How well can you describe the value of your offering to different market segments? Correctly communicating value at the segment level is critical to any successful business strategy. Unfortunately, many B2B sales and marketing professionals communicate value in broad, generic terms, or fail to customize their language to appeal to different market segments.
At a certain stage of the deal, there are a few things buyers sometimes say that make sales professionals panic.
One of them is when the potential buyer comes back and asks you to rework the numbers in your business case. For example, let’s say you’re trying to sell a very expensive solution to a big account. Let’s say this solution will help save the prospect $1 million each year. However, your stakeholder comes back to you and suddenly asks for a business case to support $500,000 savings, rather than the full $1 million. At this point, many sales professionals start to panic or worry that their deal is losing credibility.
I contend that your sales reps need to be financial experts about as much as your CFO needs to be a master of working a room. Recently I read a great post on Inc.com, “Selling in the Post-Internet Age” about how the Internet has fundamentally changed the buying and selling process.
As the author points out, customers today are better informed, and the buyer education process has been turned upside down. Customers are doing research on you and your solutions before you get a chance to talk with them. And you’re not necessarily in control of the information that’s out there for them to discover on their own.
By Jeff Bennett and Darrin Fleming
This week we're republishing one of our most popular posts about value propositions. We'd love to get your thoughts on this topic; please leave a comment or contact us directly.
When building relationships with buyers, it’s important to choose your words carefully. We’re not just referring to small talk or the language of negotiation. We’re talking about the specific words you use to describe your offering and what differentiates it.
A lot of sellers and marketers make the mistake of using what we call “ity” words when attempting to convey the value of their offering. For example:
Great value propositions are essential if you want to prospect effectively and win more customers. Despite this, we’ve found that these propositions can be tricky for both marketers and sellers alike.
Often they simply aren’t sure what their value proposition is. This is common at companies that sell complex products and/or have multiple product lines/business units. Such companies could have hundreds of different propositions aimed at their different market segments. In other cases, marketing and sales teams don’t know their value propositions because their companies have never embarked on the proper process to formulate them.
If you want to increase your average deal size, the best thing you can do is learn to sell based on value. That’s because a value-based selling approach helps you justify your price and expand cross-selling and upselling opportunities. Here’s how it works.
To increase your average deal size, start by learning how to talk about the customer’s business challenges. Specifically, think about how your solution impacts situations or circumstances that require your customer to 1) spend money unnecessarily and/or 2) not achieve their potential in terms of sales revenue.
What separates good companies from great ones?
Truly exceptional companies understand that customer value is the sum total of everything they do, not just the product they sell.
Successful marketers and salespeople strive to prove value every day. For example:
It's the week of Thanksgiving, and one thing we're thankful for is our loyal blog readers. Next week we'll be back with fresh content; until then, here are links to our three most popular posts from the past few weeks. Happy holidays!
Never Lead with a Sales Demo
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.
