Page 74 - 25148.pdf

62 • The 100 Greatest Ideas for Building the Business of Your Dreams

customers' point of view. If you can help them make a sensible business decision
based on business logic, you are well on the way to becoming a trusted and preferred
supplier. So this section covers the buying cycle and the next selling cycle.

Idea 41 - Encourage sensible buying decisions

The concept of'knowing a customer's business better than they do' neatly encapsu-
lates the concept of helping a customer to go about decision-making in a logical
manner. There is a huge amount of emotion in any significant buying decision, and
we will have to build that into the plan, but it is best to have the emotion sitting on
a rock of good common sense.

Let us take as an example a company making a capital investment decision.
This could be an IT hardware and software project, new turbines for a power sta-
tion or any other investment that is going to give service and add value for a pro-
tracted length of time. How do you go about buying such a solution?

A sensible company's guide to capital investment

At any point in time a company is being offered by its managers and by outsiders
many more ideas than it can afford to implement. There is constant pressure for
money from product-development managers, designers, information technology
groups and others throughout the business. This causes most companies to develop
management processes for investment appraisal and project management.

To understand this process, we need to follow the sensible company's step-by-
step guide to capital investment appraisal and implementation.