5 Signs You’re Ready to Execute a Value Selling Framework

Value selling has quickly become the go-to approach for many B2B organizations looking to stand out from their competition and build meaningful, long-lasting, and profitable partnerships with their customers.

If you’ve been thinking about implementing a value selling framework, you’re certainly not alone! But how do you know when you’ve done enough planning, and when it’s time to execute? Here are 5 ways to know you’re ready to get your value selling strategy off the ground–and feel confident taking the next steps!

1. You Have a Strong Customer Value Proposition

Having a strong customer value proposition (CVP) is fundamental for any value selling strategy. The very first step to any value-based program is to have a clear, differentiated, and quantifiable CVP that effectively communicates the value of your offerings to customers in a way they can understand and that is relevant to them. Here’s a quick checklist to evaluate whether you have a solid CVP–or if there are any gaps that you need to fill before going live:

Clarity: Is your CVP clear and easy-to-understand–written in your customer’s language?
Relevance: Is it contextualized on the customer’s situation and focused on the specific outcomes they expect to achieve?
Quantification: Have you included the metrics that matter most to your customers–including both qualitative value and quantified outcomes?
Differentiation: Can you articulate the incremental value of your solution versus your customers’ most likely alternative(s)?
Link to Decision Makers: Do you understand your key decision makers and what they value most from your proposed solution?

For more information about how to craft an effective customer value proposition, see our recent blog post: What is Customer Value Proposition?

2. You Understand What Success Looks Like

Understanding your goals and key metrics is essential to ensuring that your program is successful. You should have clearly defined the key performance indicators (KPIs) for your value realization program–as well as a way to monitor progress against these goals.

While the exact metrics you track will vary by business and by customer, there are 3 fundamental metrics that all organizations should be tracking on all customer deployments:

Impact on revenue – A measure of your solution’s contribution to your customers’ bottom line and growth targets.
Time to Solution Go-Live – A measure of the amount of time to onboard and implement the solution.

Time to Solution Value – A measure of the amount of time it takes for the solution to start delivering a return on the customers’ investment. A fast time-to-value can help you retain customers and secure renewals.

At a minimum, make sure that you know how to measure and monitor progress against these KPIs before you launch your value selling framework. For more information, check out our recent blog post 5 Ways to Improve Your Business Value Realization Metrics Right Now.

3. You Have a Clear Value Realization Roadmap and Framework

Make sure your value program won’t end with sales. You should have a clear value realization roadmap in place that takes customers through the entire customer journey with a seamless, value-driven experience. Ultimately, customer value creation is a cycle that is continuously refined and optimized over the course of an ongoing collaborative partnership.

Ensure you can meet your customers’ expectations by having a clear value realization framework and roadmap in place, so you can seamlessly carry on the value conversations from sales into the customer success experience. To learn more about how to do to this, see 10 Ways to Make a Value Realization Roadmap Work for You

4. ALL of Your Stakeholders Are On Board

From your leadership team to sales and marketing to customer success, all of your stakeholders must be on board and part of a larger culture of value from end-to-end to ensure the success of your program. Why? Because organizations that embrace customer value as part of their corporate identity see significant improvement across many business outcomes, including higher customer satisfaction, increased revenue growth, and improved profitability.

The proof is in the numbers. Leaders in customer value consistently get better business outcomes than their peers by as much as 70% (Ecosystems & IDC’s Second Annual Value Selling Survey, January 2022). Achieving excellence in customer value requires an end-to-end approach that involves your whole team, from sales and marketing to customer success. To learn how to build a culture of value and see customer value best practices by role, read Customer Value Best Practices Throughout the Entire Customer Journey

5. You Have a Plan for Digitization

Finally, you know you’re truly ready to embark on your value creation journey with customers when you have the right tools in place to execute at speed and scale. You’ll quickly burn out your teams with manual data entry and endless spreadsheets, and you’ll soon need to implement automation and digitization to help you keep your value engine running smoothly. Having a plan for digitization before you even begin will help you avoid this common pitfall.

A digital value realization platform like Ecosystems improves the efficiency and effectiveness of customer success teams while providing clear visibility into potential opportunities to expand the account and risk of churn. By streamlining and automating rote tasks, a collaborative digital customer value management platform ensures customer success teams can focus their time on nurturing their customer relationships, instead of data entry and spreadsheets.

In addition, a collaborative digital customer value management platform like Ecosystems fosters value co-creation. Customers and CS teams alike have access to robust reporting and KPI measurement tools, improving transparency and creating a collaborative environment in which to build long-lasting partnerships.

Congratulations, You’re Ready to Execute!

Check out our 5 Steps to Set Up a New Value Management Program for more practical insights on how to get your value selling program off the ground.