The True Cost Of Delivering Value

It's so incredibly annoying. Can we all just admit that we all hate bad news in sales?

Sales people listen up!

I’m really sorry to deliver this news to you, but you are not positioning the level of value that you think you are delivering to your prospects.

Don't worry, it's not entirely your fault. When was the last time your business ran a session on positioning value?... I'll wait.

Sales Training plan

? Cold Call

? Cold emails

? How to articulate value proposition/elevator pitches

? Discovery questions

? Negotiation & Pricing

? Closing techniques

?????? - Graduation - "go get 'em"

Ok, I'm exaggerating a little, but needless to say, the training doesn't cover everything. That is why we often struggle to get the results we need.

Most people do not have a clear understanding of what value actually means. It's as overused as the words strategic, robust and "circle back" in sales, but what does it mean in practice?

I want you to welcome the challenge of rethinking how you think and speak about value.

Salespeople and businesses assume a lot of things. In fact we assume too many things because we assume that all value is created equal. It's because - guess what - we have an ICP and we have buyer personas and customer A in the retail industry got this return, so every other customer in the retail industry that looks kind of similar is going to have the same return too. That’s not the case.

What our experience helps us to do is to create intelligent assumptions, door openers, and statements that get peoples attention because everybody likes a bit of social proof. It’s one of the main principles of persuasion made very popular by Robert Cialdini. However social proof only takes you so far. It allows a customer to feel like they are connected in someway to that statement and value proposition. But, salespeople we have jobs to do and we are put in these important positions because we are responsible for uncovering the real value that a company can get from our products and solutions.

So let me explain the distinction.

When we are talking about delivering value, it is not created equally just because Company A looks very similar to company B. There is a bit of a seesaw that exists when it comes to understanding and articulating value when we are engaging with prospects.

On one side of the Seesaw is the investment that a company needs to make. On the other side of the seesaw is the return. When these are either balanced or the return is heavier, that’s when we see true value. You may be thinking, balanced? Yes, real value can come through balance when we look at "time to value." When positioned correctly, achieving balance or breaking even, may be the first value milestone - that's for an entire different newsletter, or training (click here to discuss options ??)

On the seesaw we need to look at what constitutes an investment - specifically what do companies actually invest when they are making an acquisition of your products or services? In the image above, the investment is on the left and looks less because it's just one rock rather than 3, but there are hidden investments that we barely uncover which make the no decision the favourable option and the prize goes to the Status Quo.

I like to split investment out into a few broad categories: I call this framework - TERMs

Time

We will typically have discussions around the time it takes for a company to realise value without truly assessing the time investment. Let's spend a minute unravelling this...

• The time is takes to review the market
• The time it takes to go through the contractual procedure
• The time it takes to have internal and external meetings and project plan
• The time it takes to build and implement

Effort

The investment of mental effort. We are human beings after all which means we are biologically inclined to take the path of least resistance.

I want the easiest path to success

That is why there are so many companies out there that can put up a Google Ad and say "lose 10 pounds in 10 minutes," and they get people buying their products. Everybody wants the quick win until they get burned. The mental effort of just getting things done and going through change, and being in an uncomfortable space, is an investment.

How about structural changes? Prospects invest time in rethinking entire processes, testing out new approaches, re-design, team restructures, existing process disruption - all part of the investment to enable change. All missing from the value that you believe you can deliver.

Resources

They are also investing resources and this is often people resources. This could be external as well as internal.

• The resources required to review the project plan
• The procurement resources to assess the market
• The project teams assembled to run a needs analysis
• The list goes on....

Money (Financial)

Everyone focuses on money.

But Prospect, it's only going to "cost" you $75,000 and we're going to make you milionssssss

It’s already been found that price doesn't hold the full weight in decision making and how you establish value. But, everything rolls up into a financial cost. This goes beyond the price in the commercial agreement.

Bringing it home

Value is not just what you assume you can bring. It's not a copy paste of what you have done for other companies. That is Social Proof and evidence of your capabilities.

Value is unique to each organisation.

When you're thinking about real value and your value proposition - your promise to deliver - you can’t assume without understanding the real investment. Prospects need to feel like it's worth it - balancing out the seesaw.

As salespeople, we need to invest in understanding the true cost of change and your Prospects will appreciate you opening their eyes to the overall journey. Remember, a caveat to all of this is that it needs to be a priority too. Value is tied to economic priorities. No matter how great it may look, the seesaw will be out of balance if it's not something that the business considers important - right now. It's just not "worth it" for them.

Even though retail company A got 138% return on the investment, retail company B is different.

So what do we do with all of this knowledge? Well done for getting this far - you're a real one. We need to get better at helping Prospects walk through the true cost of change but we also need to do that in tandem with understanding what the future state looks like. Not just what it is "we want to grow by 10%" but what that 10% growth looks like in reality. How does 10% growth impact those investment variables?

TLDR: Not all value is created equally. You need to know what investment goes into getting a return.

Thinking about rebuilding your discovery frameworks?