Building value selling: a differentiation
Well, here we are in almost the end of an unbelievable year for mid-market smaller businesses. Many who have made it through, with a level of survival, are looking ahead to “next normal” in 2021 to positively grow and thrive!
What will companies who “sell” business products and tech solutions or services to business clients need to 'change' to persuade their customers’ decision-making process to pick them much more a competitive buying process? The street-level meaning of insanity is “doing the same kind of things but expecting another outcome or results”!
Selling to business customers, who're smart buyers, want more value delivered from the selling organisation, communication now becoming “hybrid normal” online which will align to their issues and differentiate enough for a long term relationship to form. Finding out how to build the customer's motivation for an engagement or commitment, based on measurable, differentiated, and compelling value may be the selling professionals focus.
Customers are running their businesses for the same reasons of revenue and profit growth because the selling organisation. Working together with the customer to specify the direction from the relationship and creating a shared vision is critical. The depth of understanding the customer and his/her business is important and is the level of knowledge needed to build the conversations. This provides developing implementation and operations intends to achieve shared vision and determining the costs and price for offerings.
Here we should become fully aware of the importance of the creation or a quantifiable value proposition. Using this method with focus helps clarify and quantify the net benefit and the value of doing business together. Developing the Value Proposition, which many companies have done, is not an easy exercise, because it is more than a word smith’s exercise. An effective and compelling and differentiating Value Proposition requires cross functions, like the marketing, sales, service, operations staff to assemble and create the message, which will be or could be delivered to the markets targeted, or specific customers articulating “how” we are different to competitors of the same services or products which all look same or similar to the customer.
Once the business across functions agree it communicates “how” the main difference can be delivered to the customer, then your sales team must be competent and confident enough to know who to deliver it to during the selling process. Communicating an effective and powerful value proposition towards the levels of decision-makers, correctly validated, is powerful to building value. However, delivering a powerful and compelling message of business value to the wrong level of buyers is a waste of costly resources, and paves the way for competition.
