Value Is Not Enough

Supply chain executive Jon Stegner once tried to convince his company’s top management to centralize their disorganized buying centers. His analysis showed the company could save a billion dollars over five years, but no matter how hard he tried to convince them, nothing happened. Finally, he decided to dramatize the situation for them. He picked a single item—work gloves—and had an intern buy one pair of every single one on the combined approved lists. He next piled a boardroom table with the gloves, each with its price tag attached, showing that sometimes the same pair ranged in price from $5 to $17. When he brought executives in to see the pile, they were shocked to see 424 pairs of gloves in a pile about three feet high! That got their attention, and Stegner got his approval.[1] A picture is said to be worth a thousand words, but in this case it was worth a billion dollars!

The point of this vignette is that value is not enough. One would think that a billion dollars in savings would capture attention, but it took a simple dramatic demonstration to make something happen.

As an author of a book called Bottom-Line Selling, I believe in the importance of value in the sales process just as much as anyone out there. In the long run, value is the foundation of every successful enterprise account relationship. Bells and whistles are great, but ultimately you will only win and keep business if you are delivering value in the form of improved outcomes that outweigh the cost and risk of using your solution.

But value is not enough, for the simple reason that human decision makers are quirky in what they pay attention to, how they decide, and how they act. If a logical balance of benefits over costs were all it took for people to make the right choices, companies would probably be better-run and people on average would be thinner and smoke less.

Value is necessary but not sufficient. Especially for big purchases or large changes, people must not only logically understand the value, they must feel it. Even the most analytical, data-driven people need to experience a need.

Whether you’re selling a product or an idea, you need to start with value as your raw material, but then you must craft your message in a way that captures attention, brings to life the need, and elicits the appropriate emotions. You can tell stories, you can use questions to get them to articulate their needs and the pains that they face; you can use visuals or word pictures to get your audience to envision and simulate in their own minds how they will feel when they have the solution in place.

A complete sales approach effectively appeals both to the heart and the mind.

If you’ve read this far, let me end it with a shameless plug: Learn about the logical side of value with Bottom-Line Selling, and the emotional side with Strategic Sales Presentations.

[1] I first read this story in The Heart of Change, by John Kotter.