Value selling is a sales approach that focuses on the potential buyer's needs and the expected value of the product or service being offered. Unlike traditional sales methodologies that emphasize features during a sales pitch, value selling shifts the customer conversation toward how a solution can address specific pain points and provide measurable benefits. This method not only helps in building stronger relationships with clients but also enhances the likelihood of closing deals by aligning the sales process with the buyer’s goals.
Learn more about value selling in our Ultimate Guide to Value Selling here.
It is essential for sales teams to master the art of value-based selling. While providing your sales team with a value selling framework will help your sales reps more effectively sell based on value, you can also increase their chances for success by providing them with a set of value selling tools that are tied to the different stages of the buyer's journey.
In this article, we'll highlight the value selling tools your sales and customer success teams should be using at each of the four stages of the buyer journey. Those four stages are:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Decision
- Post-purchase
Value selling tools can be leveraged strategically throughout the buyer's journey to decrease sales cycles, increase ACVs and ultimately drive more sales.
1. Awareness Stage
In this early stage, buyers are just becoming aware of their problem or need. To connect with the potential buyer and capture their attention at this stage, start by establishing your credibility and educating the buyer. There are a few tools that can help to do this.
Educational Content
Establishing credibility with your buyers can pay dividends in later stages of the sales funnel. It builds brand awareness and trust, and will make it more likely that your prospects consider your solution. To establish credibility, create educational content around the most pressing problems your buyers are facing. Additionally, include recommendations on how your prospects can overcome their challenges.
This educational content can come in many forms including blog posts, whitepapers, eBooks, infographics, reports, videos, and more.
Social media tools
While social media is typically associated with the marketing team, it can also be an invaluable tool for sales professionals, especially in the awareness stage. If used correctly, sales professionals can gather insights about their prospects' problems and needs and use this information to better engage with them. For example, if you follow your prospects on LinkedIn, it is likely they will share information about what's important to them or the problems they face. Later in the sales process, you can use this knowledge to better align your solution to their challenges by using your value story.
Value Calculator
A value calculator, such as the Ecosystems Web Value Calculator, is a powerful website tool to help prospects understand the potential impact of solving their problems.
It can also help marketing teams increase website conversion rates while engaging, educating, and qualifying leads on your website. Ultimately, it allows those prospects who are assessing their problem to also see the business value of your solution. Those leads are also pre-qualified and all of the data can be passed on automatically to your sellers in your CRM.
2. Consideration Stage
Once the buyer has a deep understanding of their problems and challenges, they will likely move to the consideration stage and start assessing and evaluating the possible solutions that exist on the market. At this stage, you'll want to find ways to differentiate your solution and get ahead of any objectives or concerns your prospects might have. There are a number of tools that can help you accomplish this.
ROI Calculators
Value-based selling requires an intense focus on quantifying value for prospects and customers at every touch point in the buying process. One of the easiest ways to achieve this is by providing them with a self-serve value or ROI calculator in this stage as well.These calculators allow the user to input data about their current situation to find out how your solution will impact their business.
While it is always best to open up a conversation directly with your prospects to co-create value, ROI calculators are a great way to get the prospect engaging with your solution while setting the stage for value conversations throughout the entire sales process.
Value selling software
Making a compelling case that your solution is more valuable than the competition can be a complex and cumbersome process. Platforms like Ecosystem's value selling platform can simplify the process and significantly improve outcomes at this stage in the customer journey.
Value selling platforms enable businesses to quantify the specific financial and operational benefits their solution brings to customers. This goes beyond generic claims and provides concrete evidence of the return on investment (ROI) customers can expect, making their offering more compelling than competitors who only focus on features.
Further, collaborative platforms like Ecosystems offer a space where different cross-functional leaders (buying personas) can align with sales and customer success on the proposed and delivered quantified business outcomes. Partners and overlay roles can also access the same space, creating a single source of truth and closing the feedback loop. This is all accessible either stand-alone in a portal or in your CRM, like Salesforce, or Customer Success platform, like Gainsight.
Product demos and webinars
Prospects are not always open to one on one sales conversations with sales reps and instead would prefer either group product demos or webinars. These tools give prospects more hands-off experience while also getting a chance to learn more about the value of your solution. The key to effective product demos and webinars is to make sure you focus on the benefits and value of your solution and avoid only pitching features and functions.
Competitive intelligence and battle cards
The last value selling tool for this stage is competitive intelligence which often shows up in the form of a battle card. Battlecards are a great way to arm your sales team with effective messaging around how your solution's value is greater than the value of your competitors. While battle cards will often make comparisons between solutions based on features, the most successful battle cards are the ones that highlight the value of your solution.
3. Decision Stage
Now that the buyer understands how your solution can solve their problem, it is now time to help them make a decision and turn the prospect into a buyer. The only things standing in the way between your prospects and a deal are any final objectives and all the details required to finalize the deal. Let's take a look at a few tools to help build on the momentum you built in previous stages.
Business case software
With all the information you've gathered about your potential customer in the previous stages, now is the time to formalize your business case and move your prospect across the finish line. This is the stage where your value-based selling approach can really make an impact. And while creating a compelling business case can be time-consuming, tools like Ecosystem's Collaborative Value Assessment will make the process much easier and more impactful.
Ecosystem's Collaborative Value Assessment is designed to streamline the process of developing a business case by bringing stakeholders together to collaboratively assess and articulate the value of your proposed solution. It is a powerful tool that brings the right stakeholders and the right information together to create a compelling case around the business impact of your solution, helping your prospects to make a more informed decision.
Customer references
There is no better way to sell your value than to show examples of your solution working for your customers. This can be accomplished a number of ways like through customer success stories on the website, customer testimonials, and customer webinars - but none are more impactful than the customer reference call.
Connecting your prospects who are inches from the finish line with a happy customer is an all but sure way to close the deal. The best customer reference calls match the prospect with a customer who has a lot in common. Find customers who are experiencing similar problems to the prospect or who are in the same industry, share job titles, or have similar job responsibilities. And it goes without saying, but make sure the customer is a raving fan of your solution and brand.
4. Post-Purchase Stage
Even after successfully using value selling tools and frameworks to close a sale, the work doesn't end there. Promising value throughout the sales process is essential; but delivering on that value is what truly builds trust and lasting customer relationships. As the customer starts to implement your solution it is now the job of customer success to ensure successful onboarding, drive adoption, and maximize value. Let's take a look at a few value selling tools that can help customer success teams achieve these results.
Collaborative Success Plan
A Collaborative Success Plan is a tool designed to help your customers achieve the results they were promised. It does this by facilitating collaboration between customer success managers and their customers, ensuring a mutual understanding of goals, expectations, and a clear roadmap for success. The plan includes key components such as expected business outcomes, success metrics, responsibilities, timelines, and regular check-ins. By utilizing the Collaborative Success Plan, customer success teams can improve customer satisfaction, increase adoption and usage of their products or services, and ultimately drive greater customer retention and expansion.
Eco Web Services
Another powerful tool to help you ensure your customers realize the full value of your solution is Eco Web Services. EWS allows you to quantify and communicate the value of your products and services right from within your own solution, platform, or product. The APIs provide access to industry benchmarks, ROI calculators, and other data that can be used to create personalized value propositions for customers. This enables your customer success team to upsell, cross-sell, shorten sales cycles, and improve customer satisfaction.
Customer Success Platform
Customer success platforms are a great way to keep customers and solution providers connected. These platforms centralize customer data, track customer conversations and interactions, identify potential churn risks, and provide insights to improve customer satisfaction and drive growth.
Customer feedback tools
Lastly, it is important to constantly gather feedback from your customers. Customer feedback tools like survey software or call recording and transcription software give you the ability to quickly collect and analyze customer feedback. When leveraging these tools, you'll want to balance open-ended questions and feedback with closed-ended questions that allow you to better quantify the results. Use both the qualitative and quantitative feedback from customers to make changes to your solution, your messaging, your processes, or anything else that will provide more value and a better experience for your customers.
Putting It All Together
Consistently demonstrating and delivering value across the entire customer journey can be challenging without the help of value selling tools like the ones mentioned in this article. While many individual tools exist, juggling numerous products can be a barrier to effectively selling on value. That's why some vendors have consolidated essential tools and features into a single platform.
Ecosystem's Value Selling Platform is a prime example, integrating many of the tools discussed in this article for easy access and activation at each stage of the buyer journey. To further streamline the process, Ecosystems leverages AI through ViViEN, the Virtual Value Engineer. This AI-powered tool within the platform enhances value-based selling by enabling research, content creation, automation, and optimization throughout the buyer journey.
You can learn more about Ecosystems' Value Selling Platform or ViViEN by contacting us here.
Conclusion
The effectiveness of value selling in today's B2B landscape is undeniable. However, to truly harness its power, it's crucial to equip your sales and customer success teams with the right tools at each stage of the buyer's journey. From educational content and social media tools in the awareness stage, to value calculators and competitive intelligence in the consideration stage, and business case software and customer references during the decision phase, each tool plays a pivotal role in building trust, showcasing value, and ultimately closing deals.
