The Art of Value Realization
Buying a paintbrush doesn’t make you an artist. This week at our annual sales kickoff, Jeff Hess presented an innovative Value Realization (VR) process that guides what happens after our customers buy our software. TIBCO Value Realization has been called “a wave of the future” by analysts and applauded by our customers.
The idea is simple: the sale goes on after the sale. We aspire to put in as much energy with the customer after the first deal as we do leading up to it.
Many sales teams get this wrong. They celebrate deals, not value. They celebrate the individual, not the team. Some separate salespeople into “hunters” and “farmers.”
The VR model parses no distinction between value selling and value realization; it’s one continuous cycle. It’s a system of best practices, blueprints, learning pathways, partner engagement, architecture, and design thinking. The process leads our customers through stages of sophistication and, ultimately, to value.
We don’t sell paint; we sell sophisticated enterprise software. Value realization is hard work. Modern sales leaders know the real success comes after the sale.
Or, as Gapingvoid puts it, disruption comes after the fact.