Question: Has your Sales Organisation clearly documented the Organisation’s value propositions – and do you believe that your sales executives are able to effectively communicate the Organisation’s value propositions to prospects and customers in a manner that customers find compelling?
The Reality
According to our research at ThinkSales Global, only 53.7% of Sales Organisations have clearly documented the Organisation’s value propositions.
In addition, 41.36% of companies rate their confidence as Outstanding that their sales executives are able to effectively communicate the Organisation’s value propositions to prospects and customers in a manner that customers find compelling.
The ‘Communicating Value’ Problem
Most B2B sales organisations are confident that their value propositions have been clearly formulated and delivered.
What they don’t take into account are:
- Whether the value proposition takes different stakeholder groups into account, all of whom have their own objectives and key values
- If the business’s sales force has been trained to deliver the value proposition in a meaningful way.
When we take a deeper dive into how value propositions should be shaped to appeal to different stakeholder groups within client companies, it’s clear that many Sales Organisations are failing to effectively communicate their value in a manner in which all key stakeholder groups clearly understand it. This can result in a perceived lack of value or differentiation, eventually costing deals and jeopardising market leader positioning.
How does this happen? It’s simple. Most organisations fall into the trap of offering a broad description that covers everything they offer.
Which isn’t what customers care about. They want to understand specific solutions that have supported other businesses in their industries or positions. They don’t want broad. They want detail.
Instead, companies will get much more traction if they’re able to selectively identify and highlight a small subset of capabilities that are relevant to the issues they have identified within their different customer-influencer groups.
In fact, as a Sales Organisation, you want to demonstrate that you’ve not only identified these core issues, but are able to successfully address them. In this way, you will be able to deliver unique and relevant value to each member of the decision-making team.
Build A Strong Value Proposition
According to LeveragePoint, CRM Data from organisations that have adopted Value Selling methodologies are able to demonstrate that opportunities where Value Propositions were used resulted in:
- 5% to15% higher win rates
- 5% to 25% higher price outcomes
Sales Managers agree that using Value Propositions early in the sales cycle result in more qualified opportunities in the funnel. And Sales Executive interviews showed that strong Value Propositions improve sales effectiveness, even when they are not presented!
This is because Value Propositions build a sales team’s confidence in their insights, because they know how their solutions deliver tangible and verifiable business benefits to customers.
Get Specific
Value differentiation requires that you get very specific about the value you offer each prospect.
Geoffrey Moore, author of The Chasm, likens the process to nesting dolls. According to Moore, value propositions are layered:
- Higher layers provide an integrating platform for the lower layers
- Lower layers need to consistently support a high-level overview (in other words, they have more detail, but maintain the same shape as the higher layers)
- And each layer needs to be consistent with the overall brand messaging.
For Moore, the only way to achieve this level of brand messaging is:
- To have the right conversations
- With the right stakeholders
- And then consciously create and test that your messaging is resonating at every layer.
The reality is that while you may interface with only one company representative, many more people and/or divisions will be involved in the decision-making process. In B2B selling, these typically include the following roles:
- C-Suite
- Finance
- Manager
- End-User
- Other
As Sirius Decisions says: “Like an ice-cream parlour, with its many flavours, B2B organisations should have multiple value propositions, one to match each target-buying audience.”
Do This:
As a sales leader, it’s therefore important to not only understand who the different stakeholders are that will be involved in the decision-making process, but their various needs as well, so that your messaging addresses these concerns.
In order to overcome the disconnect between seller concerns and buyer needs evidenced in the research shown above, an effective value proposition is required. This entails multiple propositions that cater for multiple decision-makers and influencers (C-Suite, finance, manager, end-users and any hidden stakeholders that could have vetoing power) across the following four dimensions:
- Future-Market Advantage
- Efficiency / Performance
- Financial
- Functional / Process.
Assess The Health Of Your Sales Organisation
Clearly documented value propositions and sales executives that are able to effectively communicate the Organisation’s value propositions to prospects and customers in a manner that customers find compelling are two of 322 measures of a world-class Sales Organisation.
ThinkSales Global is a specialist revenue engineering consultancy.
We assist our clients to deliver market-defying results through strategic and tactical intentions within a Sales Organisation Maturity Model that addresses the five key pillars of high-performing Sales Organsations, namely:
- Competitive Strategy
- Customer Engagement
- Sales Talent
- Sales Management
- Sales Enablement
How does your Sales Organisation stack up? Find out by taking the ThinkSales 5 Pillar Strategic Sales Assessment™.
This first-of-its-kind 360-degree gap analysis report enables your Sales Leadership team to assess its strengths and detect weaknesses and impediments to revenue growth across the five pillars.
Click here for more information on the ThinkSales 5 Pillar Strategic Sales Assessment™.
Question: Has your Sales Organisation clearly documented the Organisation’s value propositions – and do you believe that your sales executives are able to effectively communicate the Organisation’s value propositions to prospects and customers in a manner that customers find compelling?
The Reality
According to our research at ThinkSales Global, only 53.7% of Sales Organisations have clearly documented the Organisation’s value propositions.
In addition, 41.36% of companies rate their confidence as Outstanding that their sales executives are able to effectively communicate the Organisation’s value propositions to prospects and customers in a manner that customers find compelling.
The ‘Communicating Value’ Problem
Most B2B sales organisations are confident that their value propositions have been clearly formulated and delivered.
What they don’t take into account are:
- Whether the value proposition takes different stakeholder groups into account, all of whom have their own objectives and key values
- If the business’s sales force has been trained to deliver the value proposition in a meaningful way.
When we take a deeper dive into how value propositions should be shaped to appeal to different stakeholder groups within client companies, it’s clear that many Sales Organisations are failing to effectively communicate their value in a manner in which all key stakeholder groups clearly understand it. This can result in a perceived lack of value or differentiation, eventually costing deals and jeopardising market leader positioning.
How does this happen? It’s simple. Most organisations fall into the trap of offering a broad description that covers everything they offer.
Which isn’t what customers care about. They want to understand specific solutions that have supported other businesses in their industries or positions. They don’t want broad. They want detail.
Instead, companies will get much more traction if they’re able to selectively identify and highlight a small subset of capabilities that are relevant to the issues they have identified within their different customer-influencer groups.
In fact, as a Sales Organisation, you want to demonstrate that you’ve not only identified these core issues, but are able to successfully address them. In this way, you will be able to deliver unique and relevant value to each member of the decision-making team.
Build A Strong Value Proposition
According to LeveragePoint, CRM Data from organisations that have adopted Value Selling methodologies are able to demonstrate that opportunities where Value Propositions were used resulted in:
- 5% to15% higher win rates
- 5% to 25% higher price outcomes
Sales Managers agree that using Value Propositions early in the sales cycle result in more qualified opportunities in the funnel. And Sales Executive interviews showed that strong Value Propositions improve sales effectiveness, even when they are not presented!
This is because Value Propositions build a sales team’s confidence in their insights, because they know how their solutions deliver tangible and verifiable business benefits to customers.
Get Specific
Value differentiation requires that you get very specific about the value you offer each prospect.
Geoffrey Moore, author of The Chasm, likens the process to nesting dolls. According to Moore, value propositions are layered:
- Higher layers provide an integrating platform for the lower layers
- Lower layers need to consistently support a high-level overview (in other words, they have more detail, but maintain the same shape as the higher layers)
- And each layer needs to be consistent with the overall brand messaging.
For Moore, the only way to achieve this level of brand messaging is:
- To have the right conversations
- With the right stakeholders
- And then consciously create and test that your messaging is resonating at every layer.
The reality is that while you may interface with only one company representative, many more people and/or divisions will be involved in the decision-making process. In B2B selling, these typically include the following roles:
- C-Suite
- Finance
- Manager
- End-User
- Other
As Sirius Decisions says: “Like an ice-cream parlour, with its many flavours, B2B organisations should have multiple value propositions, one to match each target-buying audience.”
Do This:
As a sales leader, it’s therefore important to not only understand who the different stakeholders are that will be involved in the decision-making process, but their various needs as well, so that your messaging addresses these concerns.
In order to overcome the disconnect between seller concerns and buyer needs evidenced in the research shown above, an effective value proposition is required. This entails multiple propositions that cater for multiple decision-makers and influencers (C-Suite, finance, manager, end-users and any hidden stakeholders that could have vetoing power) across the following four dimensions:
- Future-Market Advantage
- Efficiency / Performance
- Financial
- Functional / Process.
Assess The Health Of Your Sales Organisation
Clearly documented value propositions and sales executives that are able to effectively communicate the Organisation’s value propositions to prospects and customers in a manner that customers find compelling are two of 322 measures of a world-class Sales Organisation.
How does your Sales Organisation stack up? Find out by taking the ThinkSales 5 Pillar Strategic Sales Assessment™.
This first-of-its-kind 360-degree gap analysis report enables your Sales Leadership team to assess its strengths and detect weaknesses and impediments to revenue growth across the five pillars of a high performing sales organisation:
- Competitive Strategy
- Customer Engagement
- Sales Talent
- Sales Management
- Sales Enablement
Click here for more information on the ThinkSales 5 Pillar Strategic Sales Assessment™.
