Does Your Sales Strategy Message Convey Value

Get Beyond the Platitudes and Develop Compelling Messages That Highlight Your Differential Value

More than ever before, companies are focusing on value. (Examples Below )

And, they’re employing a variety of methods to zero-in on all of the various ways their offerings provide value. Some of these methods are quite complex, involving dozens of process steps and requiring weeks of concerted effort. Others are relatively simple.

But no matter what method is used to understand value, it does little good unless you can communicate that value effectively. Whether you’ve gone through seven steps or 37 steps, all that really matters in the end is what the prospect believes.

And this is where things tend to fall apart.

Companies often struggle to convey their value in clear and compelling ways.

They throw-out meaningless platitudes, buzzwords, and corporate-speak—and then wonder why prospects either don’t recognise the value they provide, or just don’t believe it.

Companies talk about their offerings in a vacuum—and then scratch their heads when prospects view competitive offerings as being equivalent.

So, how do you get prospects to recognise, understand, and believe the value of your offerings?

How do you get them to view your offerings as being different and better than the alternatives?

Three Ingredients of Strategic Messages

At the most basic level, a strategic value message simply answers the following question for a prospect:

“How does your offering deliver something I need or value, better than the alternatives?”

As an answer to this question, a strategic value message will always have three main ingredients: 1) your prospects, 2) your offerings, and 3) the alternatives.

The importance of the third ingredient—speaking to the alternatives—cannot be emphasized enough. S

imply put, if the alternatives aren’t being addressed and positioned in your messaging, then that messaging is not strategic. And as a result, it’s leaving far too much to chance.

You see, prospects just don’t do a very good job of recognising differential value or critically-evaluating the alternatives when left to their own devices. They usually don’t understand the products well enough to do it effectively. Nor do they have the time or inclination to put much effort or energy into learning what they need to know.

So, don’t risk it.

Don’t let prospects do those comparisons and evaluations on their own.

Use your value-communications as an opportunity to expose the critical differences, downsides, and risks associated with the alternatives.

Overcome the natural tendency to just talk about your own offerings, and always strive to teach prospects how our offerings meet their needsbetter than the alternatives.

True Understanding Is a Prerequisite

Of course, in order to communicate how your offerings deliver value better than the alternatives, you have to know two things:

1. You have to know what your prospects really need and what they actually value when it comes to what you offer, and…

2. You need to know how your offerings really compare to the alternatives when it comes to delivering what prospects need and value.

Seems obvious, right?

But you’d be surprised how many companies attempt to craft strategic value messages based on guesses and assumptions, rather than true understanding. And then they’re shocked when those messages miss the mark and they end-up looking like they don’t know the space.

So, don’t make this mistake.

If you haven’t done the marketing research to understand what prospects really need and value, get started. It’s not that difficult and it can make a big difference.

Then, once you’ve completed your research and you’ve developed a solid understanding of what your prospects value, it’s time to conduct some competitive analysis. This type of analysis is about looking at the alternatives through the lens of what you’ve learned in your marketing research.

In other words, your competitive analysis is focused entirely on how—and how well—the alternatives satisfy the needs and values of the prospects.

Using Loss Avoidance and Risk Mitigation

When crafting your value messages, be mindful of the fact that downside/loss positioning can be more compelling and effective than upside/gain positioning.

As marketers, we’re in the habit of highlighting the upside benefits, showcasing the upside gains that can be achieved, and so on. We tend to focus on the positives, or the “plusses.” That’s important, to be sure.

But there’s a little-known aspect of human behavior you can tap into to make your communications even more effective.

Human beings are biologically wired for survival. As such, the human brain has evolved to put more emphasis and importance on “avoiding pain” relative to “achieving gain”.

Studies have shown that buyers will often perceive a downside benefit to be bigger or more important than an upside benefit, even when the outcome may be exactly the same.

In other words, buyers will see a benefit positioned as helping them to “avoid a $10K loss” as being bigger and more important than that same benefit positioned as helping them to “achieve a $10K gain”. Of course, the net-result is exactly the same—but it’s perceived very differently.

As your prospects are all presumably human, these dynamics of human perception can’t help but play a role in their purchasing decisions.

So look for ways to position your benefits in terms of risk mitigation or loss avoidance. And most definitely, look for any and all opportunities to highlight and magnify the downside risks or increased costs associated with the competitive alternatives your prospects are considering.

Getting Started with Simple Structures

The basic structure of a strategic value message is pretty straightforward. Again, you’re simply answering the question about how your offering delivers—more effectively than the alternatives—something of value to the prospect. Depending on the situation, this may take a sentence, or it may take a couple of paragraphs.

But whatever the length, the message should be somewhat educational in nature and should avoid platitudes, corporate-speak, and internal jargon.

And while you always, always, always want to speak to the alternatives, it’s not necessary to actually call-out your competitors by name—although it is acceptable and appropriate under certain circumstances. You do, however, want to get into the habit of using comparative phrasing, referring to “competing solutions” and “other solutions on the market” in a general sense (even though you may really be talking about a specific competitor).

Here are some examples to illustrate the basic structure:

• When selecting a widget stamper, floor space is an important consideration. With a footprint that is 30% smaller than any other stamper on the market, our Widget Stamper Mini? can save you over $97,000 per year in facilities costs alone.
• We’ve been doing this for over 30 years and we understand all the little ‘gotchas’ that are unique to this industry. So, while many of our competitors are still learning the ropes, we’ve pretty much seen it all and can help you avoid costly mistakes.
• “We know how expensive downtime can really be. It’s not just about the lost production—you also have to think about the negative effects on long-term customer relationships. We’re unique because while everyone else is talking about 72-hour turnarounds on replacement parts, we believe that the stakes are too high for that. Our replacement parts inventory is fully-stocked at all times and we guarantee next-day delivery.
• As you’re probably aware, the standard strategy in our industry is to sell the equipment cheap and try to make it up on the supplies. Well, we don’t do that. In fact, we can’t do that. You see, ours is the only equipment on the market that is designed to use standard, non-proprietary supplies. We’re in the equipment business. Our competitors are in the supplies business. And not knowing that little detail could cost you an additional $38,000 in just the first year.
• When preparing a facility for the zombie apocalypse, it’s important to consider the height of your security fence. After all, recent studies by the CDC show that a single intrusion could cost you more than a $1M in healthcare expenses and workforce attrition. While other solutions on the market are 10′ tall—just tall enough to deter an average zombie with limited agility—our Zombie Shield? fencing solution has an additional two feet of razor wire and is designed to repel even the most determined flesh-eater.

As you can see, the structure is very straightforward. While each is expressed in very different ways, every message has the same basic elements and answers the key question, “How does your offering deliver something I need or value, better than the alternatives?”

Our mission here at the Predictable Success is to research and disseminate leading-edge practices and innovations in sales operations.

Predictable Success accesses a community in which we bring together B2B sales professionals to help navigate a rapidly changing world by sharpening sales skills, enhancing?strategies and practices and providing a system for personal and professional growth so that sales people can make more money, be more respected,?be more recognized, and more influential.

So we’re always learning about different approaches, new technologies, changes in focus and priorities, what’s working well right now, what’s not panning out anymore, and so on.

Other people can teach you to sell.?We enable you to sell better!

These processes have worked with many of my clients for years and this systematic and disciplined approach has been a critical component to their success

The GOAL of every high-performance sales team should be to…… Proactively create the conditions where more deals, that are more profitable, with better customers, are the natural result.

This is achieved by engineering the overall sales process such that it reliably generates the desired outcomes as a matter of course.

?Predictable Success can examine your sales processes and deliver an accurate road-map after determining where you’re on track and where you need a course correction and can provide a cost/benefit analysis and expert recommendations to improve your sales performance on every level.