Value-based selling has rapidly emerged as a powerful B2B sales strategy. Because value-added selling focuses on the customers’ needs, it often leads to quicker (and larger) sales. This focus on the impact of the solution increases the perceived value, helping stakeholders throughout the organization become invested in the purchase – and increasing the price the buyer will pay for the product or service.What is value-added selling?
Value-added selling, also known as value-based selling or consultative selling, is the process of listening to your customers’ needs and ensuring customer value is central from beginning to end. For example, a value-added sales cycle might begin with a value assessment tailored to the customer, with ongoing value realization support throughout the business relationship.
Why is Value-Added Selling a Must for B2B Sales – and Why Now?
B2B buyers are bombarded with a never-ending stream of sales pitches, often in the form of cold calls and emails, with little context or clarity around the benefits of these solutions. Don’t forget that more products and services are entering the market every day, competing for your prospects’ attention. In an already fast-paced business environment, the key to standing out to buyers is to show them how your offerings benefit them, quantifiably, from pre-sale to post-sale. With B2B sales, there are often multiple stakeholders across large matrix organizations that need to buy into the value of the offering in order for sales to clinch the deal and get top dollar.
Six Advantages of Value-Added Selling
By adopting a value-added selling model, you can transform your ability to win, retain, and grow customers with quantifiable value. Here are six ways value-based selling is a game-changer during the sales cycle and beyond.
1. Buyer Confidence Increases in Purchasing Decisions
B2B sales can easily become stalled when the sticker price of the solution doesn’t match the perceived value of the product or service. An initially “warm” prospect can quickly become cold when price-to-value ratios do not match up. Value-added selling helps avoid this scenario by using data to clearly demonstrate how the solution will impact the customer in quantifiable terms, giving buyers confidence in the ROI of their purchasing decision. To learn more, see our recent blog post on 4 ways value-based selling helps overcome resistance and close more deals.
2. Executive Support is Given Early
Most large-scale projects will require executive sign-off, but gaining support from these critical stakeholders should never be left for the end of the process. Instead, value-based selling models focus on gaining senior executive support early on, accelerating the decision-making process.
3. Customer Champions Are Empowered to Co-Sell to their Stakeholders
Your first point of contact at a B2B organization is rarely the final decision maker, but they are essential to helping salespeople gain access to other decision-makers, as well as advocating for the solution internally. Value-based selling arms your contacts with both confidence in your product and the data to support that confidence, enabling them to become internal champions who co-sell to executives and budget owners.
4. Decision-Making Teams Are Aligned
Value-added selling also enables sales teams to align decision-making teams across the organization by demonstrating the impact the solution will provide across multiple departments – from sales and marketing to IT and operations. This multiplies the number of internal advocates for your solution, increasing the likelihood of closing the deal, as well as opening up avenues for future expansion and upsell opportunities.
5. Value Realization is Monitored
Value-added selling doesn’t end when a sale is closed, however. The value that was pitched to these customers needs to be realized quickly in order to retain and expand the customer’s business. By monitoring value realization post-sale, sellers can measure and report on actual solution performance for their customers. This can also provide an early indication of customers that are at risk, as well as help you identify customers that are good candidates for upselling and cross-selling.
6. Momentum is Built and Maintained with the “Ripple Effect”
Done well, value-based selling transforms your brand from a product to a driver of business outcomes for your customers. This is an incredibly powerful tool to increase the perceived value of your offerings, which can have many far-reaching “ripple effects” on your business.
These can include:
All of these benefits also mean you can command higher prices.
Start Value Selling
For more information on value-based selling or how this approach can work for your organization, we invite you to schedule a demo or contact our team of experts. We are here, ready to help. Interested in learning more about value-added selling? Download the Whitepaper: The Impact of Value-Selling
