Author: Stephan Liozu, PhD
Selling on value is a must have. But it cannot happen without the right strategic positioning, the right differentiation levels, and an alignment between strategies and tactics, as the author explains. Stephan M. Liozu, Ph.D. (sliozu@gmail.com), is Founder of Value Innoruption Advisors, a consulting boutique specializing in industrial pricing, XaaS pricing, and value-based pricing. He is also the co-Founder of Pricing for the Planet, which specializes in pricing for sustainability. Stephan has 30 years of experience in the industrial sector with companies like Owens Corning, Saint-Gobain, Freudenberg, and Thales. He has authored and edited 13 books on value and pricing management. Stephan sits on the Board of Advisors of Professional Pricing Society.
The Journal of Professional Pricing, December 2023
Currently, companies are investing heavily in training their salesforce to become value sellers. There are numerous reputable companies offering commercial excellence training combined with a value management approach. No methodology is perfect and there is always room for improvement. But methodologies and tools are never enough. Great value-based selling programs are incorporated into value-based strategies, and they are part of a large-scale strategic effort. They are supported and energized by executive leaders and are provided resources in the proper way. Selling on value is a must have. But it cannot happen without the right strategic positioning, the right differentiation levels, and an alignment between strategies and tactics. This paper starts with six considerations to consider before getting started. Then we discuss the necessity to develop and deploy the right value toolbox to support the sales efforts. Finally, we explore the design of a disruptive and progressive value-based selling training program.
Six Considerations for Successful Value-Based Selling Programs
There are certain things a company must do before embarking on a strategic value-based selling programs for their go-to-market teams.
- Get the definition right: I have seen many different definitions for value-based selling initiatives. Let me list a few here: value selling, selling value, selling on value, value-added selling, value-informed selling. Definitions and words matter. It is essential to use the right name for the initiative and to not succumb to the consultant’s latest trendy name. Value-based selling is an established methodology which has been around for decades. Let us call a cat a cat!
- Make sure value-based selling is not done in a vacuum and/or in silo: Both the design and the implementation of value-based selling programs must be done in a multi-functional way. First, they need to be connected to value-based marketing and value-based pricing initiatives. They cannot be done in a vacuum with sellers doing their value analysis and producing their own value tools. Second, the production and definition of the value drivers and the value tools must be multi-functional. Bring sales, marketing, technical, and pricing folks together to extract messages and drivers. Keep alignment in mind.
- Quantified benefits are the way to go as part of a solid value toolbox: You must prioritize the value quantification process in the value-based selling methodology. Too many companies stop at the customer benefit level without focusing on true differentiators and quantifying them in terms of financial value for the customers. I would argue that this is the heart of value-based selling. Without concrete quantified impact, your value propositions are weaker and less impactful. When designing your value toolbox to be used by your sellers, make sure these value nuggets are used in many locations. Repetition is key for convincing customers to pay attention. If you do not know how to do this, bring your value engineers, your value consultants, or your value-based pricing experts to the table. They will become your best friends!
- Value-based selling and negotiation for value are not the same thing: In fact, they are completely different. Value-based selling is a way of being and a way of working. It never stops. It is engrained in the sellers’ DNA. Value-based selling is ongoing and extremely focused on long-term relationships. Negotiation for value is more tactical, time-bound, and focused on specific transactions. While both are part of commercial and sales excellence programs, the training curriculums are different. Keep that in mind when designing your programs.
- Adopt a methodology and focus on automation and speed: You might want to shop around and evaluate the various providers of value-based selling training and consulting. They are offering similar services using some of same fundamental principles. The key question I recommend you pay attention to is the speed of deployment and the ability to automate value-based selling programs. Doing things manually and customizing the value tools based on specific customer input take time. Sellers need to sell. And they need to be doing so with the right tool at the right speed. There is a high probability of failure and low adoption if the sellers must produce their own value tools and documentation. In the future, value-based selling programs will be closely tied to technology and much more focused on outcome and impact. That change is happening already.
- Focus on training but also on mindset change: The end goal of any value-based selling program is to transform the sellers from cost-plus or market-based selling to value-based selling. That takes time, effort, and repetition. But the challenge is to create irreversible change in the way the sales team think, operate, and behave. The design of your value-based selling programs is as essential as the methodology you select. Slow down if you need to, but make sure to get it right the first time. If you miss this first opportunity, chances are that you will have to do another round of training and another round the year after.
Customer value management is a team sport. One of the team members must be learning and development professionals. This is not business or training as usual. These six key considerations can make or break your value-based selling programs. Think carefully, select the right partners, and focus on the right success KPIs. You should not just get it done because someone told you to do so. We are not checking the box here. We want to do this for impact and to scale based on customer value. That is a different proposition.
Value Toolbox to Successful Value-Based Selling Programs
Value-based selling programs must be prepared carefully with the right objectives in mind and the right content. In this department, content is key. I am often asked who is responsible for putting together the overall value playbook supporting the value-based selling curriculum. My response is simple! Marketing is in charge and must pull information from various departments such as market intelligence, customer success, strategy, pricing, and more. Marketing leaders often forget that they are the R&D of sales. They must work hard in preparation of these training events, and first impressions matter.
After decades of experience in value-based programs, I have been exposed to, used, and created many value tools that are used by marketing and pricing professionals to train the salesforce on how to become value champions. I created a list of fifty-five value tools that are commonly used in value-based strategies to advance the customer value agenda. If you are interested in reading more about them, check out my Value Mindset book here.
I do not recommend using all of these tools. Choose the five or six most relevant options to support your training and learning agenda. The most used tools are listed in the visual below:
- Value selling sheets are one or two-page documents summarizing key points for the sales force on products and services. They list key differentiators, key benefits, and key features for what you are selling. They are used internally to prepare for sales calls. A lot of these points must be memorized so that they can be used fluently during value conversations.
- Business Value Assessments (BVA) are documents used to demonstrate the ROI and financial value for a specific deal or opportunity. Sales representatives produce these for qualified leads and opportunities hopefully from a customer value management (CVM) platform.
- Dollarized value propositions can be PDF or PowerPoint documents demonstrating the economic value of an offer. They represent another way of doing a BVA, but they look more like a well-designed customer value proposition than a financial business case.
- Pricing objections guides offer a list of the top ten or fifteen pricing objections commonly used by customers and prospects with a relevant value response for each of them. They are used internally for training, role playing, and onboarding of new sales reps.
- Value messages are closely tied to true company or product differentiators and are projected non-stop to customers during multiple touchpoints. These are listed in a Word document and shared with any employee with customer facing activities. These are the “did you know that…?” of the day. For example, “Did you know we created nine out of the last ten industry innovations?” Or “Did you know that our technical XYZ solution secured the most demanding industrial facilities in the world?” Finally, “Did you know that we saved our industry $2 billion in unnecessary costs?”
- Documented value success stories are case studies that have a quantified economic value component. They go a step further than regular customer or application case studies. They should contain a quantified value scenario for an application, an end-user, or a customer situation. Often, these are proposed on the website as value stories. These also need to be automated out of a CVM platform to avoid manual work.
- Value realization reports are produced by your CVM platform and are used in quarterly business review meetings with your customers. These reports serve as progress reports on the value delivered and realized value to your customers. Remember that it is all about realizing the economic value you promised in exchange for closing deals hopefully with a higher average selling price.
I would recommend selecting these seven tools and including them in your value toolbox. These documents need to be prepared in advance using a multi-functional approach with input from sales, marketing, pricing, services, customer success, and other. They need to be battle-tested before being used in value-based training sessions. Make sure the content and the value numbers are credible or you will have an adverse reaction during the training. Value-based selling challenges people and takes them out of their comfort zone. Do not give them a chance to cop out because the documents are improvised, unprofessional, or not credible. Preparation is key.
Best Practices in Value-based Selling Training Program
Developing people skills through a thorough training plan is essential to proper pricing and value management execution. Whether we’re discussing the deployment of a tool, the assimilation of a new selling method, or a large-scale value-based execution program, training is the engine of the value transformation. Training is how we establish a growth mindset in the organization and tap people’s when embracing value management activities, especially when it comes to training the salesforce on value-based selling. It’s how we impart the organization’s new vision, objectives, concepts, approaches, and tools to each rank-and-file employee, to each team, and to each executive throughout the business. Your company deserves this investment in dedicated training.
Let us be realistic about the scope here. You might be training different sales teams on many different things including in the value-based selling scope. This cannot occur overnight, nor can it occur using conventional methods. The best-practice model you should use instead is a total redesign of the traditional lecture-class approach. We must stop carpet-bombing salespeople with information and then releasing them back to their own devices to fail or succeed entirely. Feedback and follow-up are critical.
Instead of relying on day-long lectures or PowerPoint overdoses, a formal value-based selling training session is only the beginning. Training should take place over a period of three to six or even 12 months, during which you will collect multiple data points and have multiple contacts with each trainee to reinforce execution and full assimilation of value concepts. Training never ends, just as the value transformation never ends. The roadmap needs to account for many touchpoints of reinforcement. New salespeople will come and go in your organization, requiring frequent training blitzes.
What Makes Value-Based Selling Training so Hard?
Training adults in general is challenging. Training salespeople is harder. They are on the front lines, and they are facing positive and negative market dynamics head on. The role of the salesforce has changed dramatically, and they must do more with less. In addition to this, you are dealing with professionals who have deep customer relationships and have sold using a certain style – sometimes for decades. So, training salespeople and changing their ways of working is not an easy proposition. I propose four challenges to training salespeople on value-based selling:
- You need to get salespeople out of their comfort zone: That is the real challenge. Breaking comfortable routines and ways of thinking takes time. Imagine a salesperson who has sold on volume using discounts for 30 years, and now you are asking her to sell on value and resist the discount request. The comfort zone is gone. But without this challenge, she will not learn anything: If You’re Not Outside Your Comfort Zone, You Won’t Learn Anything (hbr.org).
- You need to repeat things a lot: John Hillen uses the term “The Rule of 100” in his book What Happens Now? (What Happens Now?: Reinvent Yourself as a Leader Before Your Business Outruns You: Hillen, John, Nevins, Mark D.: 9781590794531: Books (amazon.com) to make a critical point that is powerful to remember. The idea is that you have to say something 100 times before people really hear and internalize it. So, you need to have time to repeat things without sounding like a broken record!
- You need to give salespeople enough time to assimilate: In the book Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language and Never Forget It (Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It: Wyner, Gabriel: 8601404200298: Books (amazon.com), Gabriel Wyner writes: “Spaced repetition…[is] extraordinarily efficient. In a four-month period, practicing for 30 minutes a day, you can expect to learn and retain 3600 flashcards with 90 to 95 percent accuracy.” You cannot rush training on value-based selling. You must space out the sessions and the type of training you do. It is all about absorptive capacity, which is another term for getting things to stick in the memory.
- You need to focus on retention: Since you are dealing with incredibly busy professionals who have been in business for quite a while, they might be distracted and forget the training content. In fact, after 31 days they might only retain 20% of what they learned (as shown in the graph below).
Summarizing the Training Best Practices for Value-Based Selling Training
Let us review the best practices for training to superior value-based selling execution:
• Plan on at least ten touch points: Conventional classroom instruction is not sufficient, and face-to-face follow-up is often impractical in our global world. You must stay connected, and the more frequently the better.
• Mix delivery methods: Transmit your methods virtually, physically, or as a hybrid.
• Mix up your training environment: Training can occur in a classroom, or in the field, at home or even in the car.
• Use your sales and business leaders: The person reinforcing the message can be a manager, coach, team leader, or peer. Each may have a success story to tell.
• Account for different absorption levels: Some learn best from seeing; others from reading, doing, listening, or taking actions.
• Trainers and coaches must energize the troops. Energy and positive levels must be significant and genuine. They should feel exhausted at the end of each day.
Now you know what to do and what not to do if you are thinking of training your sellers on value-based selling. Do not improvise it. Spend a lot of time and energy designing a rockstar program that will be very memorable with the salespeople. If you make it good, they will remember it forever.
Conclusions
Designing a robust, impactful, and memorable value-based selling program requires from heavy thinking. It needs to be integrated with the proper systems and connected with the relevant go-to-market processes. Value-based selling must be connected to the rest of the functional processes. Remember that before selling, marketing, innovation, and pricing teams need to do some preparation work. Selling on value is a transformation of the organization DNA. The customer becomes the center of attention and is at the heart of value-based strategies. Cost and competition remain an important part of the equation, but they come second and third to customer value. Customer value management is a team sport. And that sport requires preparation, repetition, and execution. Be bold, join the customer value revolution!