thevalueengineer

Value Engineer

Sales & Value Engineering

Hi All,

Cutting to the chase: Have you worked with a dedicated Value Team before (value engineers/ value consultants)? If so, I'd be interested in hearing how early you bring them in on a sales cycle and the impact.

TLDR:

I am a Value Engineer (creating custom business cases to show value to prospective customers & existing customers), and I have supported quite a few organizations in implementing and scaling value practices. I joined this community because value teams & sales teams are partners in communicating value and want to get feedback from salespeople on the practices of these programs.

In return, if you have questions on Value Engineering I'd be happy to help.

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👑 Sales Strategy

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braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

We had someone at my previous company doing this. Basically the grunt work of making ROI calculators. They were typically laughed out of the room during client presentations.

thevalueengineer

Value Engineer

There are some very very very bad business cases out there! I'm guessing that the ROI calculators were so elementary that they didn't accurately project value? I'd be interested in hearing WHY they were laughed out of the room.

There are some really large companies pushing quite embarrassing projections out to customers. These are typically the companies that refuse to reference these calculations post-sale as a measure of progress!

butwhy

Politicker

Solutions Engineer

In my experience, it depends on the deal and the urgency/pain that the deal is addressing. Sometimes it is handy to have them in early because they have a competing solution that is costing them money through insane customizations and old architecture. Sometimes it is better later because the deal is coming down to money after the champion's case wasn't compelling enough. Sometimes it is at the very end as a C-level wants the ROI as part of the proposal.

I advise value engineers to be able to read the room and work with the AE and SE (the actual OWNERS of the opp) to understand the appropriate time instead of shoe horning themselves as they build "scale" and "repeatability" processes as I have seen a large amount of VEs do. I find that incredibly maddening, though I try to have empathy as I understand it is a newer and evolving role.

thevalueengineer

Value Engineer

Thank you for the response! I really agree with working on the AE & SE. The goal is to scale QUALITY business cases and not just the # of deals engaged on.

My process is to create a repeatable, lightweight business case that gets the conversation going (provoking conversation with projected insights) but then work to collaborate on a custom business case tailored to the deal with the AE, SE, & customer.

After all, you are the trusted advisor and understand the In and outs of the deals. I don't understand how people think it is a good idea to not work together and let you lead it.

TennisandSales

Politicker

Head Of Sales

curious on your title. I have never met a Value Engineer before. Only solutions consultant or solutions engineer.

Am i wrong in assuming they are the same function?

thevalueengineer

Value Engineer

It is a newer function but it is very quickly becoming more common. It is not the same as SC & SE. Don't worry, you are not alone in not knowing. haha.

We are not technical on the product necessarily. The role is designed to take a prospect's challenges & goals and create a business case that articulates the value they will receive with the product.

I work with existing customers to measure the value they have received and create benchmarks based on these data points. Then I layer in 3rd party research and get input from subject matter experts. All of this is then used to create 'value models' that can support presales business cases in projecting value for prospects.

LordOfWar

Tycoon

Blow it up

I've never heard of this role but I'm very interested in learning more.

I have always been a technical seller and reached greater success via selling the value of a partnership and not just a single piece of business.

I feel what you do could likely be a beneficial skill for any salesperson.

thevalueengineer

Value Engineer

I completely agree that salespeople could do a version of what I am doing. I have seen a salesperson makes a few lightweight calculations and then drop the results into their existing slides. This has worked well for some and has even been the reason some companies decide they want to invest in someone like me full-time.

The key is to use the calculations that were used in presales to measure the value they are receiving AFTER the sale. Then it is used to sell more, create referencable case studies, etc.

A great place to start is to find a case study at your company, pull out a notable data point (like 50% reduction in time to do something) and then build a basic calculation around it for a conversation with a prospect. Example: You have 10 people working on a process. It takes X amount of time. We reduce it by y% so that is a savings of Z hours. If the average person works 2,000 hours per year that is a savings of ___ full-time equivalents.

I am speaking solely in the context of sales here (because..hey, Bravado. Right?) But overall I work to have a unified message of value to the customer throughout marketing, sales, CS, professional services, and within the product itself.

I'm happy to have a deeper conversation if there is anything you are curious about!

MrFinkle

Personal Narrative

Account Manager

My mindset on the value selling framework is that we should be uncovering what’s valuable to the customer not necessarily creating value. Once we uncover what’s valuable to them we can then tie the appropriate solution to the use case.

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