How to Implement a Winning Value Selling Strategy Without a Dedicated Value Team

87% of organizations now use value-selling tactics, which has become an essential sales strategy in the post-effects of a tough economic situation. 

It makes sense. As budgets tighten, CFOs and buying committees are beginning to have much more say on what deals happen.

The proliferation of value-selling strategies has even led to the creation of dedicated value teams that focus entirely on creating tailored value propositions, business cases and content to communicate value. While value selling strategies have existed since the early days of SAP, companies are now adding smaller, more tech-enabled value teams.  

Conversely, in organizations still growing, adapting to a value-selling strategy is often done on the fly.

It’s tempting to see value-selling strategies as time-consuming. After all, understanding a company and its problems and constructing a working solution requires a lot of skills and discovery.

However, the importance of a value-selling strategy in the modern business landscape cannot be understated. Regardless of the organization's size, a winning strategy can be implemented.

Here are three strategies you can implement without a dedicated value team:

Develop Use-Case Specific Benefit Calculations

When you consider your products, use cases, and solutions, make sure you also consider how to capture and measure their value.

First, consider which business outcome you are driving on the customer side. For example, are they interested in increasing revenue or saving costs when they buy your product? If you don’t have a good answer, ask your Customer Success Manager.

Next, look at the specific use cases. In other words, what’s your solution's key change and impact? For example, if you help companies improve their knowledge management, consider it in these terms: 

People who can access information faster spend less time searching for quantifiable information. Then, if you know an average employee’s salary, you could convert it into a true monetary value.

So, develop a dedicated benefit calculation for your top use cases and test it with existing and new customers. These use cases will feed into a wider strategic business outcome. 

Add a Value Assessment to your Sales Process (including CRM) 

Your customers may not ask for a return-on-investment (ROI) statement or a business value assessment whenever you talk to them. However, at the end of your sales cycle, you don’t want the Chief Financial Officer asking for one and not having a business case on hand. 

Therefore, adding a value assessment to your sales process is a good idea. That could be a specific field in your Salesforce CRM that needs to be filled out (Minoa can automatically link it 😉) or a dedicated stage in the sales journey (e.g., “value assessment”). That way, you encourage your sellers to think and add a business case to every deal, and creating a value assessment becomes a habit. 

Collaborate on Business Cases

The business case is one of the most powerful tools in the value-selling playbook. Your sales team can use it to address a buying committee’s key concerns directly.

A business case should be constructed through mutual collaboration between the sales rep and the prospect. This work allows the sales rep to better understand the company's problems and provide a mapped-out solution to address them.

It doesn’t matter if you use a spreadsheet-based benefit calculation or Minoa. After the first call, start inviting your champion into the conversation of co-creating a business case to realize its true benefit. 

Minoa 

Traditionally, business cases have been difficult to build, requiring a maze of spreadsheets, documents, and calls to be appropriately constructed. This has made it difficult for sales teams to create fully-fledged business cases. 

Minoa is purpose-built to allow seamless collaboration between sales reps and prospects. A simple UI and an in-built ROI calculation tool enable the creation of qualitative and relevant business cases in seconds.

If you want to learn more about Minoa’s value selling features, you can book a demo here.