Target the best customers.
Value helps you find emerging opportunities. Understanding value improves your prospecting because it explains why customers buy. Knowing how your solution enables emerging strategies will help you target companies that are the most likely to adopt early. Understanding value also helps tailor your pitch to the customer’s business needs. This helps you break through the noise, capture the customer’s attention and earn the right to call on the customer. Value is the quickest way to open door.
Pick the winners.
If you can’t create value, go somewhere else. Value helps you qualify accounts quickly because it helps you better determine the scope of the customer’s needs. If a customer only has technical needs, it is unlikely that you will be able to build enough value to justify a premium price or urgency to drive to sale to closure.
However if you can link the technical needs to high-priority business strategies, you will be able to figure out how compelling your solution is to the customer. If there is a clear connection between what your solution enables and what the customer wants to do, you will be able to use value drivers to build momentum in the account. It also helps you assess the probability of closing the account and negotiating a premium price, other important account qualifiers.
Build value in every sales conversation.
The goal of the discovery process is figure out what the customer is trying to accomplish, translate their strategy into technical needs, uncover issues and suggest relevant solutions. You conduct the discovery process by asking questions and listening carefully to what your customer is saying.
Value selling should guide every conversation your sales team has with the customer.
Asking questions that build awareness and intensify pain is the art of selling. Value questioning strategies enable you to conduct consultative conversations that build your customer’s trust and belief you’re your technology will be able to satisfy their needs, solve their problems and enable their business strategies.
Propose value.
Value drives the logic of your proposal. The customer’s perception of the value of your solution depends on how well you link your technology to their business strategies. Benefits are most powerful when they are presented within the context of the customer’s needs and problems. A benefit that doesn’t directly relate to the customer’s perception of the situation is irrelevant. Value building strategies helps you keep your proposal relevant. Furthermore they provide a consistent logic to guide key sales events, such as the executive presentation, demo and written proposal.
The economic justification, a key element of the proposal, should also be built to showcase the value of your solution. By linking your solution to mission-critical business strategies, you are tying the decision to purchase your solution to other business decisions. Linking the purchase of the product to overall success of the strategy builds value because it associates the financial benefits of the technology purchase to the successful implementation of the strategy.
Negotiate with strength.
Value lets you play hardball. If you had built the customer’s sense of value throughout the sales process, then you can use it as a negotiating tool during the close. Value makes your customer vulnerable and you strong. If the customer really believes in the potential value of your solution, they are more likely to pay more; be more committed to the implementation, and accommodate your needs. On the other hand, if the customer is not convinced of the value of your solution, most likely the decision will be made on price alone.