How to unlock hidden reasons customers buy to help boost growth

What happens when you watch 2500 salespeople calling on customers and you’ve also had 2000 salespeople call on you as a decision maker? You notice things even the best trained salespeople miss that could have turned some lost sales and no decisions into a win.

With some customers, even top producers miss opportunities because of something deeper going on inside the customer.

It's not about their training. It's not about all that is widely known in the sales profession. It is simply to say that there are things the current research based methods don’t fully address.

All that we know is not all there is to know

The current sales processes and methods when fully applied by a highly motivated salesperson will produce high sales volume. But some sales are still lost that could have been closed. There’s actually more deals to be made, more wins to put on the board, and higher growth rates possible.

As a decision maker, I was aware of things that affected my choice even outstanding salespeople didn’t address. These same issues were clear when observing salespeople converse with prospects.

If salespeople could better read the customer's mind, they could find ways to get more customers to buy at profitable prices.

Well, not really read their minds. Get customers to share more information than they currently do. Information that can often tip the scale between closing and not closing a sale.

There had to be a way to explain what actually happens inside the customer’s mind hidden from view that could help even top salespeople close more sales. And, of course, help everyone else on the sales team. And, it turns out there is.

Stealth Value

The real reason customers decide to buy or not buy comes down to their perceptions of value. But what value actually means to a customer is bigger and more complex than how most sales professionals understand value.

Value is the total worth the customer sees in your offer. All the knowledge they have and how they think and feel goes into the value a customer assigns to your offer.

• Value is not just about the features and benefits of your offer compared to the price.
• Nor is value only shaped by the prospect’s compelling needs, wants and fears.

Value lies deeper down inside the customer's mind than all of this.

Stealth Value is all the things that affect the customer’s perceptions of value which go beyond only looking at their needs, wants and fears and your features and benefits

How the customer arrives at their perceptions of value turns out to be different than what was commonly believed. Below the customers needs, wants and fears, there is deeper area where value is figured out and assigned.

When a salesperson understands Stealth Value, they expand what they seek to discover. And that additional information allows them to identify more that will affect whether the customer buys and what price they are willing to pay.

Common myths about customer value

To understand how the customer's perceptions of value work, first you have to clear out some common myths about value.

• Value is not a comparison between what you offer and your price. It’s not a comparison at all. The customer does not need to know your price to assign a value to your offer.
• You can’t sell value to a customer because that’s like telling them the value they see is wrong. This usually backfires though customers won’t tell you.
• Value is not what your accounting department says your offer is worth. That means less than zero to a customer.
• Value isn’t calculated by the customer adding up your features and benefits. That’s just one part of what goes into the customer’s value formula. And it could be a smaller part than you realize.

Only the customer can define what value means to them.

The customer runs their own calculations to figure out the value they assign to your offer. That means the only way to increase value is by sharing new information with them and influencing them to re-run their calculation. But salespeople can only do that if they know what to look for.

How customers calculate their perceptions of value

Yes, there is a formula the customer runs to figure out the value they assign to your offer. They can also use this to assign a value to your company, your salesperson, and anything else that comes to mind.

Customers actually create many different values.

They might assign a separate value to each of their needs, wants and fears and each of your benefits. Add to that their priorities and what's more and less important to them in handling their total job responsibilities.

Then assign a value to what’s motivating them right now or each buying trigger. Next, they throw in how your features and benefits align with all this. Finally, they will mix in the credibility and trust they see in the salesperson and the company. They take all the information they have and all the values they’ve created, roll them up and assign a total value.

What is important and unimportant to the customer results in the value they assign. If you’ve made everything visible to the customer, then you are left with how important or unimportant all of this is to them.

How customers rank importance often trips salespeople up.

And it’s also one of the easiest to fix! But salespeople have to know about importance and know how to raise it. That means they have to know what to look for beyond what they currently look for.

Consider what can happen with pain points and benefits.

The customer shares real pain points but the overall issue isn't that important. Salespeople too often assume when this is done, the customer is willing to buy and ready to hear what they have to offer.

Sometimes customers admit pain points but that issue is not all that important compared to other things they have to address in their job. Literally, things which have zero to do with the issue your company addresses might be much more important to the customer. So how much money, time and effort will the customer be willing to allocate to this issue?

In some cases, salespeople present benefits that are well received by the customer. They are benefits and do address the customer’s needs, wants and fears. The customer even acknowledges they are beneficial.

But the customer may not rank them high in importance compared to everything else going on in their world. Just because your company thinks your benefits are the greatest thing since the invention of peanut butter doesn't mean the customer sees them that way.

That means your benefits aren’t doing the heavy lifting that will help close the sale and raise your margins.

Put simply, the customer sees the pain points and benefits but ends up assigning a value to your offer that’s too low.

This is not due to a lack of benefits or how well you connected them to their needs, wants and fears. Don’t assume a benefit is always important to the customer just because it’s a benefit. The same goes for their needs, wants, and fears or their pain points, challenges and goals.

Value is all about what’s important and unimportant to the customer. And that involves understanding their overall priorities which can go far beyond the issue your company addresses.

Value accounts for everything going on with the decision maker and influencers jobs as well as their entire organization. It's never only about the specific issue your offer addresses. Ever.

This discovery shows that salespeople need to learn how customers will rank the importance of everything then figure out a strategy to raise the importance of what's ranked low. That means salespeople need to understand much more than their product and service and the specific issues it addresses.

Salespeople need to think like their customers think so they can uncover all the stealth value and use it to win the deal.

Stealth Value can boost sales by 20%

Because so much goes into a customer’s perceptions of value, there are parts of what contributed to the value they assigned that can remain hidden. Even when a top salesperson uses the best discovery methods, they sometimes won’t pick these issues up.

That’s why it’s called Stealth Value. It’s the part of the customers value calculation that was never uncovered during discovery. It can even remain hidden in the information a salesperson does gather. They heard the words but didn’t pick up the full meaning.

With salespeople who exceed their forecast, it happens less than 10% of the time. But it still happens. For the rest of a sales team who don’t make their forecast often enough, this percentage can be much higher.

Bain & Company identified 40 values B2B customers might consider important depending on the specific product or service offered. Companies whose offer is ranked high on eight or more of these values produce significantly higher revenue.

Salespeople are not aware of many of these values. While Bain & Company conducted this research to help companies improve what they offer, the existence of these 40 values proves that there is more going on inside the customer's mind than existing sales training and books cover. Much more. This research compliments and supports the discoveries about the customer's perceptions of value shared in this article.

When salespeople learn about stealth value and how customers figure out their perceptions of value, it gives them a new way to think about why customer’s do and don’t buy. This new framework helps salespeople find the Stealth Value and close more sales.

When you understand the full meaning of customer value, it expands how you see the customer and makes you aware of deeper issues that need to be explored. It expands the lens through which you gather information and how you interpret it.

Stealth Value improves how you use information to make better decisions about what you do next to move the sale forward.

Stealth value improves sales performance in the following ways

• Better Sales Strategies Develop better strategies to lead more customers to buy.
• More Information Gather more information that holds the key to closing the sale.
• More Accurate Interpretation More accurately interpret what customers say and use this to move the sale forward.
• Higher Profit Margins Raise profit margins by raising the customer’s perceptions of value.
• Edge out the competition more often Find more insights to gain a competitive edge

When salespeople understand the customer's perceptions of value, it's as if they can actually read the customers mind.

Some sales teams who’ve applied Stealth Value have boosted their sales by over 20%. It turns some lost sales and no decisions into wins for your better performers. And for the rest of the sales team, it can produce double digit growth.

First in a series of articles on Customer Value

This is the first in a series of articles about customer value based on observations and analysis Don Shapiro collected over the last 30 years. Each article will clarify more about the customers perceptions of value and how to find Stealth Value.

Don is currently writing the book Stealth Value and studying more about how this framework boost sales. This includes comparing the results of sales teams and salespeople who’ve been exposed to Stealth Value against those who haven’t.

Comparing sales teams who apply Stealth Value to those who don't can help us learn more about what can boost our win rates and conversion rates so more salespeople close more sales at higher margins more often.

If you’d like your sales team to boost their sales by learning about Stealth Value, please schedule a phone call with Don at [email protected] to answer your questions and explore the possibilities. 

More Reading on Culture, Strategy, Leadership and Teamwork

7 Keys to Successful Teamwork

11 Questions to Learn How Effective a Leader You Are

Culture Supports Strategy, Strategy Follows Culture

How to Create a Winning Sales Team Culture

What Is a Leader and What Is Leadership?

Leaders Hire Potential, Managers Hire the Past

Is There Such A Thing As A Bad Leader?

The Five Myths of Leadership

We Become Great Leaders by Working for Great Leaders