The Old Game of Sales
At some point in the not-too-distant future, the term ‘value selling’ will likely become redundant. Eventually, most, if not all sellers will sell by layering value across the customer journey. The term ‘value’ will be inseparably linked to selling. But now is not that point.
Instead, all too often a seller's sales pitch focuses on features and functions without mentioning value. They overload their prospects with information (77% of B2B buyers find supplier information trustworthy but overwhelming). And in the rare case they do mention value, they do so without truly understanding what matters to their prospect. All these misguided habits are bound to lead to misalignment, mistrust, and missed deals. In fact, the data supports this. According to the JOLT Effect by Matt Dixon and Ted McKennahigh, customer indecision corresponds to win rates below 5 percent. This is the old game of sales and it is unsustainable.
The New Game of Sales
The new game, on the other hand, focuses on value - and not just the value of the solution but on the value the sales rep provides to the buyer. What you don’t know about your buyer is that they are not made for making complex buying decisions. So claims for superiority about your product and why it is better than your competition can only take you so far. The best salespeople are transforming themselves into decision coaches. As a result, these sellers (or decision coaches) are adding value by helping customers decide by turning complexity into simplicity.
Of course, this is a lot easier said than done. Transforming sellers into decision coaches requires guidance. Shifting from a transactional sales methodology to a value-based selling approach requires structure. This is why sellers need a value selling framework.
What is a Value Selling Framework
A value selling framework is a sales methodology that focuses on understanding and communicating the value a product or service brings to a customer, rather than solely emphasizing its features or price. Additionally, it is a way to transform a seller into a decision coach, thereby building trust with the buyer. When correctly activated, it is an effective way to overcome the previously mentioned missteps that are resulting in win rates below 5 percent.
However, a value selling framework provides value to a buyer and seller in other ways. It acts as a roadmap, guiding the buyer and seller on a journey that incorporates value at the most critical steps. It also provides guardrails to prevent sellers from veering off the path. And ultimately, it is a tool that can help a seller produce better outcomes - like higher win rates, increased ACVs, and shorter sales cycles.
It’s an incredibly powerful tool that every sales team and salesperson should be intimately familiar with. Let’s take a look at the common components that make up a value selling framework.
What are the Core Components of a Value Selling Framework?
The core components of a value selling framework contain similar ingredients - they are simple, prescriptive, and flexible.
A strong and effective value selling framework must be simple enough that all members of a sales organization can adopt it. Complexity is a surefire way to set your sales organization up for failure. Overcomplicated frameworks lead to low adoption rates. Keep the ingredients simple and easy to understand.
Additionally, it must strike a balance between prescriptive and flexible - prescriptive enough to lead you in the right direction and ensure you don’t veer off the path but flexible enough to give you the autonomy to apply the framework to your own unique industry, audience, and product.
Let’s examine more closely the core components of an effective value selling framework that take into consideration simplicity, prescriptiveness, and flexibility.
1. Identify Customer Needs and Pain Points
Everything starts and ends with the customer. Without understanding what keeps them up at night, it’s impossible to properly position your solution.
Extracting customer needs and pain points can take on many forms at this stage of the value selling framework. Some examples include third-party industry market research, first-party surveys with customers and prospects, competitive research, analysis of sales call recordings, and more. But the most effective method is to simply ask prospects and customers directly - to really focus on their unique challenges.
Early in the sales process, it’s easy and natural for sales reps to jump right to their pitch - to flaunt all that makes their solution great. But this is a mistake. Early in the process is a time for listening to the prospect - listening for their unique challenges. By doing so, sales teams will be better prepared to surface the most relevant value proposition.
2. Create Value Proposition
By understanding the most common challenges your customers and prospects face, you can now create messaging that aligns your solution to the needs of your customers.
This messaging is called your value proposition. And because your solution may solve more than one pain point, you may also have more than one value proposition. In the likely case that you have more than one, the key to enabling your sales team is documentation. Cataloging your value propositions by customer pain point will make it easy for sales reps to access and share the most relevant messaging.
Value propositions can even help your product team build better products by getting them focused on your customer’s unique challenges. Getting this alignment between challenges and value this early on in the process is a recipe for success for not just sales teams but the entire company.
3. Quantify Value of Current Customers
One of the best ways to make your value propositions as believable as possible in the eyes of your prospects is through the use of customer stories. More specifically, customer stories that include the details about the outcomes and value your current customers experienced by using your solution. To differentiate your offerings, consider taking a more holistic view on value. Value comes in three varieties, so choose the value that is going to resonate the most with your prospect:
- Corporate value: Naturally, the financial side wants to generate revenue, reduce costs, and mitigate risks.
- Job value: Does an action, relationship, or purchase of a product or service make my job easier or more efficient? Am I working better because of this transaction?
- Personal value: Is my reputation or status enhanced because you and your enterprise are in my orbit? Am I better off working with you?
This is also where close ties between sales and customer success become so critical. Customer success, often in partnership with value management consultants, will extract and document these customer value stories and make them easily accessible to the sales team through technology integrations.
In the end, these customer stories validate the claims made by sales reps about promised value, making them that much more impactful.
4. Integrate This Value in All Stages of the Customer Journey
The term value selling framework can be misleading. At first glance you may assume that the application of the framework is only limited to sales. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, all the work completed in the previous steps can and should be applied across the entire customer journey like a fresh coat of paint across the outside of a dilapidated house.
This includes the website, ad campaigns, sales and marketing collateral, sales decks, sales outreach, proposals, within the product itself, and any other place your customers and prospects might interact with your business. The value selling framework is an all-hands-on-deck activity that should be infused and integrated company-wide.
How to Build a Value Selling Framework
Now that you understand the key components of a value selling framework, here are a few specific steps you can take to start creating your own:
- Talk with customers and prospects: Assemble a cross-functional team composed of members from sales, marketing, and customer success to talk with your prospects and customers and start documenting their pain points and challenges.
- Create value propositions: In this same document, write out how your solution solves for each of these customer pain points. Then, describe the value you provide.
- Quantify value whenever possible: Use data, case studies, and testimonials to illustrate the tangible impact of your solution on customers' bottom lines and key performance indicators.
- Tailor value messaging to different buyer personas: Craft unique value propositions that resonate with the specific needs and motivations of each target audience.
- Provide training and tools to sales reps: Train your sales team on customer pain points, your personas, and your value propositions. Make sure they are supported through sales collateral such as sales sheets, sales decks, and other resources.
- Celebrate successes: Recognize and reward individuals and teams who consistently demonstrate value-based selling behaviors.
- Rinse and repeat: This is not a one-and-done activity - continuously refine your value proposition based on customer feedback, market trends, and evolving business needs.
Conclusion
The evolution of sales from a feature-driven pitch to a value-centric conversation is not merely a trend, but an inevitable shift. A robust value selling framework serves as the cornerstone of this transformation, guiding sales teams to understand, articulate, and deliver value at every customer touchpoint. This customer-centric approach not only empowers sales reps to become trusted advisors but also fosters a deeper understanding of customer needs, ensuring a win-win scenario for both parties.
Embracing a value selling framework is not just about staying ahead of the curve - it's about revolutionizing the way we approach sales. By aligning the entire organization around a common language of value, businesses can create a sustainable competitive advantage, cultivate long-term customer relationships, and ultimately achieve superior sales outcomes. The time to invest in a value selling framework is now, for it's not just the future of sales—it's the present.
To learn more about creating a high-performing value selling framework, contact our team.
