Welcome to the next installment in our blog series highlighting the companies in SoftLayer’s new Technology Partners Marketplace. These Partners have built their businesses on the SoftLayer Platform, and we’re excited for them to tell their stories. New Partners will be added to the Marketplace each month, so stay tuned for many more come.
- Paul Ford, SoftLayer VP of Community Development

Scroll down to read the guest blog from Mike Genstil of Visualize ROI, a SoftLayer Tech Marketplace Partner providing a flexible platform for enabling sales and marketing professionals to place ROI models on the web in an engaging format. To learn more about Visualize ROI, visit http://www.visualize-roi.com/.

Don’t Tell Me … SHOW Me the Numbers

We are living in a new world of increased corporate accountability and frugality. Thanks to unpredictable markets and unscrupulous leaders, the stakes have been raised in corporate decision-making. We have entered an “ROI revolution,” where CFOs, CMOs, and CIOs are demanding detailed business cases before they will make a purchase. Questions asked of vendors by executives are, “What is the Return on Investment?” and, “What is my Total Cost of Ownership?”

Based on our research, less than 5% of companies that sell into B2B environments have an effective and efficient way of creating engaging, credible business cases for customers. Most companies that sell to businesses have developed some type of spreadsheet-based “ROI calculator” to help salespeople and customers understand the ROI. Best-in-class companies often have created multiple models – one for a “business case,” one for “a competitive comparison,” and one for “persona-based selling.” Unfortunately, these spreadsheets are not effective for several reasons:

• They are confusing and not easily modified
• They suffer from version control issues
• They don’t integrate with existing CRM and marketing automation systems
• They don’t easily enable the creation of scenario comparisons
• They can’t create professional looking reports

VisualizeROI solves these problems … and more. VisualizeROI is the first SAAS-based approach to business-case selling. We launch web-based Visualizers in days, integrate with existing systems and capture a rich set of prospect data that allows management to do analysis of customers and prospects that just isn’t possible today. Salesperson customization options are available, and salespeople can be notified when customers do their own analysis. It’s addictive.

To get an idea of the flexibility and functionality a “Visualizer” can provide, check out the Drive vs. Fly? Visualizer I mentioned in the video with Kevin. To see business examples, you can head to http://www.visualize-roi.com/examples/ to see a few of the Visualizers we created to feature the platform.

If you already have your ROI model and you want to make your own Visualizer, we’re ready for you: http://www.visualize-roi.com/create/!

-Mike Genstil, Visualize ROI