Value selling tools such as assessment, ROI, and TCO tools, as well as value calculators, all fit neatly into your marketing and sales efforts. Deploying these tools is like giving your marketing automation platform a bunch of power-ups, leveraging even more of its strength.
Marketo, Pardot, HubSpot, and ActOn are all major players in the marketing automation arena. Other marketing solutions are available, with new products and services introduced every month.
In each case, you can build value selling tools into the automated marketing and sales workflow, creating a smoother path through the sales cycle.
Marketing Automation and the Assessment Tool
The assessment tool is a good TOFU, or Top Of FUnnel tool that you can use to discover leads and increase conversions. Because it automatically creates highly personalized engagement, it not only helps your prospect identify the specific problem to be solved, but the engagement could indicate a more qualified lead than a white paper download would.
The assessment tool can be placed on a landing page with a form requesting very basic information your marketing automation platform can use to start a lead nurturing campaign. If you are using the lead scoring and grading feature, you can assign a score for filling out the assessment tool to begin further qualifying your lead.
An assessment tool can add to your customer data, beginning the process of segmentation from the point of first contact.
It seamlessly collects data around buyer demographics, common business problems, and the financial impact of those problems to help you refine your market strategy, target markets, and product roadmap.
That data will go into your marketing automation platform to be included in the customer record. You are already farther ahead than your competitors who offer content that tells them little about the prospect’s problem.
Integrating the Value Calculator
A value calculator is a top of funnel (TOFU) tool that can also be used in the middle of the funnel (MOFU). Where the assessment tool draws prospects a picture of their problem and a potential solution, the value calculator fills it in with hard data.
If the lead didn’t convert with the assessment tool, a value calculator could tip the prospect over the edge.
It is a powerful demand generation tool that can gather insightful data you can use for further qualification and nurturing efforts and may push lead qualification far enough to send it to sales.
Add the TCO Tool
At the bottom of the funnel (BOFU), leads are ready to make a decision about which solution to buy. A Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) tool gives you a way to differentiate your product or service from a competitor’s.
Total cost of ownership is used to show the amount of lost revenue or additional cost the customer will bear by going with your competitor’s solution rather than your solution.
Information from the TCO tool is integrated with the rest of the customer record, giving sales a powerful presentation point to validate the buyer’s choice and to help during follow-up as the decision is being made.
And the ROI Tool Goes Here
As your lead moves through the end of the sales process, questions about price may arise. A Return on Investment (ROI) tool greases the funnel by providing a convincing cost justification. Oftentimes at this point, a buying committee will want to see a compelling business case for your solution.
An ROI tool gets you from the middle of the funnel to the bottom (BOFU) much faster.
The marketing platform takes the data from the ROI tool and automatically adds it to the engagement data, meaning sales now has access to important intelligence about the buyer that can be used to continue the drive to close the sale.
The buyer has all the information needed to overcome any price objections. The sales cycle is shortened with a quicker close.
Information is power. Each of these tools gathers data specific to each prospect and lead, providing you with the most compelling engagement points at the right time in the sales cycle.
Tie this information into your marketing automation platform to expand your view of the customer and make it available to everyone in your organization. You save time because there is no manual transfer of data from the tool to your platform. Instead, you have a seamless data gathering machine to help marketing and sales win more deals more quickly. 
