How to Sell on Value Not Price

Learning Sell Value doesn’t have to be complicated.

Regardless of what you sell, selling the value of your product or service must be your top priority.

Selling on value is the only way to differentiate what you offer from your competition. It also allows you to earn prospect attention and leads to more proactive conversations with prospects.

In other words, selling on value puts you, the seller, in the driver’s seat.

 

Shifting from Price Wars to Value Partnerships

 

The Modern Sales Imperative: Why competing on price is a race to the bottom.

Studies have shown that prospects today are spending less time with sales, choosing instead to invest time in doing their own research.

The problem?

What your prospects read online, or what they learn from their research, tends to commoditize what you sell. In other words, most of what they read, regardless of where they read it, makes your product or service appear similar to that of their competition.

For you, this means that you enter the conversation with buyers who believe they already know everything there is to know about what you sell. As a result, their primary focus in speaking with you becomes “what is your price?”

 

Defining ‘Value Selling’: What it is and why it matters.

Value in sales can be defined in various ways.

For our purposes, value is the desired outcomes a prospect will achieve want to achieve because of investing in your product or service. Value can be both tangible and intangible, professional and personal.

For example:

• If you sell life insurance, value might include the size of premium your prospect can qualify for to support their family in the event of their passing.
• If you sell mortgages, value might be the personalized service and customized options you can offer a prospect.
• If you sell cutting tools, the value might be the breadth of products you can offer a prospect that they aren’t able to find elsewhere.

 

Understanding Sell Value

To sell on value, you need to ask deep questions during the discovery phase to fully understand the specific needs of a prospect and then, in turn, quantify that value and share it during discussions, presentations and communications.

 

The Benefits of a Value-First Approach: For ‘salespeople’, ‘customers’, and the ‘brand’.

A value-first approach as a salesperson puts you at an advantage over your competition, as it enables you to sell the benefits your prospect will achieve by investing in the product or service you are selling. Those benefits may differ for each prospect, which means your discussions, presentations and demonstrations focus on the specific and desired needs of the prospect.

For customers, a value-first approach helps to make a direct connection between the customer’s objectives for why they want to invest in the product or service, and how the product or service will satisfy or achieve those needs. In essence, a value-first approach allows the customer to not have to painstakingly listen to information about a product or service that is not relevant or important to them.

For a brand, value-first selling creates a reputation that is often unmatched by competition. Customers who buy from companies that sell valued outcomes often receive referral business as customers flock to tell other potential customers of the outcomes they’ve achieved.

 

The Foundation: Deeply Understanding and Articulating Your Offering’s True Value

When it comes to selling on value, the most important skill for sales professionals is being able to first ask deep questions of prospective customers or clients that allow them to uncover true needs and desired outcomes.

Additionally, value is stackable, meaning that a prospect might have several desired outcomes for wanting to invest in your product or service, and by capturing and sharing how these are realistically achievable by investing in your product or service, you increase your chances of making the sale.

Beyond Features: Identifying Your Unique Value Proposition.

 

How to Sell Value

Understanding what customers or clients deem as valuable outcomes they’ll achieve by investing in your product or service provides insights into what other potential customers might also find of value.

These insights provide the ingredients to develop a value proposition, something that can be shared early in outreach or conversations with prospects to describe what you sell, in terms that they would find appealing.

It’s important to note that you might have more than one value proposition, or you might have different value propositions for prospects in different industries or different types of businesses.

In the life insurance example above, a value proposition might include “we get our clients the highest possible premium to protect their loved ones.”

Using the cutting tool sales example above, a value proposition might be “we offer a one-stop shop for all of our customers’ cutting and grinding needs.”

 

Differentiating in a Crowded Marketplace.

A strong value proposition puts the customer’s desired outcomes first, rather than a focus on features or benefits.

By having several value propositions to draw from, it enables sales professionals to differentiate themselves from competitors, who are more than likely selling the features of their product or service.

Keep in mind that by having several value propositions to share, given different types of prospects you might encounter, you can. NEED TO FINISH THIS SENTENCE

 

The Intangibles of Value: ‘Trust’, ‘Service’, and ‘Peace of Mind’.

As mentioned earlier, value can be both tangible (i.e., higher profits, reduced downtime), which are often easily measured. Value can also be intangible, or less easily measured.

Examples of intangible value can include:

• Reduced stress
• Peace of mind or sleep better at night
• Increased confidence or trust
• Increased recognition
• Improved confidence

Notice all of these would be difficult to manage; however, by ensuring you are clear on intangible value, you can increase the perceived value of your product or service in the eyes of a prospect.

Mastering Discovery: The Art of Uncovering True Customer Needs

 

Sell Value Best Practices

Mastering the discovery conversation with a potential customer or client is the key to unlocking value. Some prospects will be more guarded than others, so the types of questions you ask, how you ask them and when you ask can be the differentiator between unlocking what a prospect values and doesn’t.

 

Asking the Right Questions: Unlocking Deeper ‘Pain Points’ and Desired Outcomes.

A strong discovery conversation begins with asking open-ended questions. Good open-ended questions help us to best understand the pain points of a prospect, and what they are truly seeking as outcomes because of purchasing our product or service.

 

Examples of good discovery questions include:

• What would you like to achieve?
• What is your desired outcome?
• Why is this purchase important to you? To your team?
• What are your specific goals or objectives?
• Who will benefit because of this?
• How will this benefit you personally?

You would need to adjust these questions to satisfy your product or service.

 

Strategic Listening and Empathy: Understanding the ‘Why’ Behind the ‘What’.

A strong discovery dialogue with a prospect results when you listen carefully to what they say and then ask follow-up questions to uncover what they truly value.

Most prospects will have already done their research and likely spoken to your competition, so they may not initially share their desired outcomes. A recent study by the Martal Group suggests that “B2B buyers now complete up to 70% of the buying journey before engaging sales, using content, reviews, and internal collaboration to evaluate options.”

The key to getting prospects to open is through strategic listening and empathy. Carefully and patiently listening to prospect responses to your discovery questions, acknowledging their response, then asking follow-up questions to dive deeper.

Where a prospect shares frustrations, showing empathy (i.e., “I can understand why you feel that way” or “that sounds frustrating”) can also demonstrate your understanding of their specific needs.

 

Leveraging AI for Enhanced Discovery and Insights (The AI Era Advantage).

AI tools like claude.ai, ChatGPT and Grok.io can help you uncover good discovery questions, customized for the industry or sector you are selling to.

Additionally, you can use these tools to research what your prospects in each industry find of value, what your competitors share that’s of value, and how you can differentiate your product or service.

Using the example above, some AI prompts might include:

• What do production managers need for their machine shop?”
• What do business owners look for in a life insurance broker?
• What is most important this year for customers renewing their mortgage?

 

Keep in mind the following:

The more specific your question, the more specific the answer you’ll receive. Also, follow-up questions can help you dive deeper. Just make sure to set reasonably achievable action plans for you to incorporate actions and have next steps identified by AI.

 

Crafting Your Value Narrative: Demonstrating Impact

Sharing the value a prospect would achieve by buying from you is best shared in the form of a customer story. In the simplest of terms, a customer story in sales is an example of situations, outcomes, impacts and results that other customers have achieved as a direct result of buying your product or service.**

Customer stories are your best tools for convincing customers that your product or service will achieve the outcomes they desire, and that the needs they have, and the circumstances they face, are exactly why they could use your product or service.

 

Developing Compelling ‘Customer Stories’ to Demonstrate Value**

Coming up with compelling customer stories isn’t difficult. Simply consider the specific benefits and value that past customers have achieved when they have bought your company’s product or service.

Here is a framework you can use to identify compelling customer stories:

1. Group your customers by size and segment.
2. For each group, identify the specific benefits achieved.
3. For each group benefit note the following:
   1. What was the need or problem?
   2. How did your product or service overcome or resolve this?
   3. What were the outcomes or benefits?
4. Turn these points into simple stories – keeping them brief and to the point.

If you create two to three value stories for each segment you sell to, you’ll have something you can then include in your sales conversation with customers or clients.

 

Weaving Compelling Customer Stories into Your Sales Conversations

Sharing customer value stories in your narrative with prospects can seem daunting; however, it isn’t difficult. The key is to listen for cues during your prospect discovery conversations.

Typical cues include the following:

• The prospect shares a significant challenge they’re facing
• The customer shares a doubt about the effectiveness of your product/service
• The client shares a bad experience they had with a previous provider

These cues are a chance to demonstrate how your product or service is different from what they’ve experienced before. To share the value they’ll achieve by buying from you.

The simple framework for incorporating compelling customer stories is as follows:

1. Listen carefully to understand concerns
2. Respond with empathy – “I can understand why you are concerned.”
3. Explain how your product or service is different
4. Share a compelling story – “We recently worked with a customer with a similar issue. By investing in our software, they achieved a 25% reduction in their cyber threats within the first three days.”

 

Quantifying Value: Demonstrating Tangible ROI and Intangible Benefits

When it comes to sharing value with prospects, think in terms of both tangible value (that which provides quantifiable benefits) and intangible value (that which provides more personalized and less quantifiable benefits).

For value selling to be effective for a prospect, you’ll need to share both types of value throughout prospect conversations and interactions.

 

The ‘ROI Calculator’: Translating Value into Financial Terms.

When it comes to calculating the ROI (return on investment) that a prospect might use to assess the benefits of the value you share, there is a simple formula you can apply. To do so, however, you must first be clear on the specific measures a prospect is using to assess the return on investment of purchasing your product or service.

Questions to uncover tangible benefits include:

1. How will you measure the success of introducing a product or service such as ours?
2. What benefits do you believe this investment will achieve? How would you quantify these?
3. How will you measure the return on your investment?

Examples of tangible benefits can include:

• Increased productivity
• Faster response times
• Reduced errors

Through these questions, you can expect to uncover quantifiable benefits that you can, in turn, contrast against the benefits achieved from investing in your product or service, allowing you to develop a return on investment calculation.

In addition to uncovering specific metrics, it’s important to also understand the less quantifiable measures, which often include the benefits to the individuals involved in the buying decision.

Questions to uncover intangible benefits include:

1. How will this impact you personally?
2. What benefits will your team experience?
3. What other intangible benefits might this provide your company?

Examples of intangible benefits can include:

• Reduced stress
• Happier employes
• Improved employee retention

What’s important with intangible benefits is that you ask follow-up questions to the responses you receive to confirm how important these are to the prospect, and how they’ll assess their value.

 

Beyond Monetary ROI: Unlocking Deeper Value Measures.

Preparing a Value-Packed ‘Proposal’

With all the effort and time invested in uncovering the value your product or service will provide to a prospective customer, the key is then to incorporate these as part of your quote or proposal.

Some basic rules to apply in either scenario are as follows:

1. Add a section in your proposal or quote that outlines the specific benefits or value the prospect will achieve by investing.
2. Use the prospect’s language in this section to reflect back on what they have shared.
3. Ensure this appears near the beginning of your proposal or quote, ahead of any pricing.

Note: If your software will not allow you to add a section to share benefits, consider sending this in an email to your prospect prior to sending the quote.

 

The Role of ‘Sales Training Programs’ and Development.

As you can see, selling on value isn’t a single step in your sales process, nor is it something you insert into your typical language.

Selling on value is a methodology that must be learned, applied and adopted by sales teams. Typical sales training programs only look at one or two areas of your existing sales process, our Unstoppable Sales Machine framework includes value-based selling as a strategic element, supporting both differentiation and high pricing.

Consider how to develop your own value-based selling approach by reviewing the following elements of your sales process:

1. Indirect Outreach and Language
2. Direct Outreach and Language
3. Prospect Communication Channel Application
4. Prospect Discovery and Conversation
5. Proposal Development
6. Prospect Presentation and Explanation
7. Closing Methods and Language
8. Ongoing Value Sharing and Nurturing

 

Conclusion: The Mindset Shift Towards Value Selling

The Future of ‘Sales’ is ‘Value-Driven’: Achieving long-term success and ‘customer’ loyalty in the competitive ‘marketplace.’

Whether you sell a high-value product or service, or if you are in a highly competitive marketplace, value selling is critical to accelerating and increasing your sales.

Make value-based selling part of your sales team’s DNA, rather than an add-on technique, and you’ll experience faster conversions and high margins.

 

Call to Action: Empowering ‘salespeople’ to embrace and apply the ‘value selling’ mindset.

What tangible and intangible benefits do you bring to your prospects? By answering this question and then practicing the application of language and methods to reinforce the value of your offer, you can differentiate and dominate in your sector.