This article is based on a LinkedIn Live session featuring Harry Ghuman, founder of Oracle Insight, interviewed by Ajit Ghuman, CEO of Monetizely, a SaaS pricing strategy consulting firm. Harry shares his experience building Oracle's groundbreaking value consulting program and explains how B2B SaaS companies can apply these principles to increase deal values and accelerate sales cycles.
The Origin Story of Oracle Insight
When Harry Ghuman created Oracle Insight in 2005, Oracle was transforming from primarily a database company into a comprehensive applications and full portfolio company. The challenge was demonstrating value to customers across an expanding product line.
"Oracle Insight is a trademark program… I believe in 2005. It's now almost 20 years running, and that would make it the longest running program in any company of such kind," Harry explains.
The team initially focused on manufacturing, where Oracle's ERP solutions had the strongest fit. They developed comprehensive value propositions for trial customers, showing exactly how Oracle's products addressed their specific needs. The approach proved so successful that they expanded it across all of Oracle's horizontal products.
As Harry notes, "We took a step back and came up with very good methods where we could do a lot of the work in terms of building the right type of frameworks for different industries, different product areas—very robust frameworks, and many of them are still in use in the industry."
Beyond Traditional Sales Methodologies
What sets this value selling approach apart from other methodologies like MEDDIC or Champion Selling is its focus on consultative partnership. Harry is careful to distinguish this approach from simply "value consulting":
"I would not put this in a small box of value consulting. This is consultative selling, consultative selling, consultative selling," he emphasizes. "In the past, you could make very clear distinctions: Do we have a sponsor? Do they have a budget? It's just irrelevant [now]."
The approach goes beyond traditional qualification questions to focus on understanding the customer's business context deeply enough to become a trusted advisor. This involves:
- Establishing credibility through industry knowledge
- Helping customers articulate their own transformation story
- Building consensus among stakeholders
- Enabling the customer's internal champions to sell on your behalf
The 4-Hour Value Blitzkrieg Approach
One of the most remarkable aspects of Harry's methodology is its efficiency. While many consultative approaches involve lengthy multi-day workshops, Harry recognized early that executives simply don't have that kind of time.
"People don't have time," Harry says. "If you had to coordinate a whole bunch of people's schedules for a multiple-day workshop, people just don't have time. A half-day is reasonably easy to actually schedule."
Harry shares a striking example of when a semiconductor company challenged him to deliver value in just four hours after a failed implementation:
"The VP there said, 'Harry, that's not possible.' I said, 'Okay, I just… clear the table. Let's understand why it's not possible.' She said, 'We did all of that, and it did not really work for us. We are in a pickle because we asked for all those things, implemented, and things did not go well. We cannot repeat that. How much time do you think I can get?' They said, 'Very little. Four hours.'"
Rather than give up, Harry's team worked near the client's office for several days, building a model of their business based on industry knowledge and frameworks. They divided the problem into supply-side and demand-side issues and returned with a preliminary analysis.
"We said, 'We will need two workshops, one for the supply side, one for the demand side. We'll give you what we think your business looks like, and I need as many people as you can get because I want them to critique what we've built.'"
The result? "They were very impressed that we were actually very close to accurate… We probably modified maybe 5-10% of our materials… About 60 different director-level and VP-level people actually showed up and wholeheartedly adopted the solution. Not only did they adopt the solution, they became one of the biggest Oracle references."
Why This Approach Works: Building Trust Through Understanding
The core of this approach is demonstrating that you understand the customer's business so well that you become a trusted advisor rather than just a vendor.
"We are credible, we understand your business, and we want to understand your business. We have frameworks with which we can speed up not only your discovery process but your transformation," Harry explains.
This level of understanding builds trust that transcends traditional buying processes. In one case, Harry's team was given just four hours to win a major procurement deal at a large industrial company:
"We showed them the metrics, got them to comment on it—are these good enough metrics? Because there's really no perfect metrics. Are they usable? That's the only thing that really matters."
The team worked efficiently, asking hundreds of questions and taking detailed notes. Two hours into the meeting, the client asked for a 15-minute break.
"I said, 'No. First, I need to understand is this 15 minutes coming from my time, or are we going to extend the time?' Everybody laughed… By that time, the credibility issue—we were very past that, and the sale was already done. They looked at us and said, 'Wow, these guys really understood our business, and they're helping us.'"
Making This Approach Scalable for Any Organization
A common misconception is that this approach only works for large enterprises with dedicated value consulting teams. Harry emphasizes that the methodology scales for organizations of all sizes:
"Oracle is a big company… but every sales team was like a small company. They had a lot of independence," he notes. "We needed to build a program that was very scalable. It would work for a division selling a single solution and needing to cover a large number of customers, and then it should also scale up without changing any of the methods when dealing with Fortune 500 or the global 2000."
The scalability came from two key elements:
- Consistent methodology: "We didn't really want to change the method, so our method became very scalable by design because we built it from the bottom up."
- Enablement over specialization: "There was never going to be enough people in a specialized team… One of our approaches was actually very unique in the industry at that time. We planned to enable thousands of people to be able to do this on their own and not just rely on a 200-people team globally."
Making Average Sellers Great
When asked what problem this approach was trying to solve, Harry shares a powerful insight from a sales leader:
"Harry, look, the top salespeople already know what to do. They have very good instincts. I want to be able to make the C players into the B players and B players into the A players."
The methodology provides structure that elevates the performance of your entire sales organization, not just your top performers. It gives average sellers the tools to have strategic conversations that would normally be reserved for elite salespeople.
Practical Implementation for B2B SaaS Companies
For B2B SaaS companies looking to implement this approach, Harry recommends:
- Start with market segmentation: "Segment the market where you think you are going to be strong, where you have a good story, where you have good references."
- Create proof points: "If you don't have references, just don't sit back. Build the reference… Go through an exercise with them for a few hours and say, 'How are you actually using it? What did it do for you?' and then write a small kind of story."
- Develop industry frameworks: "We had very powerful frameworks based on the capability maturity models. We would divide every industry into functions that made them very vertical."
- Focus on customer success: "You're not really trying to just sell the widget. You are trying to make them successful because the person who's your executive sponsor has challenges. They're trying to get things done, but they don't have all the knowledge."
The Value Proposition Framework
Harry outlines a general framework for these conversations:
- Establish your credibility in the client's industry
- Present an outside-in perspective on the client's position relative to peers
- Identify areas for improvement based on industry benchmarks
- Show a capability maturity model that illustrates where they are today versus where they could be
- Present a roadmap for moving up the maturity curve
- Quantify the value of making this transition
"When you're initially talking to a buyer, you don't really have the larger context. What this methodology allows you to do is access that larger context," Ajit explains. "When the person agrees that you have the credibility and experience to understand their larger context, their defenses open up, and they bring you in as a partner."
Value Selling in the AI Era
As AI transforms the business landscape, the human element of trust becomes even more critical. Harry observes that while technology constantly evolves, the fundamental need for truste