The Business Fit is the central element of the IMPAX Process. By definition, the Business Fit is how two companies, working together, can help drive critical business outcomes for the customer. These critical outcomes come in the form of achieving business objectives, implementing strategies and addressing issues.

Several past Tips review business fit best practices: doing the required research on the customer's business, the business fit development process and the delivery of the Business Fit as a part of the presentation. This Tip is focused specifically on the end of the delivery of the business fit.

The Business Fit should be the highlight of an IMPAX presentation, and done well, it should inspire the audience - especially the decision maker - to commit to an action plan that is designed to bring the Business Fit to life. No doubt this is a challenge, as the Business Fit is intangible, but we try to "tangiblize" it through the use of case studies, anecdotes and examples. Another way to make the Business Fit more concrete and tangible is to create a vision of a successful outcome.

Done well, the presenter first explains the Business Fit then leads the audience to envision a time in the future when the Business Fit is driving critical business outcomes. It could sound like this:

"Imagine a day when, together, we have developed and implemented a system that is recognized as the best in your industry, and your customer retention scores increase accordingly."

or

"Imagine this outcome; two years from now, your market share in the LATAM region has increased 5 points, and gross margins have increased even more"

or

"Imagine that, as a result of this Business Fit, your customer is never more than 2 days away from the critical chemical solutions they need."

The use of the word "imagine" invites an audience to envision a different future - a future they badly want to realize.  This is a fantastic way to summarize the Business Fit and transition to your recommended action steps.

Imagine a day when all of your Business Fits invite an audience to envision a desired outcome and inspire them to take the action you recommend!


Interested in more sales thought leadership? Check out the IMPAX Team Blog!

This year, one of our goals is to provide more valuable thought-leadership content to our followers, and at the same time, to highlight additional voices on the IMPAX team. We're off to a great start, with four different contributors touching on various aspects of sales so far in 2019. Check it out here: https://bit.ly/2TrKrow (And stay tuned for more great content coming soon!)