Selling Economic Value is a two-day sales training program that is all about developing the skills to demonstrate in quantifiable terms how you solution can address the business results desired by the customer. Selling Economic Value involves making a clear connection between the benefits of your solution and the measurable business outcomes that matter to the customer.
During the morning of Day 1 the participants develop the awareness, understanding, and knowledge of the best practices for selling economic value. During the rest of the two days they integrate and apply those ideas in a real-world sales simulation that is customized specifically for your company.
Why is Selling Economic Value Important?
Customers don’t buy; they invest. And they invest in those things that bring them the maximum economic value. In today’s market it is difficult to sell economic value, and hence grow the business, simply by “talking about your products or services.” You must develop an in-depth understanding of the business outcomes desired by the customer and relate your solution to those outcomes in a compelling fashion. Plus you must have a shared vision of the risks the customer perceives are associated with making a decision in your favor.
What is Selling Economic Value?
This is the framework for improving the capacity of a sales team to sell economic value. The morning of Day 1 of the program explores the skills associated with each of these factors – determining solution impact, risk, and cost.
What Does the Sales Simulation Look Like?
During the rest of the two days participants integrate and apply these ideas in a real-world sales simulation that is customized specifically for your company.
The Sales Simulation focuses on the type of sales opportunity that your sales leadership determines is high priority. So, how is it designed? First, working with Sales Momentum, you determine the nature of the sales opportunity the teams will be pursuing.
With this decision made, your customized simulation is ready for crafting. The crafting process begins by identifying the type of organization on which you want the sales teams to make calls. Then you define key choice parameters that will apply to the customer, such as: the competitors and their position in the company, common objections, issues to be negotiated, and the individuals within the simulated organization on whom the sales teams must make sales calls.
During the simulation the class is divided into sales teams of four to five participants. Each team plans an initial strategy for capturing business in the simulated company. Then the teams have the opportunity to make a series of sales calls on a variety of buyers. Time elapses between calls so the teams must modify their strategy as they go through the sales cycle.
In the last event of the afternoon of Day 2 each team reviews the approach to the account – what they might have done differently in regard to sales strategy, and what could have been done differently during the sales calls. The program wrap up is a “lessons learned” session that helps the participants transfer the major learning points to the real world.
Summary
Today it is becoming increasingly difficult to win by product alone. You have to sell the total economic value of your solution. In order to do that, it is important to develop an in-depth understanding of the business outcomes the customer is attempting to achieve by investing in a solution.
Too often, the difficulty of optimizing the impact of your solution starts here. The seller has only a partial understanding of what matters to the customer. One of the main reasons for this less than comprehensive understanding is the failure to spend sufficient time quantifying the customer’s needs, interests and challenges into measurable business outcomes.
Selling Economic Value addresses this and the other challenges your sales team faces in maximizing the economic value of the solutions you present to your customers.
Take a Deeper Dive into Selling Economic Value …
Selling economic value: some drill down questions – Salespeople who position their products solely as solutions to problems increasingly will find themselves in price wars. Top performing sales people bypass price wars by converting their solutions into hard currency, be it dollars, euros, pounds, yen or … With this approach, they tie their solutions directly to their customer’s bottom line – whether it’s how much money it will save the customer or how much money the customer might make. Take a look at some questions sales people can use to think about their offering and its potential economic value to the customer.
Understanding the impact of pricing on profit – A 1% price increase – if the demand remained constant – would result on average in an 11% increase in profits. Not bad. Think how many more units those companies and yours would need to sell to achieve an 11% increase in profits at your present pricing. The overall moral of the story is – it is worthwhile to have an accurate assessment of the impact of price increases and price concessions on profit.
Making the business case: quantifying your value proposition – Quantifying your value proposition requires creating and communicating a clear, compelling picture of how your solution will drive your customer’s business results – allowing sales reps to make their business case. It requires translating the benefits of your solution into high impact, measurable outcomes that matter to the customer. When done effectively, it enables you to maximize the competitive advantages that differentiate you from your competitors. This post shares three steps to quantify your value proposition.
Selling value – it’s more important today than ever! – To grow the business in major accounts, sales people need to do more than sell product. They cannot create value for the customer and separate themselves from their competition by talking about features. They must have the ability and confidence to carry out technical and business conversations with the customer about the unique benefits they can provide. This post explores the notion of value itself – what does value mean to customers?
