It can't just be what we believe is value, and it's got to be that the customer sees that what we're talking about is valuable to them. So asking the right questions to uncover what the buyer values most is what is crucial.
You're listening to the audible Ready podcast. The show that helps you and your teams sell more Faster. Will feature sales leaders sharing their best insights on how to create a sales engine that helps you fuel repeatable revenue growth, presented by the team at Force Management, a leader in B to B sales effectiveness. Let's get started.
Hello and welcome to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. I'm Rachel clap Miller. Joining me for our conversation today is Forced Management facilitator John Boney. Hi John, Hey, Rachel, how you doing.
Good? To see you again?
Good good, Yes, John's second time on the audible Ready podcast. We're happy to have them back with us. Today we are tackling the very small topic of selling on value, which we talk a lot about on the audib Already Sales podcast, But today we want to talk about what does that mean to sell on value throughout the sales process. We talk about it a lot it's so important, but it's almost this throwaway term. It's what we preach every day.
But the real crux move, so to speak, or the tactic elite sellers do, is to keep the focus on value throughout the sales process. So, John, let's kind of start with the mindset, the overall mindset that you need to make sure you are keeping the focus on value.
Yeah, really good question, and again thanks for having me back well being able to continue to share some thoughts and knowledge as people are always learning and getting better at what they do. So when you ask the question about mindset, it's such a critical component to being in
that mindset of being in a value based world. As a sell you've got to constantly remind yourself that your goal is creating and communicating value to your customer, and that means understanding your buyers needs, what their challenges are, what their goals are, and ensuring that your solution aligns to address those areas. It's about being genuinely interested in
helping your buyer succeed. And being genuinely is kind of the key that you've got to be genuine in that it can't be just a list of question that you're coming to ask about, but really caring about what the customer is trying to solve for and again aligning those things that around the buyer's needs, their challenges, and their goals and sharing that that solution ties back to it such a critical component.
Yeah, I was talking with Brian Walsh, another one of our facilitators, and he always has this phrase. He says, you know, with or without us, you may choose to go with us, or you may choose to go with somebody else, But no matter who you choose, what are you trying to accomplish? And that's what you're talking about too. It's like whe or without your solution. That genuineness you're talking about is getting the buyer to that outcome that's exactly right.
And you know, again, if you're not genuine about it, there's going to see right through it. And you've got to have that care and that fashion in order to understand where the buyer wants to go. And again, if it's just a list of questions and you're just peppering them for your own benefit rather than truly trying to help that customer, you're going to miss the boat, miss the mark. And so it's keeping yourself in that mindset.
It's keeping yourself in that compassionate understanding mindset to really ascertain what are those challenges goals that the customer's trying.
To get to right exactly, So now we have the right mindset, right, let's figure out how we how we do it. A lot of us think we sell on value and we're like, yeah, we do this every day, but do you really right? And it's about being really specific in to your point, drawing those links to the buyer might be clear to us because we're living in this world of our solution every day of how our solution helps achieve those positive business outcomes aka the value
the buyer is trying to get. But we have to make sure that line is clear for the buyer. Does the buyer understand how that helps? Because a lot of times, you know, our buyer is like in the sea of safeness with other vendors, right, everybody looks the same and they're probably in the weeds on our problem. They can't figure out how to fix it. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've been on with the vendor and I'm like, I don't even know, just can you fix it?
Like?
What do we do right, right? I know, John, you really focus on helping sellers reinforce and build on that value proposition as they go through the sales process. You know, it starts with the discovery to your point, finding out what the buyer wants. But let's talk about how you do that from that initial contact to closing the deal. We always say valuable is meaningful only if the buyer
understands it right, the buyer understands the line. Let's talk about that decision criteria or how we say and command a message, the required capabilities and how that links to building the value prop and how you deal that.
Yeah, kind of a two part question there. So you know, it's crucial to establish that strong value proposition from the initial contact, like understanding what's important to that customer, and this involves in understanding the buyer's decision criteria and required capabilities that you just referenced. And value is only meaningful to the buyer if they think it's meaningful. It can't just be what we believe is valuable. It's got to be that the customer sees that what we're talking about
is valuable to them. So asking the right questions to uncover what the buyer values most is what is crucial, and this could be in the form of cost savings or efficiency, or innovation or risk. All those are are things that the customer is going to view as valuable. And one of the best tips to keep the lines of communication around the required capabilities open is to continually check in with the buyer to ensure that you know
something hasn't change with those capabilities. We've got to stay on top of the changing environment that happens in today's world of capabilities or decision criteria can change on a
consistent basis because people are changing environments and changing. Priorities are changing and every scenario that we're in, and so you know, we've got to make sure that we are staying on top of and validating to reinforce what that value prop is, to make sure that we're in front of that and we're hearing what the customer is saying and documenting those and getting agreement that what the customer is saying is their value prop and what our aligned
solution to solve that is. We're continually validating that and communicating that on a consistent basis.
Right, And to your point, you don't want to focus on a value of a requirement that has now changed, right, and they're like, hey, that's great, that's all you do, but this is.
More important, right, That's right, because if it changes and we're focused on something that's not important to them anymore, we're going to look like we're not understanding what their business is or we're not listening to what's happening within their organization. And again, Rachel's private said a million times over that two things that are said about us as customer facing folks is that we don't listen to what the customer is saying, and we don't understand their business.
So constantly validating that and getting alignment with the customer that we're hearing them and we're understanding what their priorities are are just critical.
You mentioned this in just a minute ago, but I wanted to dig a little bit deeper on it. So let's say we've done our initial discovery, we've got our initial list of required capabilities, we feel like we know the importance of where it stands, and then the customer then rere validating because I was like, actually, this is probably more important or this is what does that tell you? As a seller, like you can't just who my gas is, right, You can't just take that change at face value keep going.
It's probably indicative of something. What is that signaling to you?
So, if I'm understanding your question, it's you know, how do we make sure that we're keeping the value front and center of the conversation?
Yes?
Always, But you know, if all of a sudden something else becomes more important or the priorities have changed, are we thinking this is a different ship from a company? Could that be indicative of a competitor, like the change in priorities might tell us more about well, absolutely, going on right, Yeah.
Really good point. So as relates to that, if something changes, there's a plethora of things that could cause that to be happening. Right. It could be that there's a competitor that has influenced the decision criteria and now the customer's thinking in a different way than they were before. It could be that there's a change in leadership, that there's a change in the priorities of what it is they
need to solve for. There could have been an event that happened, like a breach of something that has caused a more urgent criteria to be prioritized within how they're going to make their decision. That could be customer loss, that could be so again us being aware of what is happening within the organization, and that's probably going to
take us. I can almost sense what the next question is going to be Rachel about, how do you make sure that you're in front of that and who are the folks that you need to be talking to to avoid what we like to refer to as a single threaded decision versus a multi threaded decision.
So, as we know, the value prop becomes stronger when you're multi threading your deals and when things like this happen where changes are happening, the more tied we are to additional people, the better position will be. So, what strategies do you use or do you encourage sellers to use when trying to make sure they're building out relationships with more than one person, building out the foundation to build that collective yes and not just getting that yes from one decision maker.
Yeah, So when we're going back to that value prop, it becomes more robust, more, it becomes bigger as we deal with that multi threaded opportunity. And we talk about
this a lot, and you just mentioned it right the collective. Yes, So the strategies that we're we're looking at when it when it when we talk about multi threaded opportunities, it's ensuring that we are in front of not just the decision makers, but also some of the folks that are involved in the organization with using or implementing the technology that or whatever the service or product is that we may be addressing with our client that solves their problems.
And so there's a lot of things really that we need to be able to pay attention to, and you know, I want to take a little bit of a deeper dive on this. The first one is who are the key stakeholders. We've got to identify them early and often because, as I mentioned before, they change. We've got to map out that organization and we do that through talking to various people, asking the questions of who else we can
talk to, and doing some research. The second is tailoring our value problem, the value based conversation that we're having. It's tailoring it to the people we're talking to. If we're talking to an executive level, it's a different conversation. We're talking to somebody who may be lower in the organization and we get delegated to who we sound like is another common phrase that we hear a lot. So it's making sure we're personalizing that communication and using relevant
case studies that apply to those different people. The other piece is facilitating some of the other internal discussions that need to take place, like pulling different groups of people in to again gain collective understanding of what's happening. And that involves building your champion and providing resources that are
relevant to those different groups. And as I mentioned before, that continuous validation with regular check ins and feedback loops that we need to have to ensure that you're not going off track and you're going down the wrong path. And then that helps you build that consensus by aligning
those goals within the organization and addressing their concerns. Again, you're hearing an understand what it is the customer's saying, and as you're having these different discussions, this is so important and I see this ball get dropped fairly frequently, and that's the follow up the post communication and how that gets translated back into the post sale engagement and the customer success programs to ensure that they understand what's happening. And then not coming in cold when they get the
ball handed to that. So there's multiple steps that kind of play into this multi channeled approach of talking to a lot of different people. It takes a lot of effort and it takes a lot of determination in order to make sure you're in front.
Of those right people right you're pulling the right people together. But to the point of what we're talking about today, we might use the phrase political landscape, like what's the landscape within the account? But all of this helps to make your value prop stronger.
Yeah, for sure, And you know, strengthening that value prop is it's been the component that we've been talking about the whole time, and it's an ongoing process that we have to make sure we're talking through, not just at the front, not just in the middle, not just at the end, but we're consistently having this conversation.
It's around because you mentioned a stack wriking or prioritizing dishes and criteria as so you can better articulate the value of your solution and your differentiation. But as you multi thread these deals, it can help you if there's changes, but the value may not be the same to each player within the with your own company, within the company that you're working on, right, people might have different lenses.
That's exactly right, depending on where you are in the organization and who you're speaking to. Each group, person or department may have different goals, different needs, and different pains that they're trying to solve for, and we've got to make sure we understand that. If I'm speaking to somebody at let's just say it an implementation of developer per se,
what are their goals, needs, and pains. They're probably going to be more tactical in nature and more technical in nature, and I've got anunderstand them be able to speak to
them at that level. If I'm speaking as I move up the organization chain and I get into an executive level conversation, those goals and pains and needs are going to be different, and they're probably going to be more strategic, and they're probably going to involve things like cost, revenue, risk efficiency things at those nature that I've got to be able to speak at that level, and I've got to understand and be able to provide context of where
we can help them achieve those goals across all different types of people that I'm speaking to. And if I am speaking over top of somebody's head, I'm going to lose them in conversation and I may even put them in a place where they feel threatened about their job. And I don't want to do that. I want to speak at their level and understand what their goals, pains, and needs are. And the same thing at the executive level. If I'm speaking too tactical or technical, I'm not going
to be in that conversation for very long. They're going to ask me to go speak to somebody else again. They get delegated to who we sound like. So really critical that we're able to speak at the level of people that were in the front ups and they can follow along and understand how we're trying to solve collectively for the organization. Right.
So it's aligning value to your buyer, to the buying organization right, and their challenges and their initiatives and the PBOs at the organizational level. But then it's also nuancing that for the individual people that you're talking to within those organizations. How is your value aligned to the technical pain? How does your value aligned to the business pain? It's all important, right. We always say we've got to get higher, but you've got to have that old story.
Absolutely, it's it's understanding technically and from the business side of how we're going to be solving through these problems that our customers are dealing.
With and building it along the sales process, John, what is one thing you We have a lot of like quota caring reps that listen to this podcast and they are grinding it out every day. And we always say, sales is the game of inches, right, and some of these like little tidbits that we share on the Audible Ready Sales podcast can help people in the game of inches right, just give you that little little bit of
a bit of edge. What are the things that you really want to make sure those people listening take away from this conversation today.
Yeah, I would say, good question, Rachel, and I would say the key takeaway is selling on value is an ongoing process, right, It's not a one time thing. It requires deep understanding of the buyer's needs, continuous validation of the value prop and engagement on multiple stakeholders. So by keeping the focus on values throughout the sales process, you not only increase your chances of closing the deal, but also build stronger, more trust based relationships with your clients.
So again that key thing is selling on value is an ongoing process, not just at the beginning.
That's it. That's it. Thank you, John Boding, Thank you.
I appreciate it. Rachel, good talking to you.
Yes, be sure to listen to our other podcast with John. We've linked it up in the show notes. It's also another great conversation. And thank you to all of you for listening to the Audible Ready Sales podcast.
At Forced Management, we're focused on transforming sales organizations into elite teams. Our proven methodologies deliver programs that build company alignment and fuel repeatable revenue growth. Give your teams the ability to execute the growth strategy at the point of sale. Our strength is our experience. The proof is in our results. Let's get started. Visit us at forcemanagement dot com.
You've been listening to the Audible Ready podcast. To not miss an episode, subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast player. Until next time,