The one thing that gets between you and your customers saying “yes” to what you are selling is your salespeople moving their lips. In fact, recent research by analyst firm Sirius Decisions shows that 71 percent of sales leaders identify customer conversations as their biggest challenge to hitting their revenue targets.
More specifically, the problem stems from the inability of reps to link your solutions to your prospects’ business problems and then to articulate value.
Understandably, “articulating value” is easier said than done. “Value” is a rather amorphous concept that needs to be made more concrete and addressable if you are going to improve at articulating it. In our newest book (due out this spring), we identify three value conversation “moments of truth” that take place across every buying cycle.
To engage in a winning conversation, salespeople must be great at all three of them—from the first sales interaction, to the close of more profitable deals.
Create value
Objective: Defeat the status quo bias and differentiate from competitors
So you’ve earned that all-important first meeting with a prospect. While your company’s marketing efforts have clearly spurred interest, that doesn’t mean your prospect is committed to making a change. You likely still have to convince them to embrace a change management project with you.
At this juncture, your salespeople need to be prepared to tell the “why change” story—the story that creates enough value in the mind of your prospect to convince them to leave their status quo situation. This is where your salespeople have to establish a buying vision.
By addressing the “why change” question first, you change the entire trajectory of the customer conversation. And you naturally position yourself to differentiate your solution from the competition, once it’s time to win the “why you” discussion to follow.
Elevate value
Objective: Build a business impact model and secure executive buy-in
The second value conversation is the one that takes your reps up to key executive decision makers, where they must be able to hold a conversation that speaks to business and financial concerns. According to IDC, 80 percent of B2B decisions are signed by decision makers with vice president or higher titles.
Additional research shows that these executives seek conversations about their business nearly four times more than traditional product presentations. To excel in this phase, your reps have to have the financial acumen and executive conversation skills to make the business case for your solution—one that frees up the budget for an opportunity. To accomplish this, your reps have to be able to deliver compelling value propositions that justify customer investment.
Capture value
Objective: Protect profit margins and maintain deal size
When it comes to executing profitable deals, one of the most common misconceptions is that discounting happens only when the deal moves to purchasing. A lot of the things you’ve been giving away to move the deal along—trial runs, demos, meetings, early price concessions—have actually been leaking value from your deal all along.
To plug these value leaks, your salespeople need to adopt the mentality that they must be exchanging value instead of giving it away with every customer request. These trades should be pre-planned, knowing what you will be asked for and gaining agreement on what you need in return. As opposed to lategame negotiating tactics, this approach throughout will build and protect value versus trying to recover it.
It’s helpful to think of the three value conversations highlighted above as distinct but complementary. They’re distinct in that they have separate objectives and outcomes. But they’re complementary in that mastery of each is required to articulate value across the customer conversation continuum.
Tim Riesterer is Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Corporate Visions, Inc. (CorporateVisions.com).
To dig into these ideas in more detail, visit smmconnect.com/welcome/brainshark_ jan20 to view a recent SMM Connect webcast he delivered on this topic.
