Book Review: Gamestorming by Gray et al.

5 out of 5 Stars


The following is a book review for "Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers" by D. Gray, S. Brown and J. Macanufo. This book was written for individuals at all levels of the enterprise to show different collaboration tools for organizations of all types to bring out creative solutions. The book is clearly written, uses clear examples and is well written and organized. 

The authors do an excellent job of providing an introduction and background on the use of brainstorming games, which they call "gamestorming". Chapter 1 describes the objectives of games and suggests a solid approach for the facilitator. Chapter 2 lists the 10 essential components of a game and Chapter 3 discusses some skills required for effective facilitation. These chapters provide a foundation that allows for a rapid understanding of how the games should flow, how to structure the information, and how to ensure good results.

The remaining five chapter discuss a multitude of brainstorming games to solve many of the problems that an organization faces, which are often best solved through a collaborative effort. I've made slight adaptations to these games to suit my own style and solve client problems in a very smooth and professional way. Best wishes on your path to a new type of gaming!

B2B Value Capture: Are Your Salespeople Aligned?

Build Value Perception, then Harness It

In B2B, the interaction with salespeople should feel like a consultation because the sales folks should not only be familiar with their products (goods and/or services), but have intimate understanding of their customer's (think client's) business as well. The sales folks need to build up the customer's understanding of how their products deliver value and then capture as much of that value in negotiations as possible.

Salespeople As Customer Advocates?

What I've been hearing from executives is that they feel their salespeople all too often say they need to give price cuts instead of holding their ground and keep fighting for an equitable return on the value provided. Here's a list of behaviors to watch out for:

1. Sales folks sell by comparing prices with competitors
2. Throw-in services to close the deal
3. Say "Our prices are too high!" when they lose a deal
4. Close deals by lowering prices
5. Lower prices to get more business
6. Focus on revenue when making a sale

Optimal Sales Behavior

In order to make a sale, sales folks will have to look at how they are delivering customer value (product value minus price) as compared to the competition; but they also need to understand the businesses costs to ensure an equitable return for the sale (price - product cost). The following behaviors can help do this:

1. Sell by comparing cost-of-ownership with competitor products
2. Use supplementary services to generate additional revenue
3. Say "Our method of communicating value needs work!" when they lose a deal
4. If prices are lowered to close the deal, pieces of the product are taken out to lower cost
5. Consider profitability when making a sale

Ideas to Incentivize B2B Value Capture

In an ideal world, the salespeople will see that using value calculators should make the sales cycle easier. Selling as a value consultant is a different way to close deals for sure. So how do you transform your sales folks into value consultants? The answer of course is to make changes to their compensation plans...., which may not be easy. The weighting on profitability needs to be increased relative to volume and revenue. This can be difficult for management to accept because they might fear that this will affect market share. But ultimately, isn't it better for a business to have market share AND profitability?

Involve salespeople early in the development of value calculators to help them get comfortable with this methods of sale. Pilot the value calculators throughout a couple of sales cycles with "friendly" clients. After a few small wins, document the process and have new salespeople join the newly developed value consultants in the field to observe the process and continue the training by doing some role-playing. The business can also develop a small group of specialists who understand the value consulting model and who are trained to be able to find additional value that could be captured. The end goal.... a value capture culture.

Further Reading

"Value Merchants" by Anderson, Kumar and Narus

Capturing Value in B2B Transactions

What is B2B Value Capture?

Sales guys often fall victim to price concessions because they can't communicate and/or quantify how their products and services will bring value to their client. In a business-to-business (B2B) transaction, "value" means economic value--dollars and cents. The goal of B2B Value Capture is to get an equitable return on the economic value products and services provide to clients.

The tools and methods used to quantify B2B value fall under a practice called Economic Value Analysis (EVA). EVA can be used in both a B2B context (widget A saves $X/yr. or with increase sales by $Y) and in a business-to-customer (B2C) context (car A will save the customer $X/yr. in fuel costs over car B).

Documenting Your Value Proposition

The result of an EVA exercise is a value calculator. Usually in spreadsheet form, these tools support a consultative type of sale, where the value consultant (salesperson) sits down with the potential client to quantify the savings and/or increased sales that could result from the use of products/services from the supplier. This exercise leads to four major benefits:

1. Increases the credibility of the sales pitch
2. Clients can quantify the value created and will be in a better position to convince upper management and those that have to sign of on the Capital Allocation Request that the purchase makes sense
3. Suppliers can show veritable cost savings and incremental sales to future potential clients
4. Suppliers can compare actual savings to forecasted savings and refine their value calculators

B2B Value Capture Works

Value Capture works because it helps the value consultants and clients conceptualize and verbalize value. By doing so, they create a common language and mental model, which is far more than most salespeople do for their clients. Most salespeople claim they provide superior value with a "trust us" for support.

B2B Value Capture Process

Step 1: Create list of Critical-to-Value Attributes (CVAs)
Step 2: Understand how CVAs provide value as their performance changes
Step 3: Translate value changes into value propositions
Step 4: Benchmark competitive offerings and compare to value propositions
Step 5: Transform salespeople into value consultants
Step 6: Profit from capturing value

In future blogs, I'll take you through these steps and find case studies in the news to demonstrate how it works.