The Randal Osché Podcast: Season 1 | Episode 21
On this episode of The Randall Osché Podcast, I sit down with Sultan Semlali, a Value Engineer and expert in creating customer-centric sales strategies. Sultan shares his journey from selling software to redefining what it means to deliver value in every customer interaction. This conversation dives into the importance of aligning sales strategies with customer outcomes, building trust, and fostering long-term relationships.
What You'll Learn:
Understanding Value Consulting: Why it’s about business outcomes more than functions and features.
The Elements of Value Pyramid: Companies can create and sustain customer loyalty by addressing a hierarchy of customer needs, from functional to emotional, life-changing, and social impact values.
Creating Customer Belonging: The role of MVP programs and community building.
Living Business Cases: Turning static proposals into ongoing, collaborative documents.
Mindset Shifts in Sales: Prioritizing giving value before asking for returns.
Don’t miss Sultan’s practical strategies to elevate sales practices and build long-term customer loyalty.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube, Podcast Index, Podcasts Addict, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.
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Highlights
Core Role of Value Consulting: Helps customers clarify their vision and quantify solutions' impact on costs, revenue, and productivity, focusing on outcomes over features.
Business Cases Matter: 80% of B2B decisions rely on business cases, which justify solutions' value and align with client goals using their data.
Living Business Cases: These should track and adjust outcomes over time, demonstrating value and aiding renewal discussions.
Consultative Sales: Integrating value consulting into sales focuses on business goals and outcomes, fostering stronger client relationships.
SHOW NOTES
Questions this conversation has Randall Pondering
"What steps can sales leaders take to help their teams focus on customer business outcomes?"
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments!
And that's it for today's conversation here on the Randall Osché podcast. Thank you so much for joining us and we hope that you've enjoyed listening as much as we've enjoyed recording it.
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The Randall Osché Podcast - Sultan Semlali (Episode 22)
Sultan: [00:00:00] As value consultants, we are first of all, consultants. So we are here to help the customer. We are not there to do anything else. We want to guide them through the, in many cases, the purchase process.
We know that buying in B2B is hard, and it's even more harder than selling something. So we are there to help them try to crystallize a vision and crystallize the value that they want to achieve.
AI: Hello, and welcome to the Randall Osché podcast, where we create a safe space for meaningful and thought provoking conversations. We have long form interviews with entrepreneurs, thought leaders, artists, and change makers in order to deconstruct their journeys and to pass out valuable life lessons and life changing perspectives for listeners like yourself.
So that you can, as Randall says, learn their lessons without their scars. So, whether you're tuning in on your daily commute, or during a workout, or cooking [00:01:00] dinner, we are happy to have you join us. So, take a seat, relax, grab a cup of tea, and join the conversation. Now, let's dive into this week's episode.
You made it
Randall: Sultan Semlali welcome to the show. For the guests out there who don't know you, why don't you take a minute and introduce yourself.
Sultan: My name is Sultan. Thanks for having me, Randall. I'm leading the value consulting practice at Sitecore. We are a digital experience platform. So powering some of the most iconic websites and digital experiences in the world.
Think of L'Oreal. Think of Porsche think of many, many brands globally. I have more than 20 years experience in [00:02:00] sales, mainly in technology companies, working for Salesforce, Adobe, Oracle, and the likes. And besides the joy of sales, I love flying. So I'm a private pilot flying small planes, above the Netherlands, mostly where I live.
And yeah, that's all about me.
Randall: Excellent. How long have you been a value consultant?
Sultan: Oh, I started my value consulting journey in 2015. So it's going to be nine years now. So nine years and a half.
Randall: What were you doing before? Then how did that transition into value consulting?
Sultan: So I was at a time I was working as a sales at Adobe, the Netherlands selling one of our solution, which is Adobe campaign, a campaign management tool. And I felt like I saw all the. Sales tricks and techniques over the time. And I was looking to diversify my experience and I met my mentor back then, Chris Tenet, one of the most brilliant [00:03:00] value person in the world, to be honest, and he was leading the value team.
We had a conversation. He showed me what his team was doing. And I was fortunate to join his team and learn from one of the best how do you. Up your game and how do you put value at the core of your conversations with your clients from early stages down to value realization?
Randall: Excellent. One of the things I've noticed on the interviews I do for the podcast, there's like a few important things that come up and mentorship is one of those very important aspects, I think, of a career journey.
So, maybe could you just talk a little bit about, how Chris became your mentor and maybe how important, Chris and his, you know advice, guidance and wisdom was to you in your journey.
Sultan: Well, Chris is he has a long consultancy experience. And I'm making him sound like he's an old Gandalf. Kind of thing, but he's not, sorry, Chris, if you're listening.
But he has that consulting [00:04:00] mindset and also very good digital marketing, knowledge that he brought together and he built the models for Adobe back then. He used a lot of the knowledge that we have from Tom Pizzello and other authors in industry, and he shared how we need to have an approach, which is consultative and a co creation process with our clients and prospect, which is now, I think, a standard for people that do that well.
And. I was bringing my sales hat to the conversation, so we were really able to mix and match and see how do we look at things from both sides of the fence, the sales vision towards the deal and the value consultant on the other side, and how can we. Actually help salespeople to understand actually why they need to talk about value with their clients and not only about features and functions and getting clients as fast as possible through the different cell stages.
And, I think [00:05:00] a key thing of a great mentor is that is it is a person that will teach you some of the things that will let you. Do your own thing and whenever there is a problem. I remember once I was really stressed with a specific situation I was stuck and I gave him a call and he asked me five questions and it was like, okay Salta But okay, tell me more about this.
Tell me more about that. How did you see that? Why do you think like this and what if you did this and It took like 10 minutes But my whole problem was solved and he helped me clarify the whole situation. And I think that's what a great mentor does. It's just asking you the right questions and guiding you on the right path.
Randall: It's a very consultative approach that he took to helping you. Yeah. You mentioned a couple mentorship, mentee relationship with Chris, what is value or what is value selling Well,
Sultan: I think the best, value is lies in the eyes of the beholder, that's what we like to say. And I do like a [00:06:00] study that was published in HBR of our business review around the 40 levels of value and where they looked at the definition of value in B2B and in order to represent them to use a Maslow Pyramid, which is really cool.
And I think we're all familiar with. Basic needs down to self actualization. And it did the same with values. So the bottom level of the pyramid is all about costs, features, functions. Then it goes to ROI, payback. But then it goes to sense of belonging, sense of a brand, and so on. And I like to keep that actually on my desktop.
To keep that in mind that when we talk about value with a client, it's not about the numbers in a business case. They do matter, but there was way more value to it. And I think the best example that I like to give is what Salesforce is doing. So if you go to Salesforce, they have some great technology. Do they have the best technology ever?
Maybe not. Yeah. Always some better companies out there. Do they have the best [00:07:00] price? Maybe, maybe not, but if you go to their website, they don't communicate about that. It's all about being part of that Salesforce family, Salesforce community, becoming part of the Trailhead program. And so that sense of belonging, which is higher on the pyramid is really something that they play a lot.
And that helps them actually, I think, to, to generate a lot of their revenue, not by selling the best CRM in the world. But actually by creating that whole community where if you choose Salesforce, you cannot go wrong kind of feeling.
Randall: As a value consultant, how do you try to create that sense of belonging for the customers or prospective customers that you work with?
Sultan: I think it's at a personal level, it's really, having that consultative co creation approach with them. So as value consultants, we are first of all, consultants. So we are here to help the customer. We are not there to do anything else. We want to guide them through the, in many cases, the purchase process.
We know that. Buying in [00:08:00] B2B is hard, and it's even more harder than selling something. So we are there to help them try to crystallize a vision and crystallize the value that they want to achieve. And I think that that's one part of it is that we put some skin in the game, we invest and we help them.
And then from a company perspective, it's really about how can we either at a company level. So. At Sidecore, we have our MVP program. We have a whole community and partners that we also need to showcase as value. And a lot of companies forget actually that have a huge value of community of clients and partners.
But it's also how we try to partner with a client and make sure that our salespeople, our pre sales people, and everyone actually is. Try to embrace the clients and make them part of something that we are all in there together. If they're not successful, especially in SaaS, you're not successful.
Customer will churn and it will leave.
Randall: I was just thinking so much. I think that a lot of times in this, the industry, we rely so much on like [00:09:00] functions and features as a crutch. I think it's a lot of people's, comfort zone. And so when the conversations get stickier, we get in the weeds, we start talking, like we just naturally gravitate towards functions and features.
But I'm gonna have to look this up and I'll probably include a diagram of it in the video version of this. But I find it interesting that that's at the bottom of the pyramid. Right. And then you just go up from there. So that's a default. That's a baseline. Like you have to have that. If you don't have that, the conversation doesn't continue, but it starts there.
It doesn't stop there. And what I've experienced a lot is that it does start and stop there. And in order to be, you know, Excel at B2B like SaaS sales, you need to start there and continue moving up that pyramid. So I appreciate you sharing that. Maybe just a little bit more about what psych core is a MVP program.
Sultan: The MVP program is, I think it's a program that started maybe 20 years ago [00:10:00] and it's the most valuable professionals and it's a program that recognizes the best members of our community. So it's partners, it's customers that are either developers, it started actually more as a team. Technical, group of the best developers on the side, cross technology, but we have now a group of strategists.
So we're looking at digital marketing strategy and also ambassadors and the way we choose them is based on their publication. So those people are very active. They organize events for the community, for their peers. They write blogs, they write code that they share with each other. We have a group of, I think, 150 judges that every year looks at the community and their submissions.
So they need to submit what they have done and they're being chosen then as an MVP. And then when you're an MVP, it gives you not only the title, but it also gives you access to a earlier version of the [00:11:00] software discussions about a roadmap. You can influence where the company is going to.
Randall: I think it's a very powerful thing to have as part of your business.
Majority of my career has been in wealth management, but. You know, when working with financial advisors, it's like having your customers, I forget what the, like the common term for it is, but it's like hiring your own board of advisors, having your clients be your board of advisors and be like, Here's the top 15 clients or my most trusted 15 clients.
I want their feedback on how to benefit my business. So I've seen it in different industries and different models before. But I would agree that that can be quite valuable.
Sultan: Yeah. and I still see many organizations that don't have something like that. And I think if you're not able to, it doesn't have to be the same thing, but you really need to think as an organization on.
What is the community I serve and how can I serve them the best and make them part that we are part of their success and they're part of our success. If you have that, you really, you're ahead [00:12:00] of your competition, I think.
Randall: Yeah, especially if you're selling something, I think that you have to give.
Always before you get or can you before you can expect to get you have to put value out there Before you can expect value in return and usually that's not balanced But if you're not willing to put value out there to receive something then I think you're playing a losing battle
Sultan: Yeah. I think it's, it's a, it's a sometimes tough conversation because you might have some sales people that would say, well, but I called the guy I invited him for lunch and I gave him a demo.
So I gave him stuff. So why is he not buying from me? So yeah, I fully agree with you, but I think we still have a lot of mindset changes to do. Yeah. To get people to a place of really giving nuts.
Randall: Yeah, yeah, agreed, like, from a genuine place, right? Side note, it's a, complete pet peeve of mine, like, Don't buy me lunch.
Don't try to buy me dinner. I can do that myself. And I like to cook. So like this is an [00:13:00] inconvenience to me. Don't think that you're doing me a favor by dragging me out of my house or my office. So you can talk to me. That's that's not a benefit. Sorry.
Sultan: And so in a pyramid, where do you put the lunch?
Sure.
Randall: That's not on my pyramid. Anyways. So value selling, right, is a function that some B2B you know, SaaS companies leverage in order to help their customers make a purchasing decision. So maybe just your take on how that looks to you. Then we can get into it in a little bit more detail after that.
Sultan: All right. What do you mean on how that looks to
Randall: me? Like what does, so there's organizations there's a lot of software companies out there. Their responsibility as a company is to sell software. Then they do that in different ways. They have their own sales framework. They have their own approach.
Some organizations in the business of selling software [00:14:00] have value engineers or value consultants to the best of my knowledge. Those two terms are used interchangeably. But they have value teams. Usually these value teams are a bit smaller. They employ them to help customers make a purchasing decision, right?
Like you said earlier, when you have a value engagement, I call it value engagement with a customer. You're doing it for them and not necessarily for the business. It can be a win win, right? You can help them make a purchasing decision. While also representing your organization, to like bring more revenue in.
I think the reason why I would say it's a win win is we want as an organization, I would want to have customers who are bought into what I have. And I think value selling, value engagements, building business cases is a way to maybe weed out. The customers that maybe we shouldn't have and filter in the customers that we should have the people who are willing to engage in that, that type of process, but not all [00:15:00] software companies employ value consultants or value engineers.
So maybe just you know, what a value team looks like, or why value teams exist and maybe get into a little bit about, as a value consultant yourself, how you go about your day to day or work with customers or work within the organization
Sultan: Yeah, no, very, very good question. The point you make on the role of a value team, and as you said, value consultant, value engineering, you might have value engineering coming a lot from people that have an SAP background because SAP was very strong for its value engineering practice.
And a lot of the value leaders around the world have some SAP background in the past. So the real value indeed is to. Help customers make decision. We know that about 80 percent of B2B purchase decisions require some form of business case. So there's always a CFO that needs to be there and that need to give their blessing, to the investment.
And [00:16:00] if as a software vendor who should know, In our case, the value of their solution, but it could be for any industries. When you're a vendor, you know, the value of your technology, you know, where you had success, and you should be able to explain that value and be able to help your client actually justify the value internally and what a value.
Team does it's first of all, building the value models. So really being able, for example, to identify, what is the impact of my product slash solution slash service on costs. On revenue, on risk, on productivity, compliancy. It can be different areas. And within actually each one of those buckets is let's I'm looking at revenue growth and how much technology can help.
Then does my solution help to drive more sales, more conversions, or does it helps to increase the value of sales that we do? Does it increase the frequency of sales for my clients? So the first [00:17:00] job of a value team is really to clarify that, work closely with a product marketing team to make that as part of the messaging.
And then it's part of. It's job as well to educate the salespeople on to having those conversation, being able to explain in plain English, how does the product solution service drive that value for their clients and we see different kind of models. We have organizations where they have a very large value team, and then you might have one value consultant for five or 10 sales reps, working on deals, but you might have organizations which are very centralized, where they actually build a value model.
And then they educate the sales teams and pre sales teams to use the models themselves. And so instead of bringing a value consultant to the table to sit down and build a business case, the sales or the pre sales person will be actually building a business case using the methodology and some of the tools [00:18:00] like an ecosystem or a media fly or shark finesse.
Which are some of the vendors of those technologies, to build those business cases. And then the value team can then focus in those cases on more of the strategic and transformational deals and having the rest of the sales team, actually run the standard size deals and try to make a business case.
In this case, Part of the value proposition.
AI: Let's take a quick break from today's episode. If you're enjoying the conversation, please take a moment to look us up. You can find Randall on Instagram at Randall Osché, that's spelled at R A N D A L L O S C H E.
And you can catch the show notes and other resources at randallosche.com and now back to the episode
Randall: So, value as I would say, so correct me if I'm wrong, is what a solution [00:19:00] can do for you and not how it does it. I think how it does it part is the functions and features that we sometimes lean on as a crutch, but what the solution can do for you or the like business outcomes that it can create, like you said.
Drive revenue, decrease expenses, increase efficiency et cetera. And I think that's to have a successful sale to have, to influence the, you know, people who are signing the checks, they're going to need some sort of business justification as to why they should, you know, pay a software vendor, a hundred thousand dollars for software.
Like, what are they going to get in return? And a business case is a business justification as to like how that purchase is going to benefit them and align with their goals and objectives as an organization. With that said, I've also different value. Consultants use different terminology for this.
I just commonly refer to it as a business case. And that's what I would say. Like I would define it [00:20:00] as a business justification. But maybe if you would just want to elaborate on, you know, what you think a business case is and maybe what it looks like, what does it include? What does it not include? How do you go about creating one?
Sultan: So to add on your point about, what are the outcomes you get? I think it's really key. At the same time, a great value team will do a great work at translating on how do you get actually to that outcome. And you need to be able to justify that, you could say, well, we'll help increase a revenue, for your organization, but the justification behind it on, you need to be able to say by doing this and that, and we have seen evidence that we have done that in the past that.
Those clients. So I think this is really key that not just throw numbers on a slide, and just saying, Hey, Mr. Customer, you sign tomorrow, you'll get a hundred million in the bank in two weeks. It is big numbers bring big questions and bring more issues, which actually leads naturally to what a business case is.
So when we [00:21:00] do a business case or a value assessment. The funny thing about it is that when we start such an engagement, it's always to ask the customer, what is a business case for you? Because every person, every organization has a different vision on that, and they have different processes. And in some cases, all they need is just to, Tell them that, Hey, this is what we have done with that customer.
And these are the key outcomes you'll get. And in some other cases, the business case need to include an internal rate of return at present value, payback period, and all those cool financial things. So you have really this scale off. I would say the business justification, business case need to. Cover.
I think a number of key areas, first of all, is, what are their business objectives and what they try to achieve? Why we believe we can help them, using some of the customers numbers try to quantify what would be the impact. The impact needs to be quantified over time. That's a key thing, because you always have implementation.
You always [00:22:00] have, training. People will not get 100 percent of the value on day one. It will take time. So you need to take that time aspect into consideration. And then you need to do financial modeling and then the explanation behind it. Finally, the most important thing about such an exercise is that the numbers need to be from the customer and not from the vendor.
What I mean by that is that if I'm trying to sell you something, Randall, today, and I say, Hey, you're going to make a hundred million by signing this contract today. There you go, here's the business case. Go and sell it to your partner. You probably have a hard time, because unless you are really convinced that this number is correct, you will not be able to sell it.
And I think what a, such an exercise that it's, when you do it well, you get buy in from the person and try to agree on the number. Are we too optimistic? Are we pessimistic? It's nice to be conservative when you do such things. But you build that vision and that common, actually, goal [00:23:00] that we want to achieve over time with a client, and that a client feels comfortable to defend that themselves.
I think this is really key, because we want to empower them. We just don't want to throw some numbers on a slide, hoping that it will stick.
Randall: I look at it as like facilitating the process, right? You're having this value engagement. You're approaching this in a consultative way and getting them to think about this, just like your mentor had asked you these five questions and you solved your own problem.
The essence to me is to ask curious questions. Help them understand that this is the solution that they need to buy for them and that their problem that they're trying to fix with the solution, is too big and ugly not to be fixed immediately and then to help justify that, you know, using their facts and figures to quantify how ugly that problem is and how [00:24:00] valuable the solution would be to them.
Is that fair?
Sultan: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The reason why companies are not choosing you is because they make no decision. And I think it's really key to, to help them see that the issue is there and it needs to be solved and that it's worthwhile to, to grab actually that problem and to solve it.
Randall: I think 60 percent of these deals end in no decision. Which is a huge number and I have built a presentation before talking about value consulting and it's like, can you afford that? Like that's the catch line of, of the slide. Can you afford to lose 60 percent of your deals? And if, even if, okay, we're not going to solve the entire problem, but like, what if we got 5 percent more deals?
That's going to be a huge impact the revenue of the organization. Significant.
Sultan: Yeah, because it takes. As much effort to make a 5k transaction as a 50k of a 200k transaction. It might be slightly shorter, maybe for the 5k, but not [00:25:00] always. So it's still a lot of effort. So you really want to increase the odds on your side to make sure that, you get out of the no decision area.
And I think one of the, maybe one key benefits we see in doing those exercises that when a customer is not willing to work with you, on a value assessment or a business case. Can already be one of the first signals that maybe that customer is not ready to come in. And that they're just looking around and you should maybe not invest too much time into that opportunity.
Randall: Yeah. Qualify the deals in or out. And I think this can be helpful. We don't live in an ideal world. No company is optimized fully, right? So when you think about. a value team? What do you think maybe the ideal way to have a value team within an organization looks like?
And then, maybe how do you integrate that approach Into what the organization already has going on.
Sultan: It is a probably one of the [00:26:00] hardest questions to answer. It comes down, I think, to getting a team that is, has sufficient expertise to build those value models. And as we discussed earlier, and be able to translate them and educate the teams into that.
So you need to have that level of expertise. You need the sufficient level of availability of the team to, to be able to have those conversation. And it comes down, I think, mostly to the buy-in from, in many cases, the sales side of the house, in how do you make sure that the sales leadership is talking value as well with their teams.
So what you might see in some organizations is that. You might have some sales leaders having been successful, having value engineers or value consultants in their past that helped them close multi million dollar deals. And I believe in the value. And so they will be investing in their organization. I would say, well, we need a large team and it will hire five, 10, 20 [00:27:00] people to build a strong value team.
We've seen that in, in many organizations over the last years. But what happens is that if they just stop to hiring those people, but they don't bring the knowledge of those people into their forecasting conversation, the account planning, account review conversations with their sales leaders and the sales teams, then it tends to die.
And I think this buying and having those conversations. need to happen. So if a sales leader will be asking their sales reps to, okay, but what is the business case for the customer? What will they get out of it? Who are the key stakeholders and how do we impact those five key stakeholders in that deal?
What is the value for each one of them? If sales leaders don't have this conversation with the sales rep, the sales reps would not be thinking about it except the top ones that always know that they need to do that. And that's when a value program, risk of dying or not be successful and not delivering the value that it should be.
Randall: Yeah. I think that in my experience, it has to be an [00:28:00] integrated, part of the sales process. And that has to be reinforced by sales leadership. It can't be. Successful if it's like an, an add on or bolt on or something that you do in addition to, or on top of the sales process, it has to be an integrated approach.
Sultan: It's pretty much probably what you've seen in the wealth, finance industry where you are looking actually at what your clients want to, what do they want to be in maybe in 50 years or 20, 30, 40 years. With their money, what kind of lifestyle do they want to achieve? What is their goal?
How do we help them get there? So what is the value by the end of the day that you want to get from their investment?
Randall: Yeah, the thing I've learned in like crossing industries is, it was doing value selling the entire time. But instead of talking like about business objectives and what they're going to get out of a solution, It's, you know, the functions and features are like how the technology works.
[00:29:00] Right. But we're selling outcomes when we're selling software and wealth management, the functions and features would be that, you know, your portfolio returned X percent this time. And these investments returned, X percent and you're, outperforming the benchmark or underperforming the benchmark.
Those are functional features. Nobody cares about that. What they care about is, am I going to be able to, have enough wealth to pay for my grandkids, tuition? Am I going to be able to buy the beach house when I retire? Am I going to be able to. You know, die before my running money runs out, right?
Those are the outcomes and that's value selling. In that industry, we didn't call it that. We called it goals based investing, goals based investing. And when I think of a business case, it's the same thing. Like my executive summary slides that I start with. It's like, what's the most important thing to the business?
It's their goals and initiatives, their strategic plans. How does the purchase of this solution today align with the outcomes that they want to create for themselves? [00:30:00] And then again, instead of talking about, you're going to be able to buy the beach house, it's, you're going to be able to drive your revenue by, you know, an extra 10 percent next year, right?
Okay. So I think we're in a transition.
I think it took us a few years to transition out of the COVID economy, if you will, and thinking with that, that mindset. And I think 2024 was, you know, one of the first years where it's just like, Oh, we're doing business differently. And perhaps like 2024 is a definition of the new normal, post COVID.
Which I think money has gotten tighter as part of that, which would make, in my estimation, having you know, a business case and a business justification even more valuable. But do you have any thoughts on why perhaps and maybe in 2024, moving forward, business cases, to justify the sale of software, I suppose, from the customer's perspective, justify the purchase of software is even more valuable.
They're important.
Sultan: Yeah, I think it's even more important when we saw an increase. It started already last [00:31:00] year. We saw an increase in the demands on, business cases and business justification for the engagements we have. And I think that's an overall trend because, money is rare.
CFOs are being asked multiple things. If it's a hospital, will they be investing in a new parking garage or will they be investing in software to run the hospital? Both investments have some good yield, have some impact on customer experience or employee experience and so on. So, all those areas, CFOs need to make those decisions and they are really invested into those decisions.
So I think it's key, but one is. I think even more important is that we start to look beyond the business case and that the business case becomes a living document. So it's not just something that dies in a SharePoint somewhere, the land of bad plans and bad strategy things and documents, but it becomes actually a living document.
And I think the best in class [00:32:00] companies are using those business case to. Then use that as the way of measuring the value we deliver to our clients over time so that we know that, okay, we were planning to provide you X percent increasing conversion, by the end of year one, we are at the end of year one.
We see that we haven't achieved that completely. What went wrong? What can we adapt? What are the changes we can make it that you drive that conversation around outcomes and you have outcomes based conversation. With your clients over time. I think this is the next step and what we really need to do to make sure that the renewals and all those conversations actually, are easier.
Randall: Yeah. I think to your point, I think that, best case scenarios are that you leverage the business case, like the business case is the through line from a Pre sales perspective through the customer journey to a post sale perspective and customer success. And then that's, you know, like [00:33:00] you said, a living document.
Like what we, anticipated the value that you would get back to you at the beginning might not be what actually happens. But if you use that as the target, you can always iterate and adjust that as you go. But if you're not iterating and adjusting it as you go, the customer doesn't know what they're getting.
They're getting something, but when it comes time for renewal, is that something that isn't quantified enough for them to, send you another check? You don't know, but if you leverage that document as a living document, like you said, throughout the customer journey, they already understand the value that they're getting because it's documented.
You've been going through this process with them from pre sales through the journey to like renewal. And it's a foregone conclusion that they understand that they're giving us money in exchange that they're getting value. So I think best case scenario and that's like another part of what I mean of like an integrated part of the process and not something that you [00:34:00] do on on top of it.
Sultan, I know you have to run.
So I just wanted to thank you for hopping on here and sharing your value consulting expertise with us. For anybody that might want to reach out to you, see any like blog posts or anything like that, that you might have in this space, where might they be able to find you and maybe access some of your information?
Sultan: So they can contact me through LinkedIn, Sultan Semlali. And they can also check value coach. com. So value dash uh, Um, I publish regularly articles around value selling best practices and have an assessment for organization to look at how well are they doing from a value selling perspective.
So it's a free assessment. Just give it a try. It's straightforward. 10 questions and it gives you a score and it might help to drive some initiatives within your organization. And I also created a small course on how to use chat GPT for sales. It's also a free resource. Just give it a try and, I hope be useful for you.
Randall: All right, [00:35:00] Sultan. Thanks again.
Sultan: Thanks a lot. Have a great day.
Randall: You too.
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