New ValueStory Calculators help executives benchmark and improve key spending and performance

ORLANDO, Fla., Oct. 1, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — Alinean, empowering B2B sales and marketing to better communicate and quantify the value of solutions to frugal buyers, today announced the release of free return on investment (ROI) calculators for its ValueStory™ App. These free ROI calculators help business executives benchmark their current spending and management practices, and understand how various initiatives might improve performance.

The free ValueStory ROI Calculators include:

  • Marketing Calculator – analyzes marketing strategies and spending versus competitive benchmarks, and delivers financial calculators to help in campaign planning and driving better marketing effectiveness
  • Sales Efficiency and Effectiveness Calculator – assesses current Sales spending and practices, quantifying current costs and the financial benefits of various best practice improvements
  • Downtime Calculator – quantifies the current cost of downtime on revenue, business processes and productivity, and the benefits achievable via improved availability.

“Today’s B-to-B executive is budget constrained and risk adverse. They are much more careful in how they prioritize and justify purchases and investments,” says Jim Ninivaggi, Director of the Sales Enablement Strategies practice at SiriusDecisions. “Value actualization tools, like those offered within Alinean’s ValueStory app, help these executives uncover opportunities and quantify the financial impacts of various improvements.”

Each ROI Calculator contains research from leading analyst firms including IDC and SiriusDecisions, as well as assessment and performance benchmarks aggregated and constantly refreshed from the ValueStory community of users.

The ValueStory App and ROI Calculators are available for free download from the Apple App Store, for use directly by executives to assess and improve performance, or by sales professionals and consultants to help prospects understand current issues and drive improvements. Additional free ROI Calculators will be made available each month to registered users.

Customized versions of these ValueStory ROI Calculators are available from Alinean for specific B2B vendor sales and marketing initiatives. Alternatively, B2B solution providers can leverage the ValueStory Builder to self-customize and publish versions of these ROI Calculators for sales rep / channel partner use.

“As a solution provider, you need to deliver meaningful value messaging, compelling insights, and credible financial justification in each sales and marketing conversation,” says Tom Pisello, the ROI Guy and CEO / founder of Alinean. “Solution providers can easily leverage the free ROI Calculators and database of management, spending and best practice benchmarks as a foundation to create their own customized value-selling and marketing tools.”

About Alinean

Alinean empowers B2B vendors to better connect, engage and sell to today’s economic-focused buyer via the development and delivery of interactive value selling and marketing tools. Alinean-powered value storytelling, financial justification, ROI / TCO tools create more compelling value-based conversations and proposals — generating more demand, challenging the “do-nothing” buyer into action, accelerating sales cycles, increasing deal size and improving competitive win rates. Leading B2B firms leveraging Alinean tools include: HP, IBM, Microsoft, Dell, Intel, OfficeMax, IDC/IDG, AT&T, BMC Software, ADP and SolidWorks.