Written by Sean McPheat | 
Navigating the world of value-based sales conversations is transforming the way deals are sealed.
In an era where customers are more informed and discerning, the essence of a conversation can make or break a sale. It’s no longer just about the product or service, it’s about the value it brings to the table. And innovative sales training programmes have started placing significant emphasis on this approach, acknowledging its potency.
Join us as we explore the nuances of these conversations, revealing how embedding value can revolutionise your sales approach, resulting in increased successes and enriched customer connections.
Let’s compare value-based selling to other traditional approaches, such as benefit-based or feature-based selling.
Value-based selling is more psychologically profound than merely running through a list of product specs. It touches upon an emotional need, whether positive or negative, which makes this approach more potent. But does it demonstrate real-world gains?
Here’s what some experts have to say on the topic:
“[the sales] conversation is not about the product or service you are selling, but instead is a discussion built on questions that uncover your prospect’s point of view around the business issue and how this impacts their position and their company’s results.”
– Julie Thomas, Forbes.
“Strip away all the nuanced strategy and tech, and sales remains simple: Identify a need and show how your product or solution meets that need while delivering positive economic impact. That’s the heart of value selling.”
– Richard Harris, Salesforce.
“With value-based selling, sales reps can amplify dissatisfaction with the current situation and highlight the benefits of taking action. Prospects are given a powerful vision of a positive future made possible by using your solution.”
– Ryan Chute, Wizard of Sales.
“Customers relate to brands and the values [they] stand for more than the tangible aspects of a product.”
– Richard Branson, Virgin Founder.
Given the popularity of value-based selling with reps and clients alike, it’s no wonder that, according to Value Selling Associates Inc, 87% of high-growth companies now adopt this strategy as standard practice.
Clearly, it works. Now let’s find out why.
A value-driven approach transcends the mere transactional nature of sales, focusing more on understanding the customers’ needs and delivering solutions that resonate with their requirements and desires.
This may seem like a commhttps://www.mtdsalestraining.com/mtdblog/how-to-develop-a-sales-strategy.htmlonsense sales strategy, but it can be surprisingly easy to lose sight of, when you’re following a script and describing the amazing virtues of your product.
In traditional feature or benefit-based selling, you believe you have a great product and can convince your buyer that they want it. But really, you are starting in the wrong place.
By beginning with the buyer and what they want and need, you’re already able to determine if and how it’s worth having the sales conversation at all. If your product does match what the buyer is looking for, you can then focus on the aspects of your offering that align with those hopes and expectations.
Plus, and more importantly, by delving into the needs and wants of your customer, you can make the transaction an emotionally resonant one, and grab your buyer’s attention in a meaningful way.
By connecting deeply with customers and providing offerings that enhance their lives or businesses, value-driven sales conversations help you develop stronger, more lasting relationships.
To summarise, here are the advantages of adopting a value-based approach to selling:
Traditional sales approaches often focus on the features and benefits of a product or service. These are easy to prepare in advance, and relatively simple for new sales reps to learn and absorb. This probably accounts for why features and benefits have traditionally been the starting point for sales conversations.
Value-driven sales engage customers by linking the product or service directly to their objectives, pains, and goals, ensuring that the offerings are positioned as essential solutions rather than just another purchase.
This necessitates a lot more preparation and foreknowledge of a customer’s needs, wants and personality. Prior to the rise of data analytics, it was very difficult to obtain this information before each sales encounter. However, with sentiment analysis, business intelligence, and more intricate market research, it becomes possible to identify the values that typical customers share and prepare in advance for such encounters.
With detailed and high-performance CRM platforms like HubSpot and Salesforce, it’s now possible to dig deeper into individual customer pain points and thereby enter a prepared sales conversation. In other words, technology enables sales reps to do their homework as never before.
All this technology-driven insight makes value-driven selling much more feasible. Of course, the best way to find out what a customer really wants is to ask them, provided you’re likely to get an honest and open response.
In the next section, we’ll look at some ways to shape a value-based sales conversation and get customers and clients to open up.
There are key skills involved in shaping a value-based sales conversation that is primed for success. Let’s look at a few important ones.
Effective sales conversations revolve around stories that encapsulate and reiterate the value propositions of a product. In other words, they identify what emotional need the customer is trying to satisfy and show how the product can fulfil that need.
To make this work, it’s important to get specific. Ask for an example of what the customer would like to achieve. Let’s imagine you’re selling a piece of B2B software that generates effective email marketing campaigns and maintains a mailing list.
You might ask an open question like “what would you ideally like to achieve?”
The client might respond a little like this:
I want to take the hard graft out of maintaining my mailing list. I just don’t have the hours in the day to keep track of all my conversations. But I also want to make sure my leads don’t feel neglected and that I respond to them in good time.
We’ve highlighted the phrases in this speech that reveal the underlying values that the client holds dear:
Hard graft / don’t have the hours in the day: The client values a less time-pressured and stressful environment.
Leads don’t feel neglected: the client also values their reputation for responsiveness.
Your sales rep might respond by explaining how the product frees up time and maintains relationships so that all customers feel valued and responded to in good time. They might demonstrate how the software takes the stress out of customer service.
In this way, your rep has identified pain points and values the customer holds dear and has explained how the product provides the answer by addressing those deep needs. They can tell a story, perhaps imagining a typical day in the life of the customer using this new software. A day that is more relaxing and more efficient.
A well-crafted narrative can connect with customers on an emotional level, making the value proposition more relatable and compelling.
An essential sales conversation technique involves active listening, where the salesperson pays close attention to the customer’s needs and responses. This facilitates a more tailored and resonant type of communication, crucial for exploring value in sales conversations.
You can demonstrate active listening by repeating, in different words, important facets of a customer’s deep desires or needs.
Example:
Customer: We want a house that our family can grow into, where there’s room for development and we’re never going to feel cramped or compromised.
Real Estate Agent: So, you’re looking for a home that will feel just as comfortable as the kids grow up, and nobody will feel short of space. A forever home, really.
This response shows that you’ve listened and identified the most emotionally resonant values in the customer’s mind – the comfort of a family home, and the longevity of that comfort.
Another good response is to ask specific, targeted discovery questions that dig further into what the customer is saying.
In the above example, the sales rep might for instance ask if the customer wants a large garden for kids to play in, or whether the kitchen or living room might be the centre of family life.
Both strategies show that you’ve been actively listening and allow you to pick up on important values that, hopefully, your product or service will demonstrate.
Meeting objections with a clear demonstration of value helps to alleviate customer concerns and uncertainties, bolstering their confidence in the product or service.
For instance, if your home buyers weren’t sure if the house on offer would suit a growing family, you might explore the strong potential for extension, and you might stress how the neighbouring parkland is protected from development, ensuring a safe neighbourhood in which to raise a family.
In this way, you keep returning to the key value proposition: that this house is a viable home for a growing family, one that provides comfort and security.
Differentiation in sales conversation involves highlighting unique value propositions (UVPs) that set the product or service apart from competitors, ensuring that it stands out as a superior choice.
For example, if your B2B offering provides unlimited upgrades for a single annual payment, then the values you’ll stress are affordability and peace of mind. You can show how your product uniquely supplies these values by providing an ongoing service for a price that won’t change.
If you can identify values that your product or service uniquely addresses, then these aspects will form the backbone of your UVP.
Using customer feedback to refine and enhance the value proposition ensures that the offerings remain aligned with changing needs and expectations. Doing so reinforces the fact that you are customer focused and listen to helpful suggestions for improvement.
Such suggestions also inevitably result in a product or service that is better aligned to real world customer needs. This approach enables sustained relevance and appeal.
There are many ways to secure such feedback. You can incorporate automated response forms or instant polls into a B2B product or analyse customer support calls to draw out themes for improvement.
Even if clients don’t have helpful feedback, the simple act of asking lets them know that you’re actively interested in what they need and value.
Here are half a dozen simple methods for strengthening your value-based sales technique:
Highlighting actionable benefits that customers will experience emphasises the product or service’s practical value and applicability to their situation.
Example: We surveyed our users recently. Using the software, you’ll save, on average, forty minutes each day to concentrate on something more fulfilling.
Customising the sales conversation according to the specific needs, preferences, and pain points of each client creates a more personalised and resonant kind of communication.
Example: You’ve told me that customer feedback is as vital to your business as performance metrics. This platform actively incentivises customers to give feedback and rewards them for doing so.
Ensuring that the sales conversation and value propositions are in sync with the client’s broader objectives helps to create a more harmonious and convincing sales pitch.
Example: You’ve got an ambition to double your customer base within 18 months. You need a CRM that can cope with that sort of volume and expansion. Fortunately, scalability is the number one benefit of our platform. That’s exactly what we built it for.
Showcasing the flexibility and adaptability of the product or service underscores its capability to evolve with the customer’s changing circumstances. Make sure you don’t sound like you’re making 180° flips simply to satisfy a customer objection, however.
Example: We use a white label approach, so your clients can plug together whatever bits of your platform they find helpful. They can also brand it with their logo and use a colour scheme and design template that matches the rest of their livery. We’ll only charge you for what you incorporate in each site.
Emphasising the reliability and integrity of the product or service, as well as the organisation, fosters a stronger sense of trust and confidence among customers. It can be helpful to give an example of when you’ve gone above and beyond to build trust.
Example: I recently talked a customer out for going for the deluxe tier. It was way more than they needed. The mid-range tier had all the functionality they needed and, as a start-up, we knew they’d value the cost saving. In any case, you can easily move between tiers as your customer base grows.
Using real-world examples of customer satisfaction and success helps to substantiate the value claims made during the sales conversation. You might even be able to put your potential client in touch with satisfied customers.
Alternatively, include a decently sized set of positive testimonials on your landing page. If these can be attributed to specific individuals, so much the better.
Example: I can put you in touch with Bob Customer. We just built a fully functional ecommerce site for him, and he’s increased his online sales by eighteen percent in the first nine months.
Value-based sales conversations are integral to modern sales strategies, creating genuine connections and leading to increased customer satisfaction and sales.
When sales are about something real – security, happiness, fulfilment, ambition – they are immediately more engaging. The conversations flow more smoothly and both parties enjoy engaging.
Are you maximising your potential in this area? Utilise our Sales Assessment to pinpoint your strengths and areas for growth, ensuring you’re truly adding value in your sales interactions.
And for further skill enhancement, take a look at MTD’s Essential Selling Skills Training and Sales Management Training programs. These courses are specifically designed to enhance your sales capabilities, equipping you for more engaging, meaningful, and mutually beneficial sales conversations.
As a Sales Training Provider, we can help you develop further check out our wider range of Sales Courses that can help you.
Happy selling!
Sean
Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Sales Training
Updated on: 15 November, 2023
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