Key Principles and Tips of Value-Based Selling to Success

Jayant Ghosh
9 min readJan 28, 2022

Selling is the ultimate goal of all salespeople. Selling isn’t always your primary task, even though your organization has assigned you to close deals.

Globalization has made the world a smaller place. This has several benefits for businesses. In addition to streamlining and speeding up supply chains, hiring procedures have also been streamlined and simplified. The rapid connectivity, however, has created a distinctive dilemma.

Your prospective customers have access to more information and are already 60–70 per cent of the way through the buying process before they approach you, just as your company has more options for hiring vendors and staff members. Clients typically expect value services that are beyond what these firms can offer. As a result, sellers struggle with value management.

#B2B #SalesPeople are unfortunately more comfortable promoting their products than discussing their customers’ challenges. However, the average B2B buyer values a salesperson’s pertinent business knowledge much more than the ability to list product features, functions, and benefits.

We live in a world where there is more competition than ever before. Today, the key to success is meeting customers where they are and guiding them through a sales process. By using the correct #Sales methods, your company can take advantage of the impersonal marketplace and provide a tailored presentation for the huge and impersonal sector. Putting more thought into your approach can be a game-changer for businesses that rely on broad, haphazard marketing.

The value-based selling approach can help here. A value-based sale is all about providing value to the customer.

A value-based sale involves listening to potential customers and understanding their needs.

We’ll examine value-based selling here, along with its principles and the framework for value-based selling

What Is Value-Based Selling?

There is not as much complexity as you might think in the definition of value-based selling. A value-based selling strategy aims to provide the customer with additional assistance throughout the sale process.

The philosophy here is that salespeople should focus on being consultative and adding value to customers. Because of this, customers determine whether to purchase a product or service based on its potential value. By focusing on the value provided by the product or service, rather than the product or service itself, value-based selling places focus on how the product or service will benefit the consumer.

To ensure that customers have the information they need to make a decision based on the potential value of the products, the purpose is to focus on the customer’s requirements. All it takes is to focus on what your customers want, what they are experiencing, and how you can help them.

It is possible to charge higher prices to customers using this method while keeping them satisfied since their perception is that they are getting a value-added service. By using this selling strategy, you will learn about the different properties and services you can offer in order to better serve your clients and generate a higher profit.

How does it differ?

You can be more successful in determining your target market using the value selling method, not just when pitching to clients. Understanding your leads’ needs and explaining exactly how your product will benefit them will make your product stand out from the crowd.

#ValueBasedSelling can also be beneficial to Customer Relationship Management during the #SalesProcess because it is a very effective technique for building and nurturing relationships.

As the entire sales strategy is geared toward helping the customer, there is a natural tendency to concentrate on how they experience the product. By building trust from the beginning, the customer relationship improves.

Value-Based Sales Principles

Know your prospects and do your homework

You can’t add value unless you know who your prospects are. Remember that the purpose of value-based selling is to complete the deal by prioritising your prospect’s needs. You can’t, however, prioritise your prospect’s needs if you don’t know what those needs are.

Always conduct your research to understand your contact — usually well in advance of making a sales call. Many companies and their salespeople spend numerous hours attempting to market to prospects, but few are ready to invest the time and effort in attempting to understand who these people are.

When investigating a prospect, strive to learn about their firm and sector, as well as their past and present trouble concerns. You’ll have a good knowledge of how to serve them best if you comprehend these bits of information. Having a better understanding of whom your prospects are leads to improved sales performance.

Knowing your prospects allows you to discover their pain spots and explain how your solution gets them from “Point A” to “Point B” with minimal risk and eventually solves the problem.

Tell Them you Know Them

Concentrate on the importance of resolving their problem

The emphasis in this scenario should be on the importance of fixing the problem that they’ve found. A prospect who cannot define the impact and cost of the problem, as well as the benefits of your solution, is unlikely to persuade his or her firm to invest in any solution — and the chances of winning are slim.

Never assume that your prospect is fully aware of all of these costs and repercussions. One of the most important duties of a salesperson in the early phases is to show the prospect how bad it would be to keep it this way.

To accomplish this, it is frequently necessary to point out facets of the problem that they may not have observed, or — even better — to introduce key topics that they may not have previously considered. Nevertheless, if you cannot determine the real value of fixing the problem, it might be best to qualify out the “opportunity” and defer it for future nurturing — even if your solution seems to be well suited

Help define the problem and be meaningful in very interactions

When communicating with prospects in value-based selling, maintain a conversational, approachable tone in mind. This demonstrates that you are genuinely interested in them and are not simply talking to them to make a sale.

Sales professionals ask targeted questions to get across the heart of what prospects truly desire. You gain two key advantages by pushing your prospects to tell you more about what they demand. For starters, it boasts a prospect’s trust in how well you grasp their issue. Second, you learn information that allows you to underline how great your offer is in comparison to what they’re doing. Understanding the value you can bring your clients is the key to developing a profitable #SalesStrategy.

Assist your prospect in determining what they may require from a solution in order to progress from their current condition to their desired outcome. Concentrate on co-creating a defined and limited set of requirements that the solution must meet in order to address business pain points. During the process, persuade your buyer to prioritise these solution needs and stack them to your advantage.

Your contacts are high-level decision-makers or influencers with limited time. Making sure customers don’t feel their time is being wasted by providing genuinely significant value in every client engagement is critical. Every time they connect with you, you want them to feel heard and supported.

This value can be shown by answering their inquiries clearly, directly, and thoroughly, or by offering pertinent insight and information that cause them to think differently than they did previously.

Make the buying process easy for the prospect

Conventional sales methods are frequently structured to meet the needs of the seller rather than the buyer. The major stages in your #SalesPipeline must be planned around the important stages and milestones in your prospects’ purchasing decision journey.

When using a value-based strategy, your goal as a sales professional is to function as a consultant or advisor, assisting your prospect in making the best purchasing decision possible. You’re asking your prospects to put their trust in you. Acting as an authority means that you expect others to believe you know what you’re talking about but are only willing to grant that trust to you once.

Make a conscious effort to tell your prospect what to do by sharing new ideas and methods that will assist them in bettering their competitive posture. If you claim to know everything there is to know about a product line, you should be able to back it up.

Work to increase your knowledge and experience so that when prospects ask you questions, you can provide them with a concise, accurate answer. Meanwhile, if you don’t know an answer off the top of your head, never give a confident, wrong answer. Inform the prospect that you will find out the answer as soon as possible. Admitting that you don’t know something helps to develop trust by demonstrating that you will not provide incorrect information.

Educate rather than sell to prospects and listen attentively

It may be tempting to begin your sales pitch as soon as you begin speaking with a prospect if you are migrating away from traditional sales techniques. However, this results in a big missed opportunity.

Resist the urge to get into your sales pitch as soon as you get the prospect on the phone. A good salesperson is someone who can speak effectively and concisely.

A skilled salesperson knows how to arrange information creatively and interestingly while still getting their message through. Begin the conversation by inquiring about their requirements and situation. You can find out straight from them what solutions they require to be successful.

Educating prospects and customers on a topic of interest is one of the most effective methods to deliver value to them. By choosing to educate the prospect first, you gain their trust and they will come to you for advice and information regularly.

Then, instead of lecturing them with presentations, you may lead them through viable answers to their problems in an instructive and entertaining manner during your discussion. Business partnerships are built on thoughtful questions and active listening.

It will finally encourage the prospect to buy your product or service since you have already won their hearts by demonstrating your involvement in resolving the problem.

Let’s wrap up

When engaging with prospects, one of the more customer-centric strategies reps can use is value selling. It is a mindset based only on “solving for the client.” One of the finest responses to present market situations is value-based selling. Finding points of uniqueness is critical to establishing a customer base that believes your services and is loyal to your brand as competition heats up.

You establish that uniqueness by conducting research, focusing on value-added selling, and delivering a clear explanation of the exact value your service will provide to each unique customer.

If you want to successfully use the strategy, be sure you lead with empathy, understand your prospect’s needs comprehensively, actively listen, and take on an advisory role in the process. If you can nail those critical factors, your value selling efforts will provide the desired outcomes. Best of all, you demonstrate to each prospect that you have the kind of care and attention that is becoming increasingly rare in an automated environment.

I turn the floor over to you. Feel free to tell me how you like this approach and whether you use it. Tell me what you think by leaving a comment. Still confused, discuss with me, connect with me on Linkedin.

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Jayant Ghosh

Author of articles Why What, How New Age Technology is Influencing Enterprise, and What Measures Should You Take If You Sell That.