ProGrid offered a process and the expertise many industries were clamouring for, so why wasn’t it selling?

How do you measure business assets that don’t have a tangible, physical existence? Even accountants throw up their hands at the prospect. ProGrid Evaluation Solutions, however, has developed a way to add science to a process previously considered an art.

Canadian-based ProGrid markets and promotes a methodology for addressing the intangibles of complex decision making. This proprietary methodology, complete with its own software, has applications in numerous fields, including medical, agricultural and scientific research and technology, economic development, venture competitions, procurement, and scholarships. Founded by Dr. Clement Bowman, a Member of the Order of Canada, ProGrid initially met with great success thanks to its small core of consultants offering this new decision-making process in industries where they were well known and respected.

But there was a problem.

According to Fraser Barnes, CEO of ProGrid Ventures Inc., when ProGrid’s first wave of consultants started looking for business beyond their networks of industry contacts — or those contacts started retiring — clients dried up. “When sales started to drop off we even brought on some new people to sell it and they fell flat on their faces,” he says. Even worse, prior to Barnes’ involvement, there had been several years of confusion as the company tried to decide if it was a consulting firm or software firm, with software ultimately winning.

“It became obvious,” Barnes says, “that we were having difficulty communicating our definitive value proposition to our end user, how our features and benefits related to them, and even how to best qualify and approach prospects.” Around this time, Barnes heard of some work Tribal had done with complex sales, messaging and positioning for SmartSimple Software Inc., and decided to give the communications company a call.

Meeting with Tribal’s partners, Barnes went through a typical ProGrid sales presentation, and asked them to read a chapter from Bowman’s book on the ProGrid methodology, which fuelled a lengthy discussion. “They understood the issue and were able to give it a label pretty quickly: solution selling,” says Barnes. “It was obvious they had a framework to address our situation and modify our approach to the client, and that told me these guys could do what they said.”

Tribal partner and creative lead Pete Kloppenburg says, “We didn’t pretend to tell [ProGrid] what their customers wanted or what the value of their product was, but what we could do was elicit a lot of information. Then we sorted out and organized the elements that were useful and relevant, and developed messages and a sales process around that.”

To glean further insight into ProGrid’s experiences, Tribal suggested an unusual approach — a full-day workshop for eight of the consulting company’s principals, including founder Bowman. In the workshop, participants went through a variety of exercises to get the consultants talking about their interactions with customers, and refine aspects of the methodology most appealing to prospective clients.

“With so many PhDs we have a tough crew, and they can be headstrong” says Barnes, “but Tribal led it well, and everyone felt it was valuable.” But the real eye-opener, he says, was the post-workshop report. While ProGrid has been focused on the power of its methodology and proprietary software, Tribal identified that the key selling point was actually the vertical domain knowledge and trustworthiness of its consultants, who were all experts in areas like defense, energy and natural resources.

“Tribal helped us understand that the uncertainty driving a client to hire a consultant in the first place also makes them reticent to adopt a new methodology,” says Barnes. “So one of the biggest take-aways was that we always need to lead with the credibility of the consultant or sales representative, and only then do we promote the extra layer of our ProGrid methodology.”

“The Tribal report really clarified why some of these initiatives were going nowhere, and that was the affirmation we needed to change our strategy,” Barnes says. “So we switched it around almost 180 degrees, back to a high focus on our consultants, and a secondary focus on our software.” Additionally, ProGrid realized that when licensing new consultants to use the methodology, it also has to train them in sales and marketing.

“The report really helped us flesh out a strategy. Now we feel it’s heading in the right direction,” Barnes says. “For what we paid, I think we got tremendous value. This process could have literally been five times more expensive at a large firm.” After having “more clinical” experiences at previous communications companies, Barnes also appreciated Tribal’s hands-on approach.

“Sometimes I want to be able to just share a series of thoughts in that classic client verbal download,” he says. It was a comfort, Barnes says, to know he could pick up the phone or fire off an e-mail to a Tribal partner and toss around ideas without “feeling like I’m a burden or just one of hundreds of messages read by an assistant.”

“When you talk to them you get the sense they’re taking a real interest and thinking about your requirements,” he adds, “instead of throwing you through the same standard process everybody gets.”