Opportunity Vitals & The Agile Sales Opportunity Pursuit Framework

What are Opportunity Vitals

Opportunity Vitals are an objective set of criteria used to measure deal progress. They provide a set of actions to direct the seller’s efforts towards their next best move. Helping them remain focused on the activities that will lead to a win. These vitals are Pain, Power, Vision, Value, and Consensus.

Opportunity Vitals Anchor Sales Activities to Facts

Opportunity vitals make agile selling possible by focusing selling efforts on facts, not assumptions. They help sellers answer the “what,” and the “how” of selling.

• The “what” reveals the crucial sales activities sellers must engage in
• The “how” reveals the applicable skills needed to execute those activities

In Richardson's Sprint Selling Training sellers learn how to use opportunity vitals to ensure every action they take is informed by a verifiable fact that directs them to the next best activity to advance the sale.

Opportunity vitals bring renewed clarity to selling at a time when the pursuit has become more complicated amid increasing stakeholders, shifting customer needs, and sophisticated solutions.

In this blog post, we explore the five opportunity vitals, explain why each one matters, and how they work.

The Agile Opportunity Pursuit Framework

Continue reading to learn more about each opportunity vital and the framework for using them.

1. Pain

This first agile opportunity vital is Pain. Pain refers to the seller's understanding of the customer’s pain.

A pain is a critical business issue or a missed opportunity. Knowing the customer’s pain is important because their discomfort is what compels them to make a purchase. Problems, issues, and opportunities not connected to a deeper emotional feeling of pain will likely go unaddressed.

An issue can be identified as a Pain if it satisfies three key criteria:

• It's personal, job-specific, and something the person is measured on or tasked with
• It's quantifiable and serves as a gauge of improvement
• It's negatively stated

To better understand their customer's pain, sellers need to ask themselves the following questions:

• "Has the customer admitted that a critical need must be addressed?"
• "Do we understand the reasons for the pain and the cost of the pain?"

Once the seller has identified a customer or customer's pain, they can map relevant capabilities to it to create a differentiated value statement.

2. Power

The second agile opportunity vital is Power. Power refers to the person or group of people who will make the final buying decision. Sales professionals need to access this group and position their solution in a way that resonates with them.

Identifying those in power is a three-part process:

• Build an understanding of the buyer's decision-making process and the players

• Observe those who lead the conversations

• Identify the stakeholder responsible for managing timelines and budgets

Once the power has been identified sellers must access them. To gain access sellers can start by asking the current contact for it. The best way to explain the benefit of starting the conversation with the decision-maker early.

After gaining access, the seller can start the work of identifying the new stakeholder's interests by getting answers to the following questions:

• "What is the stakeholder’s interest in the project?"
• "What role does that person perform in the decision?"
• "What level of influence does the stakeholder have on the project?"

3. Vision

The third agile opportunity vital is Vision. Vision refers to how a customer sees themselves using the capabilities of the solution.

Shaping the buyer's Vision requires the buyer to:

• Work to improve the customer’s understanding of their challenges
• Draw clear lines between the customer's challenges and how their solution solves them in a meaningful and quantifiable way.
• Constantly check in on their alignment with the customer and adjust their positioning to meet their changing needs.

Continuous adjustment creates opportunities for the seller to illustrate differentiated aspects of the solution and connect those characteristics to the customer’s needs.

To better evaluate how well they have shaped their customer's vision sellers need to ask themselves the following questions:

• "Have we aligned on a buying vision that addresses the customer's full scope of needs, now and in the future?"
• "Does the shared vision highlight our solution's unique differentiators?"
• "Do we have evidence that this solution will deliver real business results for the buyer?"

4. Value

The fourth agile opportunity vital is Value. Value refers to the measurable business factors that the solution will improve.

Demonstrating value requires the seller to convert qualitative benefits to quantitative ones. To do so the seller must drill down to the numbers the customer wants to change. With this information, the seller can define the business impact their solution will provide.

Articulating value is best accomplished with the creation of a formal value statement that consists of three parts:

• A description of the customer's pain
• A description of the ways the proposed solution addresses the pain and helps them achieve goals
• A quantifiable outline of the business benefits the solution will deliver.

To better evaluate how well they are creating and articulating value sellers need to ask themselves the following questions:

• "Are we creating value in the buying experience?"
• "Have we positioned the value of our solution in a relevant and compelling way?"
• "Have we quantified value in a way that outweighs the pain?"

5. Consensus

The fifth and final agile opportunity vital is Consensus. Consensus is achieved when the individual needs of every stakeholder have been addressed and there is agreement within the buying committee that the proposed solution delivers the value they're looking for.

Reaching a consensus means getting stakeholders to agree that the solution satisfies three key criteria:

• The solution can be easily implemented
• The risk of not purchasing is significant
• The expected return justifies the cost

Throughout the process of building consensus, sellers deepen their understanding of needs. This is an iterative process because it involves many stakeholders whose needs change throughout the buying journey. The process of building consensus is best managed through a formal collaboration plan.

To better evaluate how well they are building consensus sellers need to ask themselves the following questions:

• "Do we have an agreed-upon collaboration plan?"
• "Are we progressing to a decision?"

Bring Efficiency and Structure to Selling with Opportunity Vitals

If a sales team is going to execute the skills of top performers consistently, they need a clear set of actions to guide their approach. The Opportunity Vitals offer exactly that with a concise group of goals that map to the buyer’s iterative journey.

Opportunity vitals help sellers flex and stay focused on outcomes. With this approach, sellers have more than a fixed set of actions to fulfill, they have a way to identify gaps preventing movement, and a method for targeting critical customer information early.