Small B2B technology companies face the same challenges as businesses of every other size: cash flow, marketing, talent management, execution, access to capital, and more. But they are uniquely tested when it comes to growing sales.
Founders are typically the driving force behind closing deals at small tech companies, even when a sales team is in place. Why? Because founders are often the only ones with a complete understanding of all the problems their offering can solve, and because they tend to have the greatest enthusiasm for their own solution. While this appears helpful, it can actually hurt the chance of sales success because founders are entrepreneurs, not sales professionals.
Value selling programs can address this challenge from both sides: first, by helping founders navigate today’s demanding sales environment, and second, by making it easier for sales teams to uncover buyers’ problems. Let’s tackle the second issue first.
How Does Value Selling Facilitate Discovery?
Discovery is more than just asking questions to reveal an ideal solution configuration. Done correctly, discovery is the process of understanding what buyers are trying to achieve, and why the status quo is no longer tolerable.
Early in the buying process, value selling tools such as assessments and value calculators help buyers articulate the size and scope of their problems. Whether the responses are completed independently by the buyer or in conjunction with a sales rep, the results provide sellers with insight into the buyer’s business challenges. These key learnings, about what keeps the buyer awake at night, are critical to qualifying the buyer.
With this knowledge, sales reps no longer need to engage buyers with a litany of features that they hope will address a set of preconceived problems. Instead, reps can open the sales dialog by discussing the best way to solve the buyer’s known problems and the value of doing so. For any complex sales requiring a business case, an early focus on quantifying pain points accelerates the deal through the sales funnel.
How Can Value Selling Help Founders Close Deals?
Founders have deep insight into the types of problems their offerings solve. After all, they’re the ones that had the initial vision and saw the need for the product in the first place. Closing deals, though, is not typically their forte. Too often, the entrepreneurial mindset finds it difficult to persevere through a lengthy sales process seemingly controlled by a consensus-driven purchase decision and the need to communicate value to every stakeholder, every step of the way.
With all of the diverse demands placed on founders above and beyond selling, building a business case for every opportunity can be arduous. Yet it is critical to do so. Nucleus Research found that “vendors who used value across the sales funnel could shorten the time to close by one-third, reduce discounting by 18 percent, and decrease the number of deals lost by 15 percent.”
One option for streamlining the value conversation, is to employ purpose-built value selling tools. These tools offer a simple, repeatable process to show buyers the ROI of an offering using the buyer’s own data. Since the tools automatically complete all the financial calculations, founders save time and don’t need to be financial experts to develop the cost justification for their solutions.
Conclusion
Value selling positions employees and founders to successfully grow sales at small tech companies. Sales staff gains the insight needed to engage with buyers earlier in the sales process, and at a deeper level. Founders can quickly and easily provide buyers with financial justification to make a purchase decision.
Using value selling, small B2B companies can stand out in a competitive playing field by showing buyers how to solve their unique problems, and demonstrating the clear benefits of doing so.
