The document discusses how salespeople can escape the trap of constant discount requests from purchasing departments by identifying "hotspots" or value spots within their customers' organizations. It provides an example of a supplier who was able to save a hospital time and optimize operating room usage by creating customized surgical instrument packs for specific procedures. The document advocates that salespeople follow through after delivering products to understand how the customer benefits in order to develop value propositions tailored to different decision makers within the customer.

1. Say goodbye to needless discounts..... Identify the Hotspot in the Opportunity Chain
The typical interface to a Salesperson is a narrow window with steel bars known by many names;
Purchasing, Procurement, or Vendor Management. The people inside this window want you to think
that the only access to what the organization needs is through their window. They ask you for info and
prices, they give you Purchase Orders and they always squeeze you for more discounts “otherwise we
approach another one of many other vendors who would love to be in your shoes”. Sounds familiar?
We all went through this experience until one day we find out other ways to access any organization
through different doors and windows and all of a sudden our life changes and margins climb up while
the customers is still happy and comes back for repeat business.
This article is about escaping the Purchasing/Procurement trap and getting into the Hotspot in any
opportunity.The places in the organization where decisions are taken and value is felt.
Most of the Salespeople do not bother what happens to their product after it has been delivered and
accepted. They do not “follow through” as my Golf instructor always says. Follow through means to
carry the stroke AFTER you hit the ball. You need to find out what happened to your product after your
customer has purchased it. Who uses it, and benefited from it? Who became a hero and advanced in his
career because theHelp Desk SW you soldthem has increased customer satisfaction which in turn
increased their revenue and profit. Did your product save money or Effort? Can it be improved to do
better?Offer to help your customer calculates ROI from your product/service and spread the word in
your customer organization, become their partner in success.
I would like to share with you an excellent example is mentioned in Peter Cheverton books called Key
Account Management. The example is about a surgical instruments supplier who washammered by one
of his major customer’s Procurement department that kept on asking for more discount.
By analyzing the supply chain in the hospital they found the following blocks:
1. Suppliers, focus on winning business and selling surgical instruments.
2. Procurement department, sole focus is on price
3. Logistics, focus is on efficiency
4. Operating theatre managers, focus is on time management
5. Operating theatre nurses, focus on Reliability & Safety of instruments
6. Surgeons, focus on Patient outcome
Dealing with Procurement department only and responding to their continuous pressure to reduce
prices will cause diminishing margins which is not a happy outcome, however by identifying the value
spots in this case great results were achieved.
The supplier came up with a creative idea of “procedure packs” where multiple surgical instruments
pertaining to a certain procedure/operation are grouped in one pack. This way the risk of misplacing an
instrument and finding it missing at the time of operation is omitted. Also time is saved; the usage of

2. operating theatres is optimized. In fact the “procedure pack” approach was found to save 40 minutes
per operation, which is the time taken to identify the list of instruments, order, assemble at the
operating room.Imaging a large hospital with 21 operating rooms each doing 2-3 operations/day. That is
a daily saving of 2400 minutes of OR time.
This case represents creativity of a brilliant salesperson(s) that did not opt to burn his margins, instead
he or she did the following:
- Identified the competitive situation and decided not to opt for an easy way out by reducing
profitability.
- Found out the Opportunity chain elements within the customer operation.
- Identified the Value spots/hotspots.
- Came up with a clever idea (procedure pack).
- Did not go to Procurement with this idea (they would probably turn the idea down on the
account of not meeting the specifications).
- Sold the idea to the hotspots (3,4,5,6 or a combination thereof), got the blessingand the specs
came out asking for his/her company’s product.
- Sold his products at a premium and made a handsome commission.
You will be surprised how many value spots/hotspots are there in your customer’s opportunity chain if
you put the effort to explore the internal supply chain.
Try the “follow through” approach, write down a list of your customers/products and find out what
happened to the product after they have purchased it from you, and identify the Value Spot. You will be
able to build a robust value proposition and sell at a premium price.
Good luck & good selling
Ashraf Osman
Sales Optimization Consultant