Value selling is one of the most successful sales techniques that is widely used in the industry by both direct and indirect sales channels. This blog explains what value selling is and discusses the role of sales enablement platforms in helping channel partners and salespeople engage in value selling effectively.
What is value selling?
Value selling is a sales technique that attempts to convert a lead into sale by leveraging the value the product or service provides to the prospect. Value selling is a preferred sales method in the modern world because irrespective of the sales model (direct or indirect, B2B or B2C), value selling works.
Why is value selling effective?
Value selling is a very effective sales technique. Ultimately, the question every buyer asks is–how is it going to benefit me? What is it going to do to me? And, value-based sales process answers these questions, helping the prospect make a purchase decision in the favor of the buyer. This makes value selling a very powerful sales methodology.
What is unique about value selling?
The thing about value selling is that it is more personal than all other sales methods. This is because the value each prospect persona derives from the product or service may differ. For example, let’s consider a simple, email marketing tool–one that automates email campaigns. For a marketing executive, the email marketing tool is going to make their job easier and save them time. For the marketing manager, they get better visibility into their email campaigns and its performance. For the CMO, it improves overall marketing effectiveness. See how the benefits differ from persona to persona? So, when using a value-based sales approach at the time of selling the email marketing tool, the sales person has to tweak their messaging to convey the benefit it offers to the prospect persona they are pitching to. Every prospect asks, “What’s in it for me?” and value-based selling aims to answer that question for each and every prospect persona.
How sales enablement tools can help salespeople and channel partners engage in effective value selling?
Sales enablement tools make value selling easy by-
- Bringing a high level of personalization to sales and marketing conversations
Sales and marketing enablement platforms touch the core element of value-based selling–personalization. By offering a high degree of personalization, marketing and sales enablement platforms help salespeople and channel partners engage in value-based selling better. They get access to personalized, localized sales collateral such as sales presentations, proposals and other sales documents and often, the platforms automatically personalize personalize every bit of their marketing/sales communication with prospects. Sales presentations (PPTs), emails, sales brochures and even web marketing materials like landing pages and websites can be customized to add a personal touch for each prospect.
- Helping salespeople and channel partners adopt the right messaging depending on the position of the prospect in the sales cycle and their persona
Marketing and sales enablement platforms often have tools to help salespeople and channel partners pick the right sales messages for their prospects. They basically recommend the marketing/sales asset that the salespeople can use when reaching out to each prospect. This asset recommendation may be made based on the the prospect persona and their position in the buyer’s journey or sales cycle.
Another way in which marketing and sales enablement platforms assist salespeople and channel partners to engage effectively in value selling is through sales playbooks. Sales playbooks contain a series of “plays” or sales scenarios with a complete, proven sales process created for each of those scenarios. The salesperson or channel partner can pick one of the plays, depending on the prospect persona and just follow the path indicated in the sales playbook. Advanced sales enablement platforms deploy AI to recommend the right play for each prospect. These sales playbooks are equipped with sales assets such as sales emails, follow up emails, prospecting messaging, voice mail and call scripts. By offering a proven, well-guided sales strategy for each prospect persona, sales enablement platforms enable value selling effectively.
- Providing a 360-degree view of the prospects to everyone involved in value-based marketing and selling
Sales enablement platforms allow salespeople and partners to gain a deeper understanding of their prospects and consequently personalize their sales and marketing communication to appeal to them. Not just sales, sales enablement platforms provide the entire business an in-depth understanding of its prospects and their interaction with the business and then analyzes the data and uses that information intelligently to allow a high level of personalized marketing and sales, which is the core of value-based selling.
At the organizational level, sales enablement platforms also offer feedback on the effectiveness of sales and marketing messaging, allowing vendors to tweak their sales and marketing messaging for improved performance
Value-based selling can be very complex because it relies completely on the ability to make the prospects see value in the company’s offering. It builds on the perceived value that a human being has for a product or service and creating or changing an existing value perception can be very challenging. However, with sales enablement tools, value-based selling becomes the easiest way to close leads!
