proceedit 20121217 top 10 end customer objections and how to face them succesfully

Top Ten End Customer Objections and How to Face Them Successfully V 01 P 1

proceeditTop 10 End Customer Objections and How to Face Them Successfully


Content

� Treatment of Objections

� Top Ten End Customer Objections

� We Don’t Have Processes (!!!)

� No budget Available

� All our Processes are Supported by ERP & CRM

� I Don’t Trust on your Savings

� Scared of Having to Suffer again a Project

� Are your Solutions Ready to Use?

� Massive BPM Deployment will Cost a Fortune!

� They Won't Accept to be System Governed

� Are my Competitors Implementing BPM?

� Who Are You?

� Please Comment!

� How to Contact Us

� Gratitude


Treatment of Objections

� In spite that our model is absolutely barrier-free, customers are

always putting objections. As you know, objections area

psychological defenses against “this guy that is trying to fool me”.

� Objections are not negative, in fact they are extremely useful for us

because, knowing customer thoughts, we can contra-argument by

highlighting how our business model solves every worry customer

could have.

� The main and more frequent objections we have received in the

last years are listed in the following slide “Top Ten End Customers

Objections”.

� You can see suggestions on how to contra-argument those

objections below on this document. Read carefully the document

and practice contra-argumentation before contacting customers.

� Quick and appropriate contra-argumentations is the best way to

transmit our customers we know our business very well and we

transmit credibility.


Top Ten End Customer Objections

1. We Don’t Have Processes (!!!).

2. No Budget Available.

3. All our Processes are Supported by ERP & CRM.

4. I Don’t Trust on your Savings.

5. Scared of Having to Suffer again a Project.

6. Are your Solutions Ready to Use?

7. Massive BPM Deployment will Cost a Fortune!

8. We Won't Accept to be System Governed.

9. Are my Competitors Implementing BPM?

10.Who You Are?


We Don’t Have Processes (!!!) - 1

� It seems incredible but it happens to us very frequently that

customer really thinks they have no processes in its organization,

even talking with IT people!

� In fact this is not a bad point to start because customer is not

contaminated by other actors of the BPM market and therefore we

can much better explain the BPM concept and the benefits of

applying our business model, not having to fight with pre-

established paradigms.

� Contra-objections:

� All organizations and individuals, even animals, work following formal o

informal, explicit or implicit processes.

� BPM helps the organization to formalize, normalize, optimize and

automate those processes to dramatically increase the efficiency of the

organization.

� Put examples of processes close to the sector of activity of the customer,

or the function of the customer representative you are talking with, and

how BPM can improve them.


We Don’t Have Processes (!!!) - 2

� Use definitions and process examples you can find in our document: “BPM

& BPMS Presentation”.

� Show your customer examples of BPM Process diagrams and forms of

BPM personal tasks.

� If customer is interested and consider it necessary we can arrange a

remote BPM Process live demonstration.


No Budget Available - 1

� We have no budget available, “We have to put your proposal in the

next year budget”, “Budget list is closed this year”, … the recurrent

objection as an universal barrier.

� It’s funny, customers never has budget but, very surprisingly, they

are investing every year; therefore, in most of the cases this

objection is a just a polite way to say, “Look my friend, I’m not

interested in what you are trying to sell me”.

� Let’s hope we fall in an other category: our customer is interested

but, as budget is always a question of priorities, we are not in the

first positions of the list. In that case, our job is convincing him

that we are the main priority. Why? Because our processes are in

fact a enormous cash flow machine for end customers.


� Try to clarify which type of budget is not available: investment or

expenses. That will help you on how to focus the contra-argumentation.

� Highlight the advantages of our business model in terms of no-investment

required and pay-back agreement.


No Budget Available - 2

� Try to emphasize that with the savings obtained by the deployment of

processes they will have finally! budget available for other investments.

� Use typical BPM cloud service cost ratios as cost per task performed or

cost per document, to show that we are talking of very low unitary cost

and total costs always below 25 % of the tangible savings.

� And the best argument, try us and check the savings, it will cost you

nothing, you will loose nothing, you can gain a lot!


All Processes our are Supported by ERP&CRM - 1

� “All our processes are already supported by our ERP and CRM” or

even “All our processes have to be supported by our ERP and CRM

to assure the data uniqueness”, “We don’t want to have our data

spread among many applications, we want to maintain our

referential integrity” … they sound being very solid and technical

based arguments but … completely out of the reality and of what it

is possible to achieve today.

� Why, very simple because most of the critical information (probably

+80 % and growing) the users are managing are out of the

traditional data silos of the transactional applications the

corporations have built in the past and that they are still feeding

with old information. In fact live information is managed by users

on Exchange, Outlook, DropBox, Google, LinkedIn, Facebook,

Twitter, …) with o without explicit permission of the corporation and

the fact that BPM concept is a good way to begin the formalization

an normalization and of all this dispersed and critical information.

� Nevertheless this is a very positive objection, at least they

recognize the have processes! The point is, “Are you optimizing and

automating your processes in the most efficient state-of-the-art

level?”


All Processes our are Supported by ERP&CRM - 1

� Nevertheless this is a very positive objection, at least they

recognize they have processes! The point is, “Are you optimizing

and automating your processes in the most efficient state-of-the-

art level?”, “Is your company interested on having some control on

all this dispersed, unknown, unrecoverable and not traceable data

& documents your users are spreading among many different non-

controllable repositories?”.

� By the other way, in fact, almost all big players in ERP market after

having tried to complement their applications with workflow

modules, they finally have recognized that different software

technology is required to automate processes and they have

bought for that purpose specialized BPMS software vendors.


� Put simply questions to customer representative as a mechanism to

discover non satisfied demands and then opportunities for BPM.

� “How many processes have you implemented?”.

� “Are you completely satisfied from the processes implanted over your ERP,

CRM?”.


All ours Processes are Supported by ERP&CRM - 2

� “Are your processes automating all actions, internal and external, required?”.

� “Why are you not implementing more processes or on a more quickly way?”.

� “Which has been the cost and time to implement one of those processes over

your ERP or CRM?”.

� “What happens when you have to modify the way those processes are working,

are the tools provided by the ERP or CRM flexible enough, do you have to

program to do it?”.

� “Can you design your processes on a graphic?”,

� “Can you monitor the process instances launched and obtain KPIs from them?”

� Act, react depending on the answers.

� Use the arguments explained on our document: “Change on IT Paradigm”

to explain how the organization is changing and how BPM can help on the

orchestration of the chaos that information avalanche can create in the

organization.

� Put examples of processes close to the sector of activity of the customer,

or the function of the customer representative you are talking with, and

how BPM can automate them just to check they have been implemented

of not over ERP or CRM. Use the top 20 process list to find examples.


All our Processes are Supported by ERP&CRM - 3

� Try to explain the different concept a BPM Process is wit respect to

workflows that can be implemented on the ERP or CRM. Use arguments

explained in our document “BPM & BPMS versus ERP & CRM”.

� Try to identify if a new process is required. Put cost on the table, for sure

the ones quoted by the ERP o CRM implementer will be much higher.


I Don’t Trust in your Savings - 1

� “The savings figures you are indicating are just theoretical, we

would never arrive to this savings”, “It is impossible to figure out

the operational savings to be obtained by implementation of BPM

Processes, imagine that we have problems to estimate the cost of

our products!”, “Software vendors always fool when talking about

savings, I don’t trust on what are you saying”, … for sure we have

all of us received or perceived this type of objections.

� Although according to or market survey this is the main end

customer objection against the massive deployment of BPM

Processes, surprisingly, it is also the easiest one to overcome if

customer collaborates a little bit in cost-savings analysis.

� For that purpose, we have developed and specific Excel tool which

facilitate the rigorous analysis of the savings that the

implementation of the BPM Processes will suppose for the

organization.



� Just indicating few operating and cost data we are able to

developed in a couple of hours a complete economic analysis.

� The most important point is that we use as a basis the data

provided by the customer. The rest is just mathematics, customer

has to trust on it once we have explained.

� Additionally, the capacity of our model to perform what-if analysis

is a god tool to answer customer questions and to improve the

credibility of the analysis.


� You can show the comparison savings tables we have on some of our

documents.

� If customer doesn’t agree with the figures, don’t argue, just propose your

customer an cost-savings exercise. Tell him about our methodology to

estimate operational costs and savings. For sure he will be interested.

� If customer accepts, asks him for the data you need to make the

analysis: nominal users involved, number and type of processes, number

of instances launched per month and the main saving input that is the

estimated time saved in each process task, personal and automatic ones.



� It is crucial for credibility that you obtain this last figures from customer.

Just as an orientation, 1 minute of time saving per personal semi-

automated task and 3 minutes for and automatic one, would produce

spectacular savings. Half a minute for personal tasks and 1 minute for

automated ones would be enough in most of the scenarios to justify the

cloud service costs.

� It is also critical the correct estimation of the rotation of the process

(number of process instances performed per month). Obviously it is much

better to implement processes with a high rotation (thousands of

instances per month, for instance) which will be much more profitable

than low rotation processes (hundreds of process instances per month).

� As a last attempt to convince customer, you can propose our special

agreement, our cloud service monthly fee will be always not higher than

25 % of the tangible savings obtained by the customer.


Scared of Having to Suffer again a Project - 2

� If customer have recent experiences of software implementation it

is logic that he will be reluctant to be involved again in a “project”

with complains like: “I don’t have time”, “I don’t want to complicate

my life again after being implemented our ERP, CRM o whatever”,

“I have no resources available to participate in the project”, “In a

project you know when you begin in terms of efforts, time and

money spent, but never when you will end”, …

� It’s very important in this case to differentiate or business model

from the traditional approach in the IT Industry: no investment, no

risk, no commitment, no cost involve till process is running at a full

customer satisfaction. We just need some indications about what

the process has to do and how to connect it with existing

applications, the rest is our business.


� Tell customer that, normally, main worries and efforts in the

implementation of a traditional transactional application are related on

how to adapt customer way of operating to the way the application has

been designed. This is the main cause for troubles.


Scared of Having to Suffer again a Project - 2

� As opposed, a BPM Process is 100 % tailored to the customer needs,

without any tension any exception and, again, with no investment, no

commitment, no cost, no risk involved, … it is a complete different project

scenario.

� You can say to the customer representative: “Don’t worry Sir/Lady, we

take the leadership, only few questions” … and then we put a lot of

imagination during the functional analysis.

� Take profit form our business model. Use as a explanation support the

concepts, diagrams and tables from our document: “Business Model for

End Customers”.

� And a very important thing, in traditional projects, project time is money,

and invoiced at a very high hour rate. In proceedit projects time is just

time, the reasonable time required to developed/personalize the process

and both parts are 100 % aligned to the same objective, start-up the

process as soon as possible and obtain full customer satisfaction. Without

obtaining this full satisfaction, we will not be able to charge any penny,

which is a really good motivation for us.


Are your Solutions Ready to Use? - 1

� “Are yours solutions ready to use?”, “I don’t want to wait for

months to solve my problem”, “Show me now how the process you

say is working”, … Congratulations! If that is the objection of the

customer, normally it means that there is some real interest

behind.

� The answer is clear, of course not, our solutions are not ready to

use in hours or few days because always personalization and

connection to corporate applications is needed, but yes if we are

talking about few weeks, the prêt-à-porter concept.

� For sure, using our BPM Process catalog, we can show something

similar to what customer requires and develop/personalize a fully

personalized operational solution in few weeks.


� Explain customer why processes have to be personalized. We adapt

processes to customer needs but no the opposite. Although companies

have many processes in common, every company does the thinks slightly

different. When we develop a new BPM Process we try to foreseen the

different use cases we can’t anticipate 100 % of them.


Are your Solutions Ready to Use? - 2

� In addition to that, most of the BPM Processes needs to be connected

with corporate applications and the connecting scenario is different for

every customer although with our big experience in connectivity we can

easily arrange.

� Call us, tell us what customer has in mind, and we will organize for you

and your customs a remote demonstration. We can take advantage of the

proceedit experience and methodology for quick development /

personalization and the more than 500 BPM Processes we have in our

catalogue.

� Tell customer that he will not have to wait for months, only for weeks to

have a fully operative application covering their needs.

� In most of the cases, customer is waiting for years to solve a need, even

urgent ones, because the budget trap, why not waiting for few weeks,

with no risk, no cost, no compromise.


Massive BPM Deployment will Cost a Fortune - 1

� “If I have to pay 1.500 €/moth per the cloud service of the first

process, and we are planning to implement dozens of processes,

we will have to pay a monthly fortune when reaching a massive

processes deployment”.

� This is a very common paradox, at this point of the game customer

probably has bought the idea that every single process he will

deploy will produce at least four times its own operational costs, in

fact 4 - 10 € of savings per every € spent, month by month,

process by process, but he is reluctant even to begin working with

us implementing a first process, because he realize than he will

have to pay us a substantial amount when massive deployment has

been reached, even being this amount a small portion of the

tangible savings obtained he feels is not fair!


� As this is a psychological barrier, we have to be very careful facing this

objection. Don’t insists in the fact that they will also save a fortune when

massive deployment would be reached, in our opinion that would be a lost

battle.


Massive BPM Deployment Will Cost a Fortune - 2

� In our opinion, what it really happens is that for customers, consciously

or unconsciously, the amount hey have to pay are something that they

consider 100 % certain but, the estimated savings are of and other

nature, could happen or not, then in the comparison there is a perception

of risk, much higher when deployment will progress.

� We suggest to explain that, by definition, cloud services costs are

essentially proportional to the consumption customer is making, but they

are some barriers to the usage of the processes which control the

proportional expanding of the cost and, therefore, they are limiting the

proportional increase of the monthly costs when the number of deployed

processes increase: for instance, according to our experience, the

maximum number of concurrent users of a BPMS platform is close to one

third of the nominal ones because a user: 1) is not always involved in

process tasks and, 2) is not doing two process tasks at the same time.

� By the other hand, we have to emphasize that BPM Processes will

always be implemented one after and other, with no compromise for

customer, then not additional costs would have to be accepted by

customer, before having the opportunity to check the savings obtained in

real operation.


Massive BPM Deployment will Cost a Fortune - 3

� The above means that customer only has to take decisions on additional

expenses once knowing with 100 % certainty the real additional tangible

savings obtained by the next process to be deployed, not before.

� To reinforce our argumentation we suggest to present several future cost-

savings scenarios to customer by dividing the deployment project in

several phases and calculating the budget to be spent and the expected

tangible savings for be obtained for each project phase. This is very

simple to prepare with our Excel tool, in fact we use to do it in this way

for all the proposals we are presenting.

� Nevertheless, objection will probably remain and unfortunately blocking

even the development of the first process, that’s why we have

implemented a rappel system based on the amount invoiced to each

customer every month.


They Won't Accept to be System Governed - 1

� “Our employees will never accept to be governed by the system”,

“They are good on what they do but they don’t want to be

controlled”, “No way to succeed on this matter. We don’t want to

impact on our labor ambient by applying strict rules on how to

work”, “Unions will block any advance on tis way”, … for sure you

had or you will receive comments similar to that ones.

� But the question is: “Who owns the company: employees, Unions,

… Who is paying the salary?”. Some times those comments show a

certain management weakness or at least, certain confortable

acceptance of the status quo. When the company is going well they

think is not the right time to begin this battle. When company is

having strong competitive challenges, probable is too late. And the

funny think is that the battle is no so heavy at it seems to be

before beginning it, and at the end most of the employees are

satisfied that system helps them on the ordinary non-added value

tasks when processes are well designed with high usability

standards.


They Won't Accept to be System Governed - 2


� Use the following sentence as a mantra: “Optimization and Automation

liberates time and energies of your employees that they can be dedicated

to much more added value tasks”.

� And this second one: “BPM Processes are the basis for externalization of

the company operations even with teleworking or microBPO approaches

and then for employees satisfaction, cost reduction and operational

flexibility”.

� Review with customers the BPM benefits that are explained in our

documents and adapt them to customer specific situation.

� Insists that with good communication of what the organization wants to

do, essentially being more competitive to survive in a global market,

employees and Unions will have to accept the new way to work. Put the

new working way in positive, less boring tasks, more space for creative

tasks, make productivity targets much more transparent and fair, … why

not sharing productivity improvements?

� Tell customer that with our business model they can try the acceptance of

the processes without any commitment, investment, or risk.

� Use testimonials when available.


Are my Competitors Implementing BPM? - 1

� “Are my competitors implementing BPM Processes?”, “I only

invest on very well recognized and proven state-of-the-art

technology”, “Why I have to be the first to try”, “Do you have any

reward for being a pioneer”.

� Of course being a follower has some advantages because you don’t

have the failure risks involved when you are an innovation leader.

The point is, with our 0-risk business model, why not being the

first, you have nothing to lose but a lot to gain.


� Explain customer than, on a global basis (you are competing global isn't),

more than 50 % of the organizations have already implemented BPM

Processes and that the average expected rhythm of implementation is

between 5 and 6 process per year in each organization. Use the

document “BPM & BPMS Market Survey” at that respect.

� Again, tell him that with our business model your customer is not taking

any risk. You try, you check and if you are satisfied you buy or lease or …

you wait for seeing in which way your competitors save money and gain

competitiveness against you without spending a penny.


Are my Competitors Implementing BPM? - 2

� Ask customer if it does really have sense to be a follower having the

opportunity to take profit from our business model.

� And a very important point, we are technology independent, in fact, we are

not selling technology nor software programs, we are selling BPM

Processes running to help our customers saving a lot of money. It is our

responsibility to select and to implement the best technology available to

achieve this goal with the minimum cost.

� Talking about rewards, tell your customer: “Yes, of course, in our business

model, pioneers have solid rewards, 10 % of licenses sold in the future of

the process made for you”. As far as we know, no other supplier is capable

of telling the same. Be unique.


Who You Are? - 1

� “Who are you?”, “You are new in this business and with very few

references”, “How can I be confident that you are the right partner

for so big challenge of reorganizing the way of working of my

people?” … customer can explicitly say that or just thinking on it,

but the result is the same, lack of confidence which blocks the “Go”

decision, even with our absolutely barrier-free model.

� Of course, that only will happen to proceedit partners small or

new in the market or when they contact with new customers for

them.


� Tell customer the cluster structure of proceedit, where more than 30

partners are working together reinforcing one to the others in terms of

developing experience and capacity, probably representing, all together,

one of the worldwide organizations with highest experience in BPM.

� You can make use of ours documents: “International Technology Cluster”

and “OPEX>BPM>mBPO References” which shows our capabilities as a

cluster.


Who You Are? - 2

� Ask customer to give you a chance to prove our business model and

capacities. In fact they don’t risk nothing excepts some time to explain its

necessities.

� Nevertheless, we have to admit, this is one of ours main weakness point.

We are not recognized yet by the market as being a reputed Business

Solution provider but, fortunately, this is something that time will

naturally solve once we have given satisfaction to more and more

customers and we think our barrier-free model will help us to achieve this

goal very quickly.


Please Comment!

� The right treatment of end customer objections is for sure the

most critical part of any selling activity.

� We are convinced that companies who know how to take better

advantage of objections will excel among their competitors.

� That’s why we have prepared this document, to help our

partners on how to overcome and take advantage of end

customer objections.

� Help us to maintain this document alive and every day more

useful by your comments and contributions.

� As we are all together selling products and services produced

by the rest of colleagues in the cluster, helping each other to

better perform in front of the customer will help everybody, as

individuals and as a cluster, to be much more profitable.

� We look forward receiving your comments.


How to Contact Us

We are available in the event you:

• Wanted more information about proceedit.

• Wanted to join our Cluster and provide your BPM* Processes to our Catalogue.

• Wanted to implement BPM* Processes, SOA* Connectors and/or BPM-SOA* Business

Solutions in collaboration with our Multinational Technological Cluster.

Contact:

Function:

Email:

Phone No. :

Skype:

Region:

Responsible:

Position:

Fix Phone No. :

Mobile Phone No. :

Skype:

Email:

Office Address:

North America NA

Mr. Alberto Corbí

Region Manager

+1 (305) 505 0613 Cel US

+34 655 570 560 Cel Spain

alberto.corbí

[email protected]

92 SW 3rd Street, suite 2512

Miami, FL, 33130, USA

Latin America LATAM

Mr. Gustavo Arcostanzo

Region Manager

+54 11 4792 6931

+54 911 5020 7539

gustavo.arcostanzo1

gustavo.arcostanzo@proceedi

t.com

Calle Sarmiento 349

Martínez, Argentina

EMEA & APAC

Mr. Josep Cos

CEO

+34 932 051 350

+34 670 547 956

jmcos.proceedit

[email protected]

Calle Caponata 13, At. 4ª

08034 Barcelona (Spain)

Josep Cos

CEO

[email protected]

+34 660 193 163

jmcos.proceedit


Gratitude

Thanks for

your attention!

proceedit 20121217 top 10 end customer objections and how to face them succesfully

Technology

end customers objections

end customer objections1

worry customer

customer thoughts

customer representative

end customer objectionswe

frequent objections

examples of processes