Does your value proposition articulate how your offering solves a customer’s business challenges or is it a jumble of features/benefits? The sophistication of a value proposition ranges from being stuck on feature selling to one that’s fully developed and helps win business. To find out if you’re at square one or doing pretty well, think about your value proposition in terms of the continuum below.
A signed contract signals the start of the final step in the Value Lifecycle: Deliver and Measure Value. This is a step that will not only strengthen your relationship with your customer but will also enhance your capacity to develop new offerings and improve existing ones. Here’s how it works.
Objective 1: Make sure the customer is actually getting the value you promised.
What does it mean to actually deliver value? For example, let’s say you buy a gym membership to try to lose weight. If you never actually go to the gym and work out, you won’t get the value you were promised when you purchased the membership. As the gym, you need to ensure that your members show up and actually use the facilities or else they won’t receive value (and won’t retain their membership).
Sometimes the way you talk about a customer’s problem can make all the difference. In our experience, there are lots of ways to encourage prospects to think about their business problems with renewed urgency. The next time you want to light a fire under your prospect, try one of the following conversational approaches.
Value-based sales is a popular term that gets thrown around an awful lot these days. Many major companies claim to provide this service to their customers while citing different reasons why their organization has the best value. From tech support to delivery speed, from warranty policies to company reputability, there are many factors that a company will claim makes them a “value-based seller.”
I truly believe in the power of ROI tools and value calculators to help generate better, more qualified leads for B2B marketers and enhance a B2B salesperson’s ability to close a deal. (If I didn't, I wouldn't be in the business of selling them.)
This is Part V of a five-part series about the lifecycle of value in B2B selling and marketing.
You’ve set your price, shown the customer the cost of his problem, and proven you’re a better option than your competitors. Congratulations, you’ve now made it to Phase 4 of the Value Lifecycle.
This is the point at which you perform a rock solid analysis that convinces your prospect to invest in your offering. If done right, Phase 4 the Value Lifecycle is a lot of fun, because success at this stage means you’ve closed the deal.
This is Part I of a five-part series about the life-cycle of value in B2B selling and marketing. Part I is an introduction and a summary four phases of the value life-cycle.
Whether you’re in sales or marketing, it is obviously in your best interest to understand what value you offer to customers. What most sellers and marketers don’t realize is that value has different meanings depending on where you are in the marketing/sales cycle. The “value life-cycle” has four distinct phases (listed below) – as you’ll see, different phases require input from different roles in the company.
Last week I spoke with Ken Powell, who’s been leading a sales transformation at SunGard in his role as VP of Global Sales Enablement. (He was also a speaker this week at the Sales 2.0 Conference in Boston.)
I've worked with many clients to help them craft value propositions. One mistake they often make is to mistake quality for value.
