How often does your sales team tell you the deal fell over because there was no budget?

We need to drill down on that a little further. When a budget is created do you think that every single line item has a supplier’s name penciled in?

In fact often the type of expense is not articulated in detail. It may be as broad as machine replacements and repair $400k, or online ad budget of $2m, or recruitment fees of $150k. The issue is not whether your service is penciled into the budget (it probably isn’t). The issue is whether spending cash on your service is an efficient use of capital. The spending of that cash will generate an attractive set of business results and therefore an attractive Return on Investment.

Sales teams need to learn the skills of translating product & service features into business outcomes and ROIs because looking for budgets is flawed.