Rob Howes (Co-founder of Enterprise Sales Club) recently interviewed Jayd McFerson; Jayd is a veteran Value Consulting Leader in the software industry. Currently the Head of Value Consulting at Collibra, a leading data intelligence software company.

Previously he held similar roles at ServiceNow, Workday, Pivotal, and Oracle. The Value Consulting role is important to help customers & prospects to identify, define and quantify the business value of implementing a software solution.

Jayd shared great insight on how to succeed and close large deals during a pandemic. This episode is a stellar guide on how to use value consulting to identify “business outcomes”, the process of unlocking funds and a new take on how to position and maintain credibility.

How do you maintain credibility and integrity during the process?

· Staying conservative on the metrics, is key.

- If you are looking to drive productivity for 1,000 software developers, be conservative and generate the numbers for 500 rather than all 1,000. Leaving no room for pushback.

- Do not oversell on too high returns, “No CFO believes nor needs a 50x multiple.”

How about lessons learned?

· Jayd learnt a valuable lesson whilst at Oracle, his boss called with a red alert account – prospect not happy.

· The prospective customer gave Jayd the business case that was estimating $56 million value for $1 million. “A significant oversell.”

· Jayd asked customer do you believe we are able to add value? “Yes I do but, I cannot present to the board, as I will lose credibility.”

· Jayd asked further what return do you need?

· It was 3x – the customer said make it 3x.

· A week later a revised business case that we all believed.

- Lesson learnt - de-risk the business case for your executive sponsor and champion.

· Jayd and Rob fans of doing ‘just enough’. Gaining ‘just enough’ trust and demonstrating ‘just enough’ value.

You described using the numbers and metrics as “directional” can you explain further?

· Do not over commit to perfect numbers – it can lead to credibility loss. Ensure that it is still enough.

· As the salesperson do not let the value person just too stuck on very high numbers.

· Stay conservative on value commitment. This will benefit you for this sale and the delivery on this sale.

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