BCI Insights: How Do You Sell Value in a Recession?

By Joe DiDonato | Chief of Staff | Baker Communications, Inc.

One of the areas where we see a consistent weakness in sellers is when it comes to selling value.?Based on assessment data, 69% of all sellers show weakness in this skill area. Unfortunately, this weakness gets amplified during a recession when negative budget and spending changes are pervasive.?To help mitigate this weakness, this article will focus on a simple equation that your team can use to successfully improve this skill, as well as give you an example of how this can be implemented in your team's selling motion.

What’s The Value Equation?

To answer this question, let’s look at the equation which was originally put forth by Alex Hormozi in the B2C space and then modified only slightly by me to make it fit better to our B2B language:

The way this equation works is that you are trying to get as close to 1 point for each of the four bracketed areas.?The total possible is 4 points, and when you achieve that mark, you've maximized the value of your solution to your client.?

In the top, the numerator, you’re looking to increase those areas of the solution that best satisfy your customer’s desired outcomes. You’re also looking to increase the perceived (or real) likelihood of success in achieving the outcomes that the customer desires.

In the bottom part of the equation, the denominator, you’re attempting to minimize these areas.?Delays in achieving the outcomes or the amount of effort your customer must go through to achieve those outcomes are going to work against you.

An Example We Can All Relate To - Getting in Shape

As an example, let’s say that you’re trying to lose weight and achieve a certain body shape as two of your key desired goals.?You might find yourself comparing solutions that are quite different from one another.?For instance, if you are choosing between joining a gym, you might also be considering Ozempic? diet pills or CoolSculpting? as alternative solutions.?In your mind, Ozempic? sounds like a sure winner, as well as CoolSculpting?, because they both 'seem' to produce the same outcomes as a heavy gym workout schedule - without all the effort.

If you’re in the gym owner's shoes, you will need to prove that coming to your gym for 3 months and using a 3-month "Get in Shape" program that combines 1 trip to the gym 5 days a week plus a strict low-carb diet will produce the same results as the Ozempic? diet pills or CoolSculpting?. That’s going to be a tough battle because the perceived delay in achieving those goals and the amount of sacrifice and effort might seem overwhelming to an overweight and out-of-shape person.

You decide your sales pitch must focus on the lasting effects of making better choices on the numerator side of the equation. In that scenario, you decide that the bottom detractors shouldn’t sway the person to make a short-term solution that really doesn’t help them make better life choices or change their behavior. Net-net, they'll continually have to repeat the process as soon as they go back to their old patterns. But you're smart enough to know that this doesn't mean you can ignore the denominator areas of the formula.

So, in this fictional example, and considering that we’re moving into a recession, you might attack the problem like this:

1 – Desired Outcomes:

• You show some before and after pictures of your clients who went through your 3-month program.
• You introduce the potential client to 3 people who have been through the program and can speak to the results they were able to achieve.

Score 1 for proving that you can help the client achieve their desired outcomes.

2 – Likelihood of Achieving the Results:

• You show a long list of testimonials from clients who went through the program.
• You show the longer-term benefits of having changed your behavior to maintain the results.
• You show them clients who have maintained their weight and body shape (or even improved on both) after 2 years.
• You offer them a guarantee that if they follow the program – that they will achieve their desired outcomes or the 3-month gym membership is on the house. (The cost of this guarantee with the normal free month is $18 - see below. The potential gain is a perpetual gym membership worth $108/year plus other expenditures at the gym.)

Score 1 for showing the likelihood of achieving the results. You now have 2 points.

3 – How your program minimizes the delays:

• You offer to start the program that day by signing them up for the membership with no money down.
• To show you’re sensitive to the recession pressures, you mention that your gym always offers the $9/month membership free for the first month and then you ask if they’ve had a chance to find out the costs of the other solutions. (Sidebar: You know that Ozempic? costs about $1,000/month without a diabetes diagnosis, and CoolSculpting? costs about $2,000 to $4,000 per session and takes up to 16 sessions to complete. To this end, you decide to have some printed data available to give them.)

Score 1 for showing that your program minimizes the delays.?Extra kudos for pointing out your low cost for comparison purposes. You now have 3 points.

4 – How your program decreases the effort and sacrifice it takes to achieve the desired outcomes:

• This is your toughest sell, especially if money is no object to the person. But you point out that the other solutions really won’t help them change their behavior and lifestyle.?You explain that as a result, they're going to be going through this weight battle for the rest of their lives.?
• You also point out that they might find themselves repeating those more expensive solutions to weight gain and body shape - over and over.
• And finally, you point out that those alternate solutions take the same amount of time.

Score only .75 on this one.?The reason is that if the person isn't personally motivated, they can just make no decision, or decide to go the other route first and come back when they "have more energy." Total points for all 4 areas = 3.75. That's a very good value proposition.

Could you have gotten a perfect score of 4? Perhaps. But how? One way is that you could have created 'urgency' by subtly pointing out the risk factors from a health perspective if they're overweight. How you do that without embarrassing them will take some thought. It may just be some posters hanging in your office.

That’s one example that we can probably relate to readily.?But the B2C space is going to be very different from selling in the corporate world.?So, to cover the B2B world here’s one final example to show how we might approach it with a customer of ours after going through a discovery process to determine their true, desired outcomes.

An Example from Our Training World

So now that you get the idea, here’s how BCI might respond to a customer whose desired outcomes during this recession might be to:

• Increase revenue by increasing the number of sellers making quota.
• Reduce the time it takes to get reps trained to full competency.
• Focus on improving the top 4 skills their team needs in a recession: The ability to get to key decision-makers, improve consultative selling skills, improve their ability to sell value, and the need to "push back" on delay tactics by focusing on the value being brought to the table by your solution.

Now that the 'true' needs of the customer have been identified by the seller discussing the customer's preferred outcomes in more depth using a consultative selling approach, the next task is to use the value formula to create a skeleton of the points that will be focused on in the written proposal.?Using this process will also give the sales manager an opportunity to review the strategy to win this account and give input.

Let's begin with the numerator of the value equation:

1 - How to increase the desired outcomes – you decide that the proposal will highlight these areas and associated findings:

• Increase revenue by increasing the number of sellers making quota – You have data from OMG's research that show that there is an 88% increase in the number of sellers making quota when skills are accurately assessed and acted upon in the training - so that study will be highlighted in the proposal.
• Reduce the time it takes to get sales reps to full competency – Using sales-specific assessments to find skill gaps, and then focusing on closing only those ‘exact’ skill gaps will shorten the training time and increase the selling time. ?The proposal would then focus on how the BCI technology maps skill gaps to virtual instructor-led or online training and then also uses technology to allow for anytime, anywhere access.?
• Place focus on top 4 skills required in a recession – Here the proposal would focus on how the BCI curriculum is designed around competencies in lieu of complete courses that require a seller to cover material that is already known. By highlighting the assessment results for these 4 focus skill areas, the technology will point to any individual weaknesses by job role in those 4 skill areas.

The sales manager suggests that to illustrate these last 2 points, the proposal should include this graphic and a short narrative to explain how focusing only on the exact skill gaps required, and the ability to deliver those with virtual classrooms and online technology would work:

The sales manager added the need for the graphic in the proposal and then scored this as appropriately focused on the customer’s desired outcomes giving it a 1, with 3 more points to go.

2 - Next in the formula is showing how the proposed solution will increase the likelihood of achieving the customer’s goals.?To do that it's decided that the proposal should focus on these elements of the proposed solution:

• The fact that assessment data & technology are used instead of 'opinion' to more accurately find strengths and weaknesses.
• The fact that technology is used to map skill gaps to specific training and coaching to create a personalized training and coaching program.
• The fact that this solution will use a Sales Play to change behavior by taking the knowledge learned in the classes and workshops and immediately turning that knowledge into wisdom and changed behavior in real field exercises.

The sales manager added the Sales Play to the items the proposal should cover in order to achieve a better customer outcome. (Sidebar: The notion behind this immersive training is that you can only learn so much in the classroom. To truly assimilate the information, you actually have to use it in your actual work environment.)?

The sales manager's score for this second element at the top of the formula is now a 1, with 2 more points to go before the proposal can be built.

3 - Next the proposal must show how any delays in achieving the outcomes will be decreased by focusing on these elements.?To do that, you decide to highlight these key points:

• By mapping training to specific weaknesses, and only covering those topics using technology, the time to full proficiency is greatly reduced.
• By accurately defining strengths and weaknesses with technology, there's no time wasted teaching topics that sellers already know.
• By immediately executing on a Sales Play with the client, their ability to accelerate and improve revenue gains is more immediate and the customer achieves the outcomes desired.

Besides the better customer outcome, the other reason that the sales manager added the Sales Play element was to show that the revenue gained from that sales play will be much greater than the cost of the training.? During a recession, this helps solidify that this particular training solution is being designed to achieve additional revenue, and therefore should be considered an investment versus a cost.

The sales manager is now ready to score this 3rd element and she gives it a 1.?We now have 3 of the 4 points needed to begin writing the full proposal.?

4 – Lastly, the proposal must show how "effort and sacrifice" are decreased in the achievement of the desired outcomes.?To do that, the proposal will focus on these items to highlight:

• The fact that proven and successful Sales Play Templates are being used to show the client how to run a successful Sales Play eliminates the work of putting the whole play together on their own and helps guarantee the projected revenue outcome.
• The use of an “I Coach, We Coach, You Coach” methodology must be explained in the proposal to show how coaching skills are transferred to the client.
• The proposal must also show the client how to create formal sales processes and sales management cadences to immediately improve performance and predictability while reducing meeting times drastically, thus adding to the reduction of effort to maintain this additional process to their selling motion.
• The proposal must also stress the use of technology to eliminate the need to manually create individual learning & coaching paths. For sales managers or sales enablement to perform these tasks manually will usually take about 2-4 hours per seller per year depending on the complexity of the product or service offering.

The sales manager added the first bullet to close the loop on the Sales Play addition and scores the overall value selling strategy a 4 out of 4.?At this point, it's time to write the final proposal, and you've now made this review a part of the sales process.?

This is one simple but effective approach that can be used to make sure your team knows the basics of selling value during a recession.?This also gives you a start on a methodology for writing proposals - and you have also dramatically improved the likelihood of the proposal getting properly considered.

Summary

Hopefully, these two examples showed you an effective approach for selling value in a recession.?It will also strengthen the sales team's overall approach to "consultative selling" by getting to the customer's truly desired outcomes as the starting point, and then working backward from there to apply your recommended solution. When you go through this method every time you prepare a proposal, the approach will create a major differentiator between you and your competitors.?By following this simple formula and other techniques that we teach in our workshops, you and your team can become more skilled in this much-needed recession competency.?

In future editions of BCI Insights, we will be focusing on how to build other critical skills used during a recession. To make sure you continue to receive these, be sure to follow us on our LinkedIn home page: Link. You can also sign up for our weekly blog post if you follow the above-embedded link to "consultative selling" and subscribe there as well.

For more information, please don’t hesitate to contact us.?We're here to help you pivot your team successfully, in these tough economic times.

?? Copyright 2022, Baker Communications, Inc.