Where is your organization on the value selling maturity scale? 87% of high-growth companies now take a value-based approach to sales. Meanwhile, Rain Group reports improving the ability to communicate value is a top priority for 70% of sales organizations. Value selling is not just the recommended way to sell. It is the only way to sell. If you aren’t value selling, you aren’t winning — period.
Why is everyone so focused on value selling in 2023? 95% of buyers now require financial justification on any significant purchase. If you are a stakeholder in a sales or customer success organization, you’ve seen this firsthand. With all the hyper-focus on value selling, companies should be winning all the time, right? For most companies, the answer is a resounding no.
According to Forrester Consulting, only 10% of buyers report sales reps are value-focused, with most still using an ineffective sales pitch. A poor sales strategy can impact new business and drastically affect your ability to retain customers.
So if the data proves value selling is how buyers want to buy and how high-growth companies want to sell, why is it only happening 10% of the time? Where is the disconnect?
Value selling disconnection in an organization usually comes from two sources: 1.) the lack of evaluating your value maturity — where you are now and what can help you reach new levels of value maturity and 2.) the lack of a value enablement program that encompasses the entire buyer journey through value marketing, value selling, and value realization.
Evaluate your value selling maturity
To set a baseline for where your value selling program is today and establish organizational goals to reach value selling maturity, begin by evaluating the maturity of your value selling model.
The Value Selling Maturity Model consists of 5 successive stages:
- No value-based selling model; selling based on product features/functions
- Spreadsheets that may be centralized or decentralized and managed by a value engineer or finance. Not scalable, difficult to manage, and typically used to calculate ROI, TCO, etc.
- Interactive, software-based value solution
- Value tied to insights/analytics to inform the business
- Holistic value enablement program that is integrated with critical business systems, has support and buy-in from across the organization, with world-class commercial adoption
What if my organization still hasn’t adopted a value selling approach?
Don’t panic! Congratulate yourself for recognizing that the need exists for your organization to transition away from selling based on product features and functions and start leveraging outcome-based value conversations that encompass value marketing, value selling, and value realization.
Spreadsheets abound…
Many companies have utilized spreadsheets for years to create calculations to support value conversations. Unfortunately, spreadsheets are not the most effective or efficient way to communicate your value story. Spreadsheets present many challenges, including but not limited to low adoption, the high cost of development and maintenance, the inability to scale or integrate, and a lack of control, analytics, and governance.
Read more in our guide ‘Why spreadsheets don’t work’ here.
Interactive, software-based value solutions; what should I look for?
To solve the challenges associated with using spreadsheets for value selling and enablement, transition to an interactive, software-based value solution, with SaaS-based value solutions being the most popular.
While there are many talented people in this world who love spreadsheets and talking about ‘all things financially complex,’ the truth is that most people (especially most salespeople) would rather have bamboo shoots driven under their fingernails than participate in a complex financial modeling process that is too often the precursor to value selling discussions.
Value Engineers are a critical resource in the value selling motion; however, even in small organizations, scaling your value engineering resources to support all sales teams can stretch them to their limit.
To ease this pain, ensure your value software platform optimally supports your company’s value selling motion. Any solution you select should include:
- An intuitive UI – Providing an intuitive and streamlined way to surface the elements of value selling. Discovery questions, complex financial calculations, and output reports should be presented in a client-facing way that customers, sales, and customer success teams easily understand. That is crucial to commercial adoption and a great prospect/customer experience.
- Self-service capabilities – We all prefer to be self-sufficient and not wait for another company to do what we need to get done.
- Storytelling – There is more to a value solution than an online calculator. There is no ‘one size fits all’ value selling motion. Value-based conversations should be consultative/prescriptive and avoid pitching products. You need to develop a challenge-based narrative that demonstrates understanding of the buyer’s problem and communicates how the solution solves it — your organizational value story and your value-based software needs to support the value selling motion.
- Governance – The value platform should support the robust complexity value engineers need while allowing internal and external stakeholders to create and edit the value business case to meet their unique value selling motion — without compromising value solution integrity.
- Current workflow fit – You need the ability to embed value solutions into existing workflows to enhance company user adoption — for instance, integrating with the company’s marketing automation, CRM, and customer success platforms.
- Scalability – You value solution needs to meet you where you are on your value journey and grow with your needs for value marketing, value selling, and value realization.
- Flexibility – Ensure your value solution integrates with your existing investments, including marketing automation, CRM and customer success tools, can offer insights & analytics, and provides capabilities for future tech stack integration.
I have a great software-based value platform. Now what?
First, please avoid the lure of the complacency of only using your interactive, software-based value solution as an online ROI calculator.
Does your value tool support your sales enablement activities by highlighting appropriate discovery questions by use case, persona, or industry? Can you dynamically qualify and surface challenges, products/solutions, embedded content (or URLs), and value drivers based on previous inputs or selections?
If so, take advantage of these capabilities to surface intuitive (and robust) calculations and effectively craft the Value Journey for buyers and sellers through value marketing, value selling, or value realization. That will help you support internal stakeholders and differentiate your offerings to buyers.
Build on what you have. To get more out of your software-based value platform, use the analytics and actionable insights provided. Can you gather value tool utilization among individuals and teams, track usage by industry, persona/role, use case, etc. to identify how well your value selling motion aligns with your business goals?
What does the pinnacle of Value Selling Maturity look like?
- You have implemented a holistic and scalable value enablement program across your organization that has the support of your executive leadership team and has achieved world-class commercial adoption.
- Your sellers can communicate your value story in an engaging, interactive way.
- There is an established ‘silver thread’ of consistent, value-based communication across value marketing, value selling, and value realization motions.
- You deployed individual value tools to help your customers make decisions based on where they find the most value.
- Your value solution is scalable and provides a top-notch user experience with pertinent value analyses, including credible results that are easy to use, intuitive, and don’t require a degree in statistics to explain.
- Actionable insights & analytics are actively utilized in a continuous improvement cycle to identify gaps, inform the value enablement program, and execute strategies to improve overall business outcomes.
- Your value solution integrates with existing marketing, sales and customer success tools.
- You have optimized your tech stack by linking your ‘silver thread’ of value with other marketing, sales, and customer success activities (such as account based marketing, team coaching, etc.).
- You are providing feedback to your organization and leveraging best practices and lessons learned.
Ready to get started? Download our free value selling checklist to boost your win rate in 6 easy steps or contact us to speak to a value expert.
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