“Value,” most likely one of the top 5 sales buzzwords that exist. Ask 10 sales leaders do they believe their great teams should be effective at building value and 11 will say yes. Here is the issue, do they truly even know HOW to do that?
Test it out right now, ask your team, ask yourself…..how do you build value? If any of the answers sound like……
- “I show them Case studies with success stories” (has anyone ever published a bad case study on their site or marketing materials )
- “I engage in value selling by telling them all of the things our company can do”
- “I share with them how we are different and build value by highlighting our differentiators”
- “I told them how it is going to help them”
………then we aren’t building value. Hate to break it to you, just because you have helped Company A doesn’t mean it is valuable to Company B. Just because your product/service has something different about it doesn’t mean it is valuable to someone else. Just because you tell someone it is going to be good for them doesn’t mean they believe it is going to be good for them.
I see this time and time again with clients early on. They shake their heads thinking, “how did I lose that opportunity or lose it on price? I thought I built great value by showing them A,B and C!”
What we must remember, UNLESS it fulfills a gap on the other side it is not of value. PERIOD. Look back to the past several deals your team lost, who did a majority of the convincing in the conversation? Did the reps convince the prospect to buy or did the prospect convince them why they want to do something, why now and why they should work with your company?
Selling is much easier if we understand what actually drives the buzzword of value. It’s been around since day 1, master it and you will help more people.
