Now more than ever it’s important to show how you can bring value to your customer and solve their problems without boring them with products specs and features and industry jargon. You need to make your pitch simple and easy to understand, while tailoring it to suit your specific customer’s needs. One of the biggest problems salespeople face is the inability to communicate their value message so here are a few tips on how to develop and convey your value message properly:
1. Know your customer
Firstly, you must create an Ideal Customer Profile. It is the basis for who your customers are and how you can find them. Use this to find customers that fit your profile.
Once that’s done and you have found your ideal customers, you need to research. You need to find out everything you can about your customer: their industry, their company size, their market, how much they sell, who exactly is involved in the decision making process other than them, etc. If you know anyone who has had contact with your customer talk to them as well, they might be able to give you valuable information that you can use.
Talk to the customer themselves. Ask them questions that will let you know what their goals are, how they plan on accomplishing them. Find out how they measure their success, and most importantly, find out what their pain points are. This is all of the information you can use when communicating your value to them.
2. Tailor your value
You know how good your product is. You know that your product can help to solve your customers problems. But you need to convince your customer of that. It’s easy to say that your product will solve X problem, but if your customer thinks their problem is Y, they’re not going to bother listening to you. It’s your job to show them that either your product is just as good at solving Y, or that X is in fact a problem for them, and that by solving X, Y will fall into place.
You need to be able to tell your customer a ‘before’ and ‘after’ story to convince them. Their current situation is the ‘before.’ Perhaps they’re not meeting quotas, or their spending too much money in a certain area. This is an un-ideal scenario that your customer does not want to be in.
The ‘after’ scenario is how your customer’s company will transform once their pain point is resolved. Weekly and monthly goals will be met, stress will be eliminated, costs will lower. The contrast between the two will make your customer see how badly their current situation is affecting their business.
Once they realize how bad their pain point is, you just have to show them how well your product can transform them from a ‘before’ to an ‘after’, and you already know your product can do this. Now you just have to convince them that it’s the best option for them.
3. Differentiate your value
Once you have shown the customer that they need a solution to their problem, you have to convince them that your product is the best product that can help. You might not be the only person trying to sell them a similar product. You need to show them why your product is better than your competitor’s. Focus on things such as your company’s remarkable customer service, the fact that your price is better or that your product can do more than your competitor.
Case studies are a good way of differentiating you from your competitor. They show exactly how your product has helped people in the past. If you have case studies from companies in similar industries to your customer, or similar company sizes, etc., showing them how similar companies have benefited from your product will make them see that your product is the best for them.
A lot of reps make the mistake of showing comparisons with their competitors as a way of differentiating. This isn’t always a good idea. If your product is unique in its capabilities, then there is no need to compare it or mention your competitors. They can’t offer what you can so don’t even bother.
One of the most important things to remember when coming up with a good value message, is that it needs to be consistent throughout all of your teams, not just your sales reps. Make sure that both Sales and Marketing are using the same language when talking to customers, either through content, in meetings, or over the phone. This will show a level of professionalism and will stop the customer from getting confused about what your value message is.
Understanding your customer and being able to show them exactly what value you can bring to their company is the most important part of selling in the digital age. Creating a value message that conveys this is simple and will stop you from losing any sales unnecessarily.
