VALKRE Blog

BIG news! We will be presenting with GE at the upcoming BMA, May 30 through June 1. We couldn't be more honored and excited to share a little of what has consumed us for the last two years. It was actually at the BMA two years ago when we met Beth Comstock, Steve Liguori and the rest of the GE team. Since that time DVP has become a part of the GE culture. And, the GE culture has become a part of Valke. We hope you can join us for what is shaping up to be the best BMA conference ever! By the way, it is Chicago.

Congrats to our new VPM candidates!

Henrik, Brian, Dan, Aaron, Barend, Christine, Shali, Milan, Jon, Mitch, Chris, Marc, Susan, Jim, Fritz, and Julia...you guys know who you are.  Thanks for all the hard work preparing for DVP in 2012.  Looking forward to seeing all the big wins in 2012 and beyond.

For all of you non-VPM (Value Prop Master) candidates out there wondering what this is all about, these folks just completed a pretty intense training curriculum designed to enable them to implement our DVP system without much need to any outside help.  It was pretty intense for us as well...just like writing Winning With Customers all over again...this time with amazing software behind it.

Ok, enough patting ourselves on our back.  We've got a new class in a couple of weeks...plenty of time to innovate and improve.

Thanks again guys...congrats and good luck.

Render v2.3 Released

Continuing our long-term product vision, Render 2.3 was launched this past weekend.  This release builds upon the redesigned UI/UX of Render 2.0 and includes much more than you will typically find in a point release.  Using Render, we continue to strengthen the qualitative and qualitative rigor of the customer dataset, in order to identify the top opportunities our customers should execute against.  Furthermore, Render enables our customers to track their progress against the commitments and promises made to their customers.

The major features included in Render 2.3 are driven by our customers’ requests to make Render administration more self-serviceable, to provide additional dashboards to track differential value proposition (DVP) progress, and to leverage the enhanced data metrics from DVP Customer Interviews.  To that end, we have added a new “Manage” interface with its own top-level navigation menu that allows users to invite users, add teams, and setup DVPs.  Also included are new dashboards that provide a more top-down view of a company’s overall DVP progress.  This new section complements the existing Process-driven navigation and feature set that users are familiar with. 

Additionally, a new process section for “Interview Setup” now exists as an intermediary step between forming an internal DVP perspective and interviewing customers.  Here users can quickly build out new customers, interview teams, customize and preview Interview Guides, and configure other DVP settings.

Finally, DVP analysis now supports a more flexible and rigorous organization of customer interview data.  Such analyses can inform initiatives that Render tracks for organizational accountability to deliver the commitments a company makes to its B2B customers.  Throughout Render, help guides and support are available to assist those users who want to learn more about the DVP system and maximize the new features in this release.

Over the upcoming months, we will be releasing new management dashboards for visualizing the DVP data set across an entire organization and continue to iterate against our product roadmap.  We’ve got some other surprises in store as well, so expect 2012 to be another year of major advances in our software and the DVP system.

 

Render 2.0 plus Valkre Office 2.0

After much anticipation, we launched version 2.0 of Render, our web-based product solution, this past month.  This milestone release comes fully packed with a completely redesigned user interface and improved user experience.  The upgrade to the new interface was a long time in the making and it enables the long-term vision of what Render will provide to our customers.  That is, managing an amazing dataset of customer insights, powered by a rich, interactive experience.  However, this is only the start.  We will continue making iterative updates to enhance the overall UI/UX of Render and advance its feature set.

 

The primary new features in Render 2.0 focus on building an organization’s internal perspective on how it creates value for its customers.  Defining the language of the value attributes and drivers that fuel this perspective is important.  Even more essential is the ability to estimate or rigorously model and calculate the differential value proposition (DVP) of the organization.  Render 2.0 manages all of this now in a streamlined workflow.   And as always, Render provides clean deliverables for your work in the form of dynamic PDF reports. 

Almost as exciting as Render 2.0 is our shiny new office location in Chicago's River North neighborhood.  The move from our previous space in the West Loop was driven by the growth of our product development and services teams, which reflects the continued success of the business.  We are still settling in, but we've already planned an open house on October 14th to celebrate with our customers, friends, and family.  Please join us for the party or stop by whenever you're in the neighborhood!

 

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The Latest Job Openings at Valkre

We are expanding our development team again!  To meet market demand and continue rapid delivery of our product roadmap, it's time to fill a few more seats in a our brand new office.     

Please visit the complete company job board, or follow these direct links to learn more about the positions:

Senior .NET Developer

Senior Front End Developer

If you or someone you know is interested in the following positions, please submit a resume.

 

Let’s get back to SELLING!

I have been selling to large, multi-national business-to-business companies for most of my career.  What is most striking is that in the early part of our upward economic cycle companies could do no wrong; revenue was always going in the right (upward) direction. Companies were, however, looking for ways to increase profitability by cutting costs, increasing supply chain efficiencies and in general streamlining any and all business processes.  This obsessive focus on cost reduction served companies well. But now there is little cost to wring out of the income statement and companies need to focus instead on new markets, growth at existing customers and strategic pricing. 

So let’s get back to actually selling!  Not just a focus on how to reduce costs, but selling the benefits of your products or services and realizing that your customers are in business to make money doing business with you. 

In business-to-business, it takes the entire organization to win with your customers.  We find that an engaged organization needs:

• Customer-centric, ‘outside-in’, economic discussions with your customers.
• Business cases that focus on your company’s investments that truly impact your customer’s bottom line.
• Plans that drive cross-functional alignment and cause accountability inside your organization.
• Communication and documentation that holds the organization as well as the Customer accountable for the commitments you have been asked to meet.
• And what would a good process be without measurement and continuous improvement?

So does this sound like your organization?  Are you having discussions with your customers that center around financial and economic outcomes linked to your product or service?  When I have had discussions with customers around the ROI of doing business with me, I have been able to win more business and (more importantly, once I prove the ROI) retain and grow my customers.  Isn’t that what sales is all about?

Join the conversation:  www.winningwithcustomers.com

Did you mean: Valkre

One of the more subtle impacts of naming your company is how search engines decide to treat that name.  For the longest time, searching on the term "Valkre" would inevitably return results for "Valkyrie". 

Google would sometimes be so kind as to offer a "Did you mean: Valkre" olive branch.

You can't really blame the search algorithms, considering our company name is a reference to Norse mythology.  But those days are thankfully over, at least if you ask the leading search engine. 

A small, but worthy SEO victory. 

Next up, getting that other search engine to stop confusing us with a Tom Cruise movie.



Jambon, Fromage, and DVP

Maybe the first addition to the Valkre blog written over the Atlantic as I’m on my way back from a great week in Paris where I spoke at SAMA’s Pan European Conference.   First off, many thanks to SAMA.  It was a great show and dinner on Monday night was fantastic.  A special thank you goes out to my new friends from Motorola who graciously included me in their dinner plans as well.  I hope to see you soon…maybe in Hawaii.  Anyway, here are just a few highlights from my session entitled ‘Winning With Customers’…

There were about 35 folks in the room representing pharma, computers, corporate apartment leasing, event planning, medical devices, chemicals, and a whole host of others.  There were folks from Canada, India, Germany and more.  We kicked it off with a simple survey so here is all you need to know about them:

• Every one of them feels that know how they make their customers more money than their competitors
• Only about 10 of them felt they could quantify the amount of money they make their customers
• Only 1 gent in the crowd felt he could quantify the advantage, had a path to improving upon it, and incorporated it into an account plan

Seems like pretty basic stuff, but time and time again, the largest B2B companies in the world have a hard time understanding and executing against the very reason they are in business:  make their customers more money.

After a bit of a dog and pony show, we got into it and tried to quantify their impact on their customer’s bottom line using our metric, the DVP, or Differential Value Proposition.  Two cool things happened here.  First, the group had to critically think about how they made their customers more money today and struggled quite a bit with it at first…so much for that first bullet above as it was obvious the group was a little over confident.  The cool part wasn’t that it was hard, but that the group was into it and really dug in to learn more.  Here is a little picture of the group and I in action…notice everyone with their heads down doing some serious thinking.  Great job everyone. 

 

The second cool thing was that after initial struggles, you could see light bulbs going off everywhere.  All of a sudden the group was pondering what hospitals do with a little extra bed capacity…how does joint planning benefit a strategic account…how does this differ segment by segment…how can this be used to ‘hunt’ prospects?  The group learned pretty quickly that a little economic rigor can advance your thinking pretty quickly.  In the end, most everyone was able to quantify their DVP in about an hour so.  The lowest DVP% was 1%, the highest was 104%.  Go here if you want to know a little more what that means.

The rest of the trip was fantastic.  I tried to become an expert in Mixte sandwiches with jambon (ham) and fromage (cheese)…with the winning café being right by the north entrance to the Luxembourg Gardens.  My lovely wife joined in the festivities and got a chance to see most of the sites…with St. Severin church in the Latin Quarter being our favorite (although I think we interrupted a funeral).  Sorry about that.

Job Opening for Account Manager

Account Manager

Position Description

Account Managers are the frontline interface with our customers. This interface requires the capability to effectively contribute customer management thought leadership at the C-level as well as on the street level with sales and marketing professionals. VALKRE does not operate in a traditional leveraged consulting or services model. Account Managers are expected to deliver a capability to our customers and not consulting work product.  VALKRE is looking for highly motivated performers, with a bent for the entrepreneurial, who believe they can contribute to the changing world of how B2B companies think and manage profitable growth with their customers.

Responsibilities

• Deep CVC expertise.  All members of the Professional Services team must acquire an in-depth understanding of CVC tools and methodologies to train clients, conduct workshops, and serve as subject matter experts in our approach.
• Customer Boot Camp Leadership Role.  These multi-day sessions serve as the kick-off for new clients.  During these sessions we teach teams the CVC method and principles, work directly with the team to define how they create differential value for their customers, and prepare our clients to enter the market to interview their customers.
• Customer interviews.  Customer interviews are the lifeblood of VALKRE’s methodology.  Our clients entrust us to meet with their most valued and critical customers to lead the process of capturing customer insights and quantifying the economic benefits their customers receive from doing business with them.
• Account Management.  The Account Manager is the primary point of contact for VALKRE’s clients, responsible for managing all elements of the customer relationship and ensuring success for our clients in the rollout and adoption of the CVC method.
• Project Management.  Develop and execute implementation plans as necessary; coordinate activities across organizations; identify roadblocks and hurdles and resolve potential issues; ensure achievement of project objectives and milestones.

Required Capabilities and Expertise

• Strong business acumen with a solid foundation in business strategy principles and finance; Ability to deconstruct financial and economic drivers across a diverse set of industries.
• Excellent analytical and problem solving skills.
• Effective facilitation skills and ability to lead cross-functional teams through workshops and boot camps.
• Strong interpersonal and relationship management skills.
• Strong executive presence, friendly demeanor; Confidence and poise to successfully manage a wide range of customer personalities.
• Resourcefulness, adaptability, ability to think quickly on your feet and deal with ambiguity.
• Excellent communication skills (verbal, written, and presentation).
• Strong project management skills.
• Willingness to travel (up to 50-80% travel) including internationally.
• Entrepreneurial spirit – we are still a small and growing company. We still wear multiple hats and do whatever it takes to make our customers successful.

Desired Background/Previous Experience

• BA/BS degree required; MBA or other advanced degree preferred.
• 3 to 5 years’ experience with management consulting firms or equivalent roles in leading client engagements, managing client relationships and delivering service and technology solutions.
• Prior work experience in B2B a plus (including operating, sales, or marketing roles).
• Background conducting executive coaching, training, or teaching a plus.

About VALKRE Solutions

VALKRE Solutions, Inc. is a high growth entrepreneurial technology and services company that has pioneered a new approach to customer collaboration that is yielding improved profitable growth for B2B companies.  The foundation of the approach is called Customer Value Creation (CVC).  CVC is built on the proven business axiom that companies win in the marketplace when their customers realize more profits and growth because they do business with them…essentially answering the question “Do Your Customers Make More Money Doing Business With You?”  VALKRE’s CVC methodology combines a new metric for predicting performance with customers (The DVP), next generation technology for managing customers, and years of Intellectual Property packaged into an offering designed to create advanced business capability in sales and marketing for Fortune 1000 B2B companies.

VALKRE’s vision is built upon three core concepts:

• Outside-In: Companies will improve decision making by adopting a rigorous external customer perspective to breakdown internal overconfidence bias.  We use an approach that leverages a company’s own sales and marketing organization to engage customers in a new conversation that generates direct insights from customers to inform investment.
• Technology Led: There is a new generation of sales and marketing professionals who are not currently served with the necessary technology and communication tools for today's world.  Our CVC Value Management System and Render™ platform enables organizations to gather and analyze data at scale to deliver insights across their entire customer portfolio.
• Self-Sustainability: We focus on building capability, not extended consulting projects.  The company has developed extensive training materials and programs that rival the cultural change phenomena and value of Six Sigma.  At the core of this approach is the goal of helping sales and marketing professionals have a different conversation with customers and to collect their own data.  We focus on helping companies integrate the CVC method into the ongoing fabric of the business in a way that is sustainable, scalable and cost effective.

Professional Services at VALKRE

The Professional Services group is responsible for leading Fortune 1000 companies on the CVC journey. This journey includes activities such as: executive coaching, business strategy, process integration, implementation, training and facilitating a different conversation between companies and their customers. Internally, the professional services team will be responsible for contributing to intellectual property and translating methods into technology and training tools our customer can leverage in a scaled environment…building VALKRE’s assets and differential value proposition to customers.  On a tactical level, the team works closely with client teams to help them better understand how they create differential value in the marketplace though direct dialogue with their customers.  As we partner with our clients, we design and customize our tools and methodologies to ensure successful adoption within their organizations.  The Professional Services team typically plays a more significant role at the beginning of each relationship and then reduces its involvement as clients gain comfort and take greater ownership of the process over time.

TO APPLY:

Trends Shaping B2B Marketing

Inc. Magazine recently interviewed Jerry Alderman, Founder and CEO of Valkre Solutions, and his co-author of the book Winning with Customers: A Playbook for B2B. 

Check out the latest innovations in B2B marketing.