Is This Missing from Your Value Prop?
Most value propositions sound polished but fail to move buyers. Too many sellers miss this one critical element...
Don't forget to check out last week's top tip: No More CRM Excuses!
For more strategies like this, check out my sales tip video library on YouTube...
If you prefer to read - here is the transcript:
A few years ago, a customer of mine sold a great deal to his customer. He sold a product to replace a product that his customer was using, that was probably 25 to 30% more expensive. But he did it by showing how the customer could use significantly less product, thereby improving his operation and improving the annual expenses associated with this product line. Sounds great. Absolutely.
But it almost failed miserably. Why? Because the sales rep didn't think to manage the change that was required inside this customer in order to actually implement the value that they talked about in the sales process.
Selling is a change management process. And if you think about change inside an organization, huge amounts of it fail because we haven't implemented it correctly. There's a couple of things that you can be doing in order to ensure that your changes stick, and the customer continues to want to buy from you and doesn't cancel or stop doing business with you because they think you are a failure.
One in the pre-sales process before the customer has signed or as you're getting close to signing, talk about what the change process will look like and ask specifically if they know of any red flags or any people in the organization who might resist the change. Because those are people you're going to have to work with to handle. Talk about the customer., talk to the customer about the process after the change. So make sure the customer knows that you will be onsite at certain regular intervals or checking in with them, providing training, making sure that the people who are in charge of the actual implementation are doing the implementing.
And then of course, after the sale. Don't walk away. You've heard me say before that selling starts when the customer says yes.
As the owner of that account, you need to be present with the customer and making sure that they're implementing the changes that they said they wanted to, and that everyone in the organization is on board with implementing those changes. When you spot a resistor or a sabotager, you need to address that right up front and work through it professionally with the person in question, as well as your buyer to make sure that the changes are implemented as planned. Because only when you do that and the customer realizes the true value do you maximize the value of the sale for the customer and of course, for yourself.