If we could listen to all the internal sales conversations and do a word count, “selling value” would be right at the top of the list.
The modern formulation of selling value has been around for a long time – let’s say at least 30 years. Today, almost everyone agrees that the capability to sell value is a survival skill for any sales team. Everyone knows that it’s really important – unfortunately not everyone is really good at it.
Learning how to sell value is challenging, particularly given that everyone else is trying to do it, so salespeople must master the skill if they are to stand out from the crowd.
Let’s take a deeper dive. We will examine some of ideas masquerading as selling value and then explore what salespeople need to know and be able to do in order to sell value better than the salesperson next to them.
Masquerading. Any concept that develops notoriety tends to suffer a common set of problems. These problems are easily seen by examining concepts like “paradigm” and “strategy,” which have been overused and abused. One problem is that the idea becomes fuzzy. For example, does anybody really know exactly what a “sales strategy” looks like or the meaning of the expression “paradigm shift?” Since the idea loses meaning over time, a second problem is the emergence of impostors.
Let’s look at some candidates for the case of selling value:
The key to selling value is closing the deal without lowering your price.
Doing a good job positioning your competitive advantages to the customer is an example of selling value.
Selling value is about being able to pitch the benefits of your products.
Now, these examples are not necessarily bad ideas – however, they are not really what selling value is all about either.
Mastering.Let’s first provide a narrative description of selling value and then explore what one needs to know and do to sell value effectively.
Selling value is all about helping the customer understand how you can help them make their business better. It all starts with developing an in-depth understanding of the customer’s needs, issues and challenges. Given that context, you have to demonstrate how your products and services will improve productivity, contain expenses, reduce risk and help drive revenue. An inherent part of the concept is that salespeople must make the connection between their solution and customers’ desired outcomes, as opposed to letting customers make that connection.
In complex sales, where there is always a dynamic business environment, multiple players, and a complex buying process, selling value effectively is a highly skilled task. It is challenging even to accomplish the first step – getting a clear, in-depth picture of the needs, issues and challenges.
So, what does the skill profile look like? Two components stand out:
Second-tier product knowledge. As a baseline, you have to know the features and functions of your product portfolio. However, to sell value, you have to know a second tier of knowledge, which has to do with product application.
How do your products individually or collectively solve the various problems likely to be encountered by your customer base? How do they impact the previously noted outcomes like productivity, risk, expense and revenue? Can you relate a customer story a/or delineate the research that demonstrates your solution does what you say it does? And can you fine-tune these narratives based on whether you are talking with a customer engineer versus the CIO?
If you are selling simple products, then following this path is relatively straightforward. However, if you are selling complex integrated solutions, then developing that second-tier of product knowledge is a more difficult journey.
Customer base. In major accounts, to sell value better than other salespeople, you cannot start from scratch in the discovery phase. Salespeople have to enter a sales call with a general understanding of the types of issues and challenges their customer is facing. So the discovery is about helping the salesperson and the customer better understand the business and economic impact of the problems versus the proverbial discover-your-pain discussion.
The foundation for selling value is not just about uncovering and developing problems, it involves helping the customer to understand their problems from a different perspective. It also entails bringing new insight as to potential alternative solutions that might not have been formulated by the customer.
The moral of the story is that selling value is as important as everyone says it is. Unfortunately, it is also more difficult than a lot of people think it is. If you are a sales leader, it’s probably a good idea to spend a couple days in the field to get a personal assessment of the degree to which your sales team is selling the value of your solutions. Our bet is you will find there is some work to be done.