Alinean Starts Fight Frugalnomics Movement

ORLANDO, Fla., June 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Alinean, the leading creator of value-based interactive sales and marketing tools for business to business (B2B) solution providers, today launched its mission to Fight Frugalnomics at the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum this week in Boston. Driven by successive economic downturns, corporate buyers have become very cautious, creating an environment where buyers demand quantification of benefits, significant return on investment (ROI), fast payback and superior value from each purchase, a condition known as Frugalnomics.  As well, these buyers are skeptical of traditional sales and marketing approaches, now empowered by the Internet and social media to do their own research, and collaborate with peers on purchase decisions.

"With two economic downturns in the past decade, buyers have permanently and fundamentally changed, requiring a more facilitative sales and marketing approach," said Tom Pisello, Chairman and Founder of Alinean. "Sales cycles are longer and deals are frozen. To Fight Frugalnomics requires B2B solution providers to adopt new tactics to connect, engage and sell to today's more empowered economic-focused buyer."

This new breed of buyer is empowered with access to more information and decision support tools than ever. Combined with risk aversion, today's buyers are clearly more economic focused and frugal.  The old approach of product selling is not working in today's environment. Successful marketing and sales teams are moving from selling products to helping facilitate the buyer's decision making process, from discovery to consideration to decision.

There are three main recommendations to selling in the new economy:

• Be provocative with personalized research and diagnostics—helping buyers uncover hidden issues, prioritize pain points and recommend solutions to solve the highest priority opportunities.
• Empower buyers to compute the cost of doing nothing and the value of proposed solutions with quantifiable ROI analysis.
• Make it easy for your buyer to be confident in their purchase decision by differentiating the superior value/lower total cost of your solution with total cost of ownership (TCO) comparisons.

These recommendations can be implemented in best practice fashion using Alinean-powered interactive white papers, diagnostic assessments, ROI calculators and TCO comparison tools—proven to drive incremental leads and pipeline opportunities, reduce sales cycles, minimize discounting and improve win rates.

A video introducing the Fight Frugalnomics movement and best practices can be found on YouTube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=qFqS94QFnn8

In addition, to help vendors understand the drivers and challenges of Frugalnomics, as well as the best practices and tools to "fight back," Alinean has the Fight Frugalnomics™ Resource Center. It can be found at: http://fightfrugalnomics.com.

About Alinean

Alinean, the leading provider of provocative interactive sales and marketing tools, empowers B2B vendors to better connect, engage and sell to today's more empowered, skeptical and frugal buyer.  Alinean-powered interactive white papers, assessments, ROI calculators and TCO comparison tools are used to facilitate the buyer's journey, driving more compelling value-based engagements, sales-led workshops, presentations and proposals.

Leading B2B firms leveraging Alinean tools include: HP, IBM, Microsoft, EMC, Dell, Intel, IDC/IDG, AT&T, Siemens, Unisys, Thomson Reuters, NetApp, Citrix, Symantec, Novell, Cisco, Oracle, Sybase and CA.

Learn more at the Fight Frugalnomics™ Resource Center http://fightfrugalnomics.com or by visiting http://www.alinean.com or calling 407.382.0005.

Alinean and the Alinean logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Alinean, Inc. Other Alinean product or service names or logos herein are trademarks of Alinean, Inc. All other products, services and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE Alinean