How long does it take to copy, paste, and send it out, drop your price, threaten you? And he goes, then all you salespeople would run around. Half the time, you would give me a discount. Yeah. Hard to yell at you, believe it or not. I laughed. I'm like, Yeah, good point.

Bruce Scheer: True.

Todd Snelgrove: You know, my boss measures me on price reduction, not TCO savings. This is what people will say. I'm not saying these are true. And if you stick around for 2 more episodes, hopefully, you'll have the answers to these. Mhmm. That is somebody else's department. My KPI isn't that. That will help production. That will help sales efficiency, whatever that other department is. That doesn't help me. And this actually is from a quote from a book that Jim Anderson wrote. They're almost the same. You know, there's there's there's 3 they they look the same. They smell the same. They're the same things. It's not worth the time or effort investigating value because and this was the example. I'm not saying it's true, but what office supply company to the next office supply company? They're both delivering Bic pens and a pad of paper. I mean, I got bigger things to worry about. Not true, but that was kind of the assumption. So I think there was 7 or 8 things. These are assumptions. I used to spend 25% of my time with procurement, at procurement conferences. So I've got these aren't just sales stories. They're how procurement acts and thinks, which I think is what I'm into now. Not to get academic, but I think it's very important when you're starting a discussion, getting them ready to have a business discussion. There's 2 terms. One's called ATP. It's a pricing term. It says the ability to pay. Do I have budget? Do I have authority? Do I have money? Okay. And there's another term called willingness to pay, WTP. Again, academic, who cares? This, for every salesperson, that was something they need to think about. Ability, Todd, that is the best thing I've ever seen. You're awesome. I don't have the money. There's no money in the pocket. So I'm talking to our CEO once, and he goes, and he Scottish accent also said, that's crap. So what do you mean? And he goes, you give me a good business case that is hard and measurable, and I believe it, I'll find the money. And I laughed in my own personal life. I have a budget. But if I truly believe there's value somewhere, I will pull money forward. I will sell stocks. I will borrow. I will do something. Mhmm. If you say, Bruce, it's gonna cost you x 1,000, but it'll pay for the there's a 95% chance it pays for itself by the 8th month. 90% of the client, whatever. And I believe it, I'll do the risk reward analysis and do it. So ability to pay changes dramatically with a hard believable business case. Mhmm. Every company will have, whatever, top 3, 4, 5, 20 priorities every year. And, you know, you've got something, the customer goes, that's awesome. Customer says, I'm buying it. I'm making this up. They're going out for a software buy. The little company's behind it, and then it dies on the buy. What he says happens, and the research also shows, is that somebody else's business case came in and got leapfrogged above yours. So every salesperson that's probably listening to this somewhere in January was told, this is the strategy, this is the budget, this is where we're investing, whatever that is. And magically, somewhere through the year, it changed. I always assumed it was economic things change. We're allowed to hear our numbers. That's option 1. Option 2 is we got a better business case for something that wasn't in our top five. That prioritization changes based on the hardness and the believability or the timeliness and all these things of the business case. So if somebody don't have money, a hard business case can help them find the money. Yeah. I would even finance it if I had to. That's another day's discussion, but I've entered in performance finance agreements. And willingness is, look at Todd. We got bigger things. We're in acquisition mode. We're putting in a new software system. You know, your upgrade down here is is important. Holy wow. Look at the ROI of that. Look at the speed of that ROI. That would change. So, you know, in the early phases, really try to get the the customer, the procurement team, and the technical person the tools for them to get access to the money and to prioritize that money because you're competing within that company for somebody else that wants money. With the different department, same department. We're gonna talk about the buying process, and I know that there's different ways to look at this. This is from a procurement person, and I just loved it. We were sitting somewhere one day, and he explained it to me. And we had always talked about the sales process. And he goes, what drives me nuts about you salespeople is you should think about how I buy. So we got up on a whiteboard and started drawing this, and what I'm gonna do is just walk through everybody on the the has bought something in their life. So let's say it's something that's strategic purchase. So let's say you're buying a car. Okay? And then I'm gonna walk through this process, and I'm gonna tell you where I think it's wrong or how people act, but I think it's the process. Then we'll explain where and how value and value selling and it integrates into this. But it always starts with a need has been identified. I need a car. Car broke, lease ended, kids got older. There's a reason I need a car. I got a new job, do I have to drive to work, whatever. I need has been identified. Somebody could have brought me the need. I need office supplies. I need whatever. Then I sit and I establish my specification. So with my preconceived notions, I'm sitting back saying, Todd wants a car, Todd wants a gas car. I'm not saying this is right, but I'm establishing a specification. I want a 4 door car. So Lamborghini's out. I want a gas car, which means we'll just say Tesla's out. I'm not saying these are right, but I will start specifying what I think I want. I then will go say, well, who can possibly deliver that to me? You know, there's the the legacy 3 plus maybe be whatever. I'll go through a list of, say, 6 or 7 that meet that that could possibly deliver that solution to me. And then I will maybe get rid of a few based on past experience, bad research on the internet, you know, that type of stuff. But I will probably go out and get an RFQ, RFI, RFP. I will get information from them. What is yours? Why is it better? What's your price? What's your delivery? What are the operating maybe again, these will all look different. These sales teams will do a lot of work in bringing the information back. I will then negotiate terms and conditions and price and value, not value and shipping, whatever it is, and then I will buy. And then hopefully, I measure was it good or bad. I've had the car for 3 years. Did it do what it was supposed to do? So he drove through this buying cycle, and he goes, what you need to understand is your ability as a sales team dramatically decreases over that cycle of their ability to impact me. If you get to me what identified, you can frame it. You should be looking at best value. You should be looking at lowest cost. You should be looking at total value. So then when I get to establish specifications, it opens it up. But if you call me and we're in the RFP stage and say, don't look at price and delivery, look at electric car. You better be the best salesperson that's ever existed because my mind is no. No. No. Quick story. Company car selection comes out years ago. 5 cars. One of them was the diesel. Because I'm not technical, like, the need was identified, company car time. Before I got to specification, I reached out to my friends, their car people. These are the vehicles. What do you think? And 3 of them said, that Passat diesel for sure. And I'm like, no. I hate diesel. Dad had a Mercedes diesel in Canada in the eighties. Cold, cold start, couldn't find diesel. My history was bad. And they said, Todd, that's old. New is good. They work. There's diesel, blah blah blah. It was the best car ever. Ran smooth, fast. You could go twice the distance. When I look at this now, I used to be involved in industrial products. The need was identified. We need bearings and belts and chains. I want one that's from an ISO specification from a name manufacturer. These 5 people make it. Let's add them all in for bid. Now I'm gonna stream, threaten you all these ways to get your price down. So me going in to say, it's not price. It's value. Here's how we measure value. It was much tougher in the RFP stage than it was spending time upfront with sales, marketing, key account people, getting to customers before they're in that buying journey. And I'm gonna throw out a few statistics. And again, there's numerous studies. This is from Gartner. They say the 27% of a b to b buyer's journey is researching independently online. Best supplier, reviews of whatever category we're in. I mean, I'm doing research. I'm looking at Yelp reviews. I'm going out to their website. I'm doing some searching. I'm looking at case studies. 22% of the time is spent with the internal group. Hopefully, the people that will use the product or service and get the value. What do you really need? What's important to you? Let's prioritize these things. So theoretically, procurement's buying what you need. 18% is spent researching offline, calling their friends. Like you, salespeople know other salespeople, procurement people know other procurement people, and they will call industry associations, trade associations, you know, anybody. What do you know? What good? How'd you do? And you think your price that you gave to one client's secret? That's already around the world faster than you can imagine. Only 17% of their total buying cycle time was spent with suppliers. Let's just say there's 4 of you. 4% is spent with you, Bob. 4% is spent with you, Bruce. 4% is I mean, can't change what they think, how they think, what their KPIs are in 4% unless you do it early and reframe the whole buying process.

Bruce Scheer: I do like your data here. You know, you said it is probably 5 years ago when they did this study, but, I saw an study in 2024 where 70% of the buying journey is done before sales is engaged. So funny enough, this maps up still to 2024 in terms of all this buying activity that's happening kinda behind the curtain before sales, starts to engage in the buyer. So that's brilliant. And I do agree with you. You need to get a upfront some somehow in that buying journey and setting what good looks like, what what that potential value to be realized can be in setting the specifications to achieve similar value as they start to move through that buying journey. So brilliant. Yeah. This makes sense.

Todd Snelgrove: And the last point I'll make here is that it's not just marketing's job. I mean, I think we all should do some thought leadership, whether that's LinkedIn or local trade associations, but go where they learn so they rethink. I used to spend a lot of time and some people didn't understand why I have statistics approved. The thought leader in the industry gets access, opportunity that other people don't. And with our CRM systems today, in my old world, a lot of it was contracts. The bigger customers were, say, 3 year contracts. You just lost the contract coming in next month going, hey, you dumb buyer. You bought you screwed up. It's probably a little early, maybe a little in their face, but you could put cadences up. In 6 months to win, how are things working? What KPIs are you not hitting? Can I help you with the areas that you need? I also know that it's probably a 3 year buy, so the year and a half before, let's get our preplanning done here. Let's start seeing our our call strategy to get them to be rethinking. I always found it funny when it was a surprise that the 3 year contract was coming back out for rebid 3 years from now. And it's like, we knew this was happening. So marketing, whoever, start being able to get that process changed. Makes sense. One of my favorite visuals is the price perk. Customers can see the price of your product or service. You're a 100, you're 99. There's all these other drivers below that. And all I can say is that procurement people say we don't do a good job of articulating what they are, the impacts they are, and the probability and where they've changed them before.

Bruce Scheer: For our listening audience, the price berg is is an iceberg, kind of the typical iceberg slide that you might see, but you got part of that iceberg above the water and then the majority of it below the water.

Todd Snelgrove: You can see the top. The dangerous part of a iceberg is the part below the water that you don't see, And you don't know and you don't believe until something bad happens, you hit it. I would argue, I don't care where the water line is. I want the smallest price perch. The the total size is what matters. So it's our job to say, yes, we can see this. You understand it. It's clear, but there's all these other things and they're bigger and they help more. And here's what they are, which is what today's session and the next 2 sessions we'll do. We'll get into some more meat. This is a takeaway from, again, a different procurement person. And he said to me, he was I thought he was American. But I'd never heard the term before. Stop burying the league. I couldn't even spell burying. And I'm like, what do you mean if you go? And this is how old I am. So I those of you that don't know me might laugh. How many Kia Kowal meetings, big meetings, whatever that means to you, you're in. You've got a team in the in the room. There's a senior person in the room, and your 3rd slide in, and their BlackBerry beeps, and they get up in the lead. Like, oh, it happens all the time. Drives me nuts. We got the whole team. We prepared. He goes, there was not an emergency. That person made the decision by the 3rd or 4th slide. This is below me. I have people that do this. I have something better to do my time. He goes, the reason why is you guys lead to your value. We'd start with here's our company. Here's our history. Here's how we're structured. Here's our offer, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you might, if you're good, say, we think by working together, I'm gonna make up numbers, can save you $1,000,000 next year by doing ABC. Mhmm. I was, I would start with, I we're here from supplier ABC. We're in this industry. We think we have a $1,000,000 opportunity to make you more profitable. What I want to do is show you what we've done, how we've done this for you or similar companies, our process to identify that, our process to operationalize that, our process to track it and make you realize that. Do I have your attention? $1,000,000. Okay. Where can you do that? Why have you done it? How what happened? What's a I'd make you outnumbered, but now there's a $1,000,000 thing for me to leave. And he goes, you bored me because you're leading to it. Lead start with. Don't bury the lead. For paper people, you put the most exciting title at the beginning. You don't put it at the back of the paper. Nobody reads to the back of the paper unless they're interested. That's where the bury the link thing comes from. So if you're engaging with procurement, be bold. Didn't say you did an audit. Didn't say you put 500 engineering hours. I think based on your size, based on your industry, based on your experience, I think it could be between x and y. Then you start doing some work and getting into the real value quantification stuff, but there's nothing wrong with putting out an assumption that's reasonable

Bruce Scheer: and then saying, let's see where you really are around that. It totally makes sense just from kinda disciplines of communication, but then also getting the executives' attention, what they care about.

Todd Snelgrove: This is kind of an interesting thing because as a I'm not an engineer, but I'm a math person, and there's something called there's 3 elements of influencing attributed to Aristotle. And the point that I always focused on was the logic. If I've got the numbers and I've got the facts, I win. And I would get frustrated with clients when I'm sitting there, what do you not understand? It's 50% more, but you're using 60% less, which turns into a much bigger savings than it sounds like. I'm like, it's it's numbers, people. What do you not understand? Like, real hard numbers. There's 2 other things that I just said. Okay. Wow. Ethos, the credibility of the person speaking. I know, Bruce, you talked about this. What's your LinkedIn profile? How do you show up prepared? Do you know the terminology? I mean, if it's just numbers are numbers, but I wanna believe that you got it. And I put these 2 together, the the the pathos, but, you know, the storytelling, the imagery, the appeal. And not to brag by any stretch, but nasty negotiation going on, well, ages ago. And I had started with some corporate slides with the VP of procurement at a huge company, and he basically said, I don't have time for this dog and pony show. We had lost. My client took me outside, and he goes, we have nothing to lose. Go back. And I went back and pished right on the table. I got a little red in the face. We got a huge order. The guy said, I'm buying your belief in this. What you started off was with slides and words and some training, which are just a comment here. If you ever get sales training, take the training, but take what you learn and and build those stories. Steal the person's stories, make them your own. But reading a slide comes across as reading a slide, and they'll go, any salesperson could put the priceberg up. They could steal that and put the priceberg up, and then if they don't have a story to tell or something, it'll come across as weak, and they're by you, believe it or not, much more than I thought the numbers were the numbers.

Bruce Scheer: I love your point there that I I love it. The the ethos, the pathos, the logos. But pathos, that's where you can push into the emotion, your confidence, that back to building trust where where that buyer has trust that you're gonna deliver on that value. Of course, interested in the logos. What kind of numbers are we talking about here? Is this really worth our time? And then and then the ethos, but really nailing, demonstrating value and discovering value is, you know, that emotional contribution. And thanks for that story, Todd, just to anchor on that point. You really gotta nail all 3 of these.

Todd Snelgrove: So I wanted to really quickly hit on value quantification at this stage. I'm trying to get the customer to focus its on value, not price. And what I find a lot of companies will do is they will have somebody create their own tool in Excel on Word. So I've seen people create these one off tools, and the formulas are wrong. There are mistakes. Cell AB didn't transfer to y z. One time, somebody confused currency symbols. And you get this, when you look at a formula like, there was a currency calculation wrong. I mean, again, I could spend a day on this, but I won't. I've seen numerous ones that have inaccurate formulas. The biggest one I see is some industries, they really help customers increase the speed of their cash flow. That doesn't mean more cash. It means I have the cash for longer periods of time. 2 completely different value propositions. And some people will call that out, Glenn. You can't if I owe Bruce a $100 and I pay him in 30 days or I pay him in 40 days, Bruce doesn't have some companies will say, well, Bruce, then that's 10 days. You know, $100 over 30 days is $3.33. Bruce says 33 extra dollars. No. Bruce says a $100 for 10 days times interest rate times I mean, it's a it's a false calculation.

Bruce Scheer: Yeah.

Todd Snelgrove: Because every salesperson's created their own. It's not been vetted by anybody, and this is when the lawyers go, oh my god. What did you just put in writing in front of somebody? Reasonable ranges of impact when you're doing your research. I mean, sometimes you're gonna have to be weethinks. That's okay. But if your whole thing is, if we just improve it by 1%, it'd be worth this. My example, Bruce, is if my house wasn't in Michigan and it was in downtown New York, it'd be worth that. It's just it's not even plausible. There's no reasoning. There's no background. There's no how. It's just if. I'm not saying my spelling's the greatest, but, I mean, output format makes a difference. Back to my logos comment, why does it matter if it looks pretty? Why does it matter if it has cash flow graphs and they got colors? It's their number. Turns out, when that document gets passed on a customer, visualization makes a difference. I am not a communications person, but my goodness, they love that cash flow graph. They also love that ROI analysis. They love that breakeven point. Mhmm. I couldn't how exciting that made it. You know, references and links to your justification. I can make statements all the time, but the more third party links I have to it, the more validated, more logical it is. So say, here's my proof points to support these assumptions and changes. I kinda hit the visual idea. One thing that I'm amazed that most people don't do when you could you probably could, but nobody's already done it in Excel. Have different stages for your value case. K. Look at I'm gonna prepare before I go. I'm gonna test my assumptions and think, what is this gonna look like? Because maybe I don't need to fight on the price per labor per hour is 25 versus 22 because it only affects the case by 5%. You know? But I wanna I wanna get comfortable so I'm not sitting in front of the customer going, I don't know, or how come? Then I'm going to actually propose a value analysis to the customer based on what I understand, what I think. And this is where Bruce comes back and goes, yeah. Bob told you that number. He's wrong, or that's an industry average. We use this, but I'm gonna put numbers out. They're gonna then modify some of them. Not hopefully, but probably all of them. We used to actually have a a case stat a stage name called accepted. Not saying it's the right word, but I put a business case with my offering. They bought the offering. They've accepted your logic was my my thinking behind it because by then, he wanted to see how much did we sell that was attached to a business case. And then we could see the sales cycle was faster. We discounted less. And then what I'm amazed is most companies don't go back and verify. We'll talk about this in the final episode, but I knew what they bought. I knew what they implemented. I knew what the value drivers should be. Maybe I should go back and check. Are they getting it? Are they getting more? Awesome. Change the case. Are they getting less? Why? Can they fix it? I mean, then those become case studies to use to the next place I know. Over time, you start to get so much data you can be predictive and prescriptive. Again, long time with mine, but I would go into a customer. I've got 24 100 times we've done this. Here's the min. Here's the max. Here's the average. It was by accident we took it out of Excel and got it into a database type structure where we could start mining the data. And most customers would say, you win. You've done this at my locations around the world. This is the average. Wow. You've I mean, you've got the more times you use data, the better it gets. And it's gotta be easy and clear. When I file with technical people, they overcomplicate it, and you'll never understand it. And they think they're showing how smart they are by having an Excel spreadsheet with 27 tabs, and you hit this thing and it goes there. Nobody can reverse engineer it. Everyone's eyes gloss over, and you're not making yourself look smarter. You're confusing the customer. They might not say to you right there, I don't understand, because they might not wanna feel like they're not smart. But they're not taking that to their boss because their boss is gonna ask them, what do you mean by internal rate of return based on a Tuesday? But we I mean, I'm not showing something to my boss, but he's gonna question me that I don't have the answers. So more complicated doesn't mean anything. And if you use a tool, it's gonna be repeatable. It's not gonna be what load is Todd in on a Tuesday, not number what I wanted to create. It's gonna be a structure. The numbers might change by the customer, but you're gonna have something you can reuse. So, again, I just see a lot of people say, you know, the value thing's important, but the tool everyone will create their own, all of the the danger it causes.

Bruce Scheer: Absolutely. Yeah. Just to summarize on some of this, Todd, really insightful, astute based on experience and also with my own personal experience. Funny enough, I was engaged by Tableau to help them with their sales narrative, and, boy, did I learn a lot about the importance of visualizations and how people can internalize and get more committed around visualizations versus just raw numbers. So that that's super smart. But I also learned through through that engagement, and we did a bunch of research to help Tableau tell Tableau. And most spreadsheets, in fact, up to 40% of them are dead on arrival. Bad data, bad formula, as you were saying, bad calculations. And anybody in the finance world that needs to approve numbers typically knows that that that's your spreadsheet and it's probably broken. And, Todd, I don't know if I told you this story. Microsoft engaged us to build some value calculators for them, and they passed me one that they had another vendor make for them. And I broke it within about 30 seconds, and they had spent $500,000 on that value calculator, but it just had bad formula, bad data. So what we've done with value pros is we've got a value calculator platform that makes things repeatable. Of course, we've gotta do the research, the analysis, the benchmark research, and and make everything as credible as as we possibly can within that platform, but we get out of the bad data, the bad formula, bad calculations land, and move into more credibility by having that platform. Really important.

Todd Snelgrove: Last point, just for diving. But one customer said to me they got 6 different value analysis all in the same solution to the same departments. All of them look completely differently. And I'm like, oh, wow. The credibility went down. We'll just leave it at that.

Bruce Scheer: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Todd Snelgrove: So we're gonna wrap it up here with just I'd love to put a quote at the end. This is from the lady that used to run procurement for AstraZeneca, big drug company. She's UK based. We were at a conference together. I'm going to read this. She's now in charge of the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply, European. But suppliers often don't come to us with a business case, but it's what we want. Sell your value using our numbers to get our attention. And my favorite part, but if you can't quantify your value, don't be surprised at the failure of procurement to do so. She stood that said that on stage getting beside me, and I almost want to hug her because some people are probably saying our value can't be quantified. It can. Trust me. We don't have the time to go into it all, but it can. And she says, I'm in charge of all these things. If you can't tell me why your widget's better than their widget, I can't figure that out. I've gotta buy all this different stuff. I got bigger worries in my world. You better come to us with something.

Bruce Scheer: Absolutely. Just to anchor on that, Dean Edwards, who's also on our ValuePro Show, former head of procurement for Levi Strauss and Ingram Micro, mentioned the same thing. It was even rare when the sellers came with the business case and and could even talk about their own metric. You know, they're looking at their their the hurdle rate, the internal rate of return that, you know, the the value analysis would have to exceed to be considered. And he said, rare was the salesperson coming in prepared to have that converse or even to ask the question, what is that hurdle rate? Where does this need to be? And he kinda laughed about it with me. He said, when when I did have a good seller that asked the question, it made their sales job so much easier because they're helping us do our job. So, yeah, I I think this is so insightful, the quote by by this wonderful woman out of the UK, and just in terms of, hey. We don't have time to do it. If you're not gonna do it, I guess, good luck.

Todd Snelgrove: Or won't get prioritized, or I guess, to the back of the burger, or I because I'm not doing it. I've got too many things to worry about.

Bruce Scheer: So I

Todd Snelgrove: know we covered a lot, Bruce, but the idea is to set procurement up, so they want to have a different discussion.

Bruce Scheer: Excellent, Todd. Any other last thoughts that you'd have, Todd?

Todd Snelgrove: Taking different industries in different worlds, but in my old world, which I think is very interesting, we'd have a industry expert help work with me. I call myself the commercial value person. But there's different terms of industry. They could help me refine it. Increased production to a steel mill is different than a paper mill, which is different to a airline. This is this is the terms used, and we usually, for the big opportunities, do the dual role play. They would come to the explanation because they could, with credibility, explain that with the how, then they would look at me and go, Todd will do the numbers. So, again, for the big customers, and we the success was so much higher. It was one extra body, but it was worth it. Instead of me trying to talk language that I didn't understand, and it probably would come through. You know? And I got it my way around it sometimes. I mean, I'd stand and go, I don't understand the railway industry. I've been on trains, but, you know, here's my railway smart person. So the team's selling Brilliant. And I want everyone to sell value. I want everyone to create value that they need to have that first thing to go back to, and they need that industry or application person to have that person to come back also.

Bruce Scheer: So smart. So smart. And just being prepared and going in there because, of course, it's a credibility moment. You need to nail it. Use their language, have a credible analysis as you talk about. Visualize that for them. Have all the backup and all the proof and evidence that they need in that value, but just getting ready, getting that team ready. That that is so smart. Well, Todd, thanks so much for, sharing this wisdom on how to get approval ready and being on the show. Really appreciate it.

Todd Snelgrove: Thanks, Bruce. Look forward to the next few episodes that we'll do in the

Bruce Scheer: next little bit. Take care. Absolutely. You too. And that wraps up another insightful episode of the ValuePros Show. We've covered a lot of ground today from understanding the buyer's journey to mastering the art of value quantification. Todd has shared some invaluable wisdom on how to be approval ready, including the importance of engaging with procurement early, presenting a clear and compelling business case, and using visualization to make your value proposition stick. Remember, as Todd pointed out, if you can't quantify your value, don't be surprised if procurement fails to do so. It's our job as value professionals to make the case clear, compelling, and quantifiable. If you found this episode valuable, I strongly recommend you follow and connect with Todd and me on LinkedIn. Also, please sign up for our email newsletter by visiting valuepros.io. These are great ways to stay updated on the latest in value based selling and continue your journey to becoming value ready. Thank you for tuning into this episode. If you found it helpful, please share it with your colleagues and leave us a review. Until next time, keep striving to be value ready and help your buyers buy from you.