It’s more important than ever to ensure your salespeople have the tools and training needed to focus on selling value over features. Today's buyers are better informed because their education process has changed. Buyers have more information at their disposal, and you aren't in control of everything published about your company and solution.
“That ROI is way too high. It can’t possibly be right.”
Have you heard this from a customer?
At this point, do you:
The correct answer, of course, is number two.
How many sales techniques and methods have you trained in, read about, or considered for your sales team? There are lots of them out there, each purporting to help you get in there and lock down that sale.
Recently, I ran across a review of well-known sales methodologies for closing complex sales by David Peralta, the content marketing manager at iSEEit. He talks about several methods into which I believe value selling tools would neatly fit.
Read on for an overview of six sales methods from Peralta’s guide and how value selling tools and calculators can enhance these practices.
The data driven buyer is the one who makes decisions based on concrete metrics and financial arguments rather than something that seems fuzzy, like an improved user interface or a list of features. This buyer wants to have a firm basis from which to choose the solution with the best value expressed in dollar signs or productivity numbers.
When it comes to winning over this type of buyer, assessment tools, Value Calculators, and ROI Tools contribute the information he or she craves. In turn, these tools provide your sales representatives with the data they need to clinch the sale.
Marketing leaders have an array of methods and techniques available to them, just as all marketers do. What makes them leaders is their ability to make a customer notice and purchase a particular product or service, especially when there are other purveyors of a similar offering.
Here are five great things all marketing leaders do that put their companies at the front of the crowd.
Buyers tend to take the same journey every time they make a high-commitment purchase. They realize there is a problem and begin researching potential solutions. Unfortunately, they are not always methodical in their search.
As a value-seller, there are tools you can use to help steer them in the right direction. Even though today's buyers have gone further into the sales cycle before contacting you, some of these tools are meant to help prospective customers before they signal their readiness for a sales contact.
Other tools help your sales representatives build a convincing business case to take to the financial decision makers. Whatever the situation, here are four steps to help you fill your value selling toolbox.
Nothing better makes the case for change in front of decision makers than showing the red ink on your buyer’s bottom line. A value calculator is a highly effective tool for displaying all of that red and identifying that it’s caused by a problem your product or service can solve.
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.
Value and total cost of ownership comparisons are important to any B2B sales process. Between them, they attract and justify the selection of your product while building a business case for prospective customers to use when presenting your offering to buying committees and financial approvers.
However, they operate in different ways and at different points in the sales cycle. Each tool has a different goal and addresses different pain points, and each is used by a different primary user to different benefit.
Marketing automation is rapidly becoming a necessity for B2B sales organizations. Because it keeps the conversation going long after the initial lead is captured, automation creates robust opportunities to engage prospects and promote continued awareness of your solutions.
Some of the biggest benefits you’ll reap from automating your marketing efforts include:
