The logic is more important than the number

A claim in a sales presentation: “we will save you $10m over 5 years”. A nice statement, but it does not have instant credibility. How can you make it credible?

The best option: show real case studies of other customers where you managed to pull it off. Not every company has this data ready though (especially startups).
The second best option: show the logic of you how you got to the number with a simple and transparent multiplication of a few numbers. “We save 10 minutes per procedure, we estimate you do [x] procedures, therefore we get to this cost saving.” You shift the debate from arguing about the absolute number, to how your product adds value.

2 comments

Anonymous2011-03-19 22:27:11

So why is it that the MBB case interviews place importance on quantitative assessment ;)

Jan Schultink2011-03-20 06:14:49

I am not contradicting that. The point estimate of the number does not matter, the quantitative process that you took/explained to get to it is very important. I think that's the same in a case interview.