Value selling is one of the most popular sales methodologies used by leading brands. After all, while your primary job as a salesperson is to “sell”, that doesn’t have to be your only mission. Value-based selling, or “value selling” encourages sales professionals to look beyond the conversion.
When you’re targeting high-value clients, value-based selling can help you to close more deals, and earn customer trust. By acting as a consultant and trusted advisor to buyers, showing them how certain products and services can help them achieve their goals, sales reps can accomplish more.
This customer-first approach to selling not only boosts your chances of higher revenue, but it can also strengthen your brand image, and lead to the creation of new deals.
What is Value Selling? An Introduction
Value selling, or value-based selling, is a sales process or methodology that prioritizes the needs of your specific customers or leads. The aim with the value based selling approach, is to ensure your sales team can deliver value in every interaction.
Sales reps act as trusted advisors, helping customers to find the source of their problems and pain points, and detect the right solutions for their needs. This ensures each rep can become a valuable consultant to a lead, building a relationship before they start the sales pitch.
With the value selling framework, reps listen to buyer needs and concerns, and personalize their pitches accordingly. This helps professionals highlight not just the features of a product or service, but the distinct benefits they can bring to buyers.
In some ways, value selling is similar to solution selling, as both strategies acknowledge buyers are attempting to solve a problem. However, while solution selling focuses on product features, value-added selling is all about the needs of the buyer.
Value-Based Selling Methodologies
The value sales methodology revolves around helping prospects understand how a product or service can address their problems, rather than focusing on specs and features. There are various ways sales reps can demonstrate value through sales conversations.
Generally, a strong value-based selling approach starts with researching a customer, and using open-ended questions to get to the root of a problem. From there, reps can tailor their pitch to their customer’s specific needs, sharing insights about how a product or service could:
- Save a customer money on other purchases
- Help a company to make more money
- Set a company or individual apart from the competition
- Help customers save time or eliminate frictions
- Improve the stability of the company’s bottom line
Why is Value Selling Important?
The value-focused approach to sales is extremely popular in the modern world because it delivers excellent results. According to some studies, approximately 87% of high-growth companies use value-based sales. Value-based selling is effective because it puts the customer first.
Buyers are primarily interested in what’s “in it for them” when they make a purchase. They’re less interested in what your product can do, and more interested in what it can do to serve their specific needs, or address their pain points.
What’s more, with value-based selling, salespeople can position themselves as important partners and consultants to their buyers. They bring value to sales conversations, help customers overcome problems, and earn their trust. This leads to longer-term relationships, and improved lifetime values.
Other benefits of value based selling include:
- Opportunities to close more deals: Buyers want to work with sales reps that prioritize their needs over anything else. Value-based selling helps to define long-term relationships between sellers and their customers. This can lead to opportunities for more selling opportunities in the future. Plus, it can turn customers into advocates for a brand.
- Overcoming sales objections: Objections are common in the sales landscape. However, when sellers focus on highlighting how their product or service can address a customer’s pain points or problems, it’s easier to overcome these objections. Focusing on benefits rather than features makes a sales pitch more compelling, and interesting to the buyer.
- Enhances sales cycles: The sales cycle in many industries can often be long and complicated. However, when the value selling approach is chosen, the client constantly receives the information and guidance they need to make the right choice. This can accelerate the path to purchase, and save sales professionals crucial time.
In some cases, a value-based sales strategy can also help to ensure more consistent pricing. If you can show your customers the ROI of your solution, by demonstrating the benefits it can offer, they’re less likely to ask for a deal, or try to negotiate on pricing.
Building a Value-Selling Framework
Value based selling, like most sales methodologies, requires a structured approach. Sales professionals need to approach the sale from a different perspective, positioning themselves as a valuable resource to their customer at every stage.
To get started with value-based selling, you’ll need to:
- Research buyers
Ultimately, to put buyers first, salespeople first need to understand the needs and expectations of their customers. The value-selling framework generally starts with in-depth research. Reps learn as much as they can about prospects by using market insights and online information, as well as CRM data.
They also look for ways to increase their understanding of their buyer during sales conversations. This could mean asking a number of open-ended questions during calls, to encourage buyers to reveal deeper insights about the causes of their problems or concerns.
- Understand USPs
Salespeople also need to have a deep knowledge of the products and services they can offer with the value selling approach. The more a sales rep knows about the solution they offer, the easier it is to highlight the benefits of the features you can offer.
Sales professionals should receive comprehensive training on the unique selling points of the solutions they’re offering, and what sets these solutions apart from other tools. The more USPs sellers can point out to buyers, the easier it will be to overcome objections.
- Asking questions
As mentioned above, there’s only so much sellers can learn from researching before they connect with a prospect. This means they need to learn how to ask questions that get to the heart of the buyer’s pain points. Asking open-ended questions, such as “what would the impact be if this problem wasn’t solved?” can help salespeople to tailor their approach more effectively.
The key to successfully asking questions during the value-based sales approach, is making sure your agents know how to listen to your customers, and collect valuable information.
- Taking a Consultative Approach
Great value sellers don’t position themselves as salespeople. Instead, they focus on acting as a go-to resource for buyers in their industry. They conduct research into common problems facing their customers, and share insights into potential resolutions to these issues.
Some sales reps even share testimonials, case studies, and success stories from similar buyers who have solved the problem in question in the past. By explaining how certain features work, teaching customers how to overcome issues, and answering questions honestly, salespeople build deeper relationships with their prospects. This helps to enhance the value sales approach.
- Personalizing the sale
Crucially, value-based selling requires salespeople to be personable, and committed to delivering personalized experiences for every prospect. Building rapport with a client, asking questions, and listening to their feedback is all crucial. Salespeople also need to ensure they’re being genuine, honest, and human in every sales call.
By connecting with customers on a deeper level, sales professionals will gather more of the information they need to personalize their pitch. This is crucial to the value selling approach. Sellers need to be able to show their customers their products and solutions don’t just solve problems; they address the specific pain points their customers face.
- Add value to every interaction
Finally, value is the core component of any value-based selling approach. Sales reps using this selling framework should be looking for ways to deliver constant value to their customers. This means not just answering questions and providing insights, but helping customers to overcome their problems.
Adding value to every interaction isn’t a process that stops once the deal has been closed. Sales professionals also need to continue adding value, by training new customers on how to use tools, offering onboarding support, and checking in on their success regularly.
Embracing Value Selling Techniques
Putting buyers at the heart of your sales strategy can be a valuable tactic. Not only does it improve your relationships with your target audience, but it can increase your sales and revenue too. Value selling helps to minimize objections, improve sales revenue, and increase opportunities for growth.
What’s more, with the right value selling strategy, business leaders can transform their customers into long-term advocates for their brand.
Learn more about how you can transform your sales techniques, by collaborating with the top industry professionals today. Join the Hard Skill Exchange to boost your sales skills, discover new opportunities, and enhance your sales strategies.
