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.
How to Score More Points with Your Value Proposition
In general, a value proposition describes why people should buy from you. It’s the ultimate argument that should tip the scales in your favor when they make their decision.
But for purposes of this article, let’s scale back that ambition a little. Especially in complex sales, it’s rather presumptive to try to tell someone why they should do business with you until you know more about their particular situation—in other words, until you’ve gone through that specialized thinking process called a buying cycle.
More realistically, your value proposition as I address it in this post should describe why they should take the time to talk with you and explore whether they have a need that you are best qualified to address. In other words, the purpose of a value proposition is to earn their attention. It’s what you need to get in the door.
Not all value propositions are created equal
Leo Tolstoy said: “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Thank goodness for unhappy families, for without them there would be no great stories or literature.
If you replace the word “family” with “prospect”, you can easily see that the same idea applies to selling.
Thank goodness for unhappy prospects, for without them there would be no need for our products or services. But, since every unhappy prospect is unhappy in their own way, for maximum possible impact you must make your value proposition must be as closely targeted to their particular unhappiness as possible.
In this article I will explain how to move closer and closer to the bulls-eye of a perfectly targeted value proposition. Just like a dartboard, the closer you get to the center (your prospect), the more points you score. Let’s look at the five possible concentric rings.
The first shot that most people take at the target is some version of the better mousetrap theory, where the mere presence of something better is all you need. It sounds something like this:
“Our state-of-the-art MouseRid system is the world’s best, most advanced and most efficient mousetrap.”
Score: 0 points
This value proposition is all about you, not the prospect. With so much information available to prospects nowadays, they’ll likely ignore anything that does not target a specific need, so we’ll score that a complete miss. You’ve put a hole in the wall near the target, but that’s about it.
For our second shot, we zero in on a common problem that the prospect may have. For added focus, you could select a problem specific to their industry, or a recent trend which needs to be addressed.
“A recent Forrester report points out the alarming increase in mouse sightings in your area. Historically, rats and mice have been carriers of the bubonic plague. Let us come in and show you how we address this critical risk.”
Score: 1 point
This one definitely targets a need, although it may or may not be of concern to the individual. Let’s give it 1 point.
For our third shot, we can focus on something specific to the company the prospect works for.
“Your recent annual report states that one of your initiatives is to entertain more this year. That may open you up to an increased risk of a friend spotting a mouse in your house. We will help ensure that your entertainment initiative for 2020 is a great success.”
This one hits closer to home, because it addresses a documented need they have, and it also tells them you’ve done your homework.
Score: 3 points
For our fourth toss of the dart, we home in on something of particular concern to the function or title of your prospect.
“As a parent, nothing matters more to you than the well-being of your children, and seeing a mouse scamper across the little tyke’s room could ruin them for life.”
You probably put your finger on something that this person has thought about recently, and there’s a good chance that they’ll want to hear more.
Score: 5 points
For our fifth and best shot, we learn enough about the individual so that we can address an issue they personally care about.
“In your recent speech to the Chamber of Commerce, you mentioned that your ZeroRodent campaign is a major strategic initiative for you this quarter, but you’re allergic to cheese. We’ve created a system specifically for that particular issue…
You have targeted an issue that they deeply care about and is timely; probably the only reason they might have for not taking a meeting with you is if they have solved the problem already.
Score: Bullseye. 10 points.
One way to think of refining your value proposition is to imagine that every potential prospect has several layers to their identity. They are a) unique individuals, who b) do a certain job, c) in a particular company, d) within a certain industry. The closer you can aim your value proposition to the center of who they are, the more likely you will get that meeting you want.
By the way, did you notice something else about all the value propositions that scored points? Not one mentioned the product.
Have you ever suffered from wrap rage? That’s the feeling you get when you try to open one of those clear plastic packages that so many products come in today. I’m sure the manufacturers mean well; I doubt they intentionally set out to make things difficult for their customers, but that’s where they end up.
This analogy occurred to me while I was reviewing sales literature for a client project I’m working on. Trying to decipher exactly what their products and services do for their customers was like trying to open up one of those packages—you know there’s some value in there somewhere, but it’s difficult to get to.
That’s because so much promotional material is loaded with multisyllabic abstract jargon. Or in plain English: big words that most people don’t understand and can’t picture in their minds. You read it once, and maybe get a vague sense of what they’re selling and what it means for you, but then you usually have to re-read it a couple of times and translate it into English in your own mind to make sense of it.
Buyers have so much access to information that they don’t necessarily have an incentive to make the effort to understand your difficult material. This is where the analogy with packaging falls apart a little. When you’re trying to open a physical package, you’ve already bought the product, so of course you’re going to persevere until you get it open. But if you’re trying to make sense of marketing literature, you haven’t bought it yet, so it’s easy to just skip over it and find something that’s easier to understand.
Buying decisions are hard enough, so you should strive to be part of the solution, not add to the problem. As simply as I can put it, just try to say it in plain English. Your customers will thank you.
I love learning about how to improve sales just as much as the next person, but sometimes you can get tired of reading the same old thing over and over. So today, I’m going to do the opposite. Here are ten tips to ensure that you have a terrible sales meeting…
- Don’t prepare – It prevents your spontaneous, authentic loveable self from coming out.
- Talk as much as you can – It doesn’t give the prospect an opportunity to think up objections.
- Tell them all about yourself – They already know all about themselves, so why waste their time talking about them?
- If you don’t know an answer, fake it – They’ll think you’re smart and they’ll probably never find out anyway.
- Make sure they see every single slide you prepared – Why let all that hard work go to waste?
- Make sure you tell them when they’re wrong – How else can you deliver fresh insights?
- Always be closing – You’ll save a lot of time that way.
- Make sure they know all about how bad your competitors are – Save them from making a serious mistake.
- Overpromise and underdeliver.
