The Power of Value Selling (Book Summary

The Power of Value Selling by Julie Thomas

Foreword — The Power of Value Selling: The Gold Standard to Drive Revenue and Create Customers for Life

• Is this individual here to help me, or to sell me?

I. Why ValueSelling, Why Now

1. Specialized Sellers, Exploding Sales Tech, Sophisticated Buyers (What’s Changed)

• Sales leaders fail to interrogate the why behind wins, and they set goals for a volume of activity that eliminate the possibility of careful, methodical action.
• “Often, B2B buyers don’t buy the best solution but rather choose the lowest-risk solution.”
• High-performing reps routinely focus on the other person, their challenges, motivations, and goals.

2. How You Sell Is Just as Important as What You Sell

• Sales engineers, customer success, executive sponsors, and leaders are involved earlier and earlier in the sales process.

3. Modern Selling Is ValueSelling (Why Value Is Still Important)

• 64 % of B2B buyers cannot differentiate one brand’s digital experience from another’s.
• No matter what you’re selling, you’re selling change.
• When sales orgs conduct win/loss analyses for why the deals are lost or stalled, it’s nearly always because the solution was not mapped to business issues and outcomes.
• Salespeople make the mistake of viewing discovery as a one-time event.
• We can’t always sell the way that buyers want to buy; sometimes that would amount to providing a price quote and nothing else.

II Put the Pro Back in Sales Professional

4. People Buy from People: Building Credibility, Trust, and Rapport

• The customer expects you to show them that you know them.
• Start with an understanding of their CEO’s top three priorities for the year, the company’s recent acquisitions or product news, and the likely business challenges on the executive’s radar?
• More than four out of five (89%) of top performers report that they do research “all the time” before reaching out to any prospect.
• High-performing reps routinely use value-based stories to captivate, create engagement, and entice busy executives into having meaningful business conversations.

5 .Think Like an Executive

• A healthy company will show Net Cash Provided by Operating Activities as increasing over time.

6. Mastering Sales Conversations: Asking the Right Questions, at the Right Time

• Problem
  • What are the problems the prospect is dealing with?
  • What’s causing these problems?
  • How do these problems impact the business objectives?
• Solution
  • What does the prospect believe to be the ideal solution?
  • How will that solution impact the business?
  • What competing solutions are being considered?
• Value
  • What quantified impact will solving the problem provide to the business?
  • What’s the quantified impact of not solving the problem?
  • Is that quantified impact enough to motivate urgency and bring about change?
  • What’s in it for the prospect?
• Power/Decision-Maker
  • Who is involved in the buying decision?
  • Who has the power to sign the purchase order?
  • Will other departments need to review the final contract?
  • When can you meet with everyone involved?
• Plan
  • What next steps are the prospect recommending?
  • Is a proof of concept or ROI analysis needed?
  • If your solution is the ideal fit, is there anything else that could get in the way of moving forward?
• Too many sellers make the mistake of viewing discovery as a one-time event.
• The discovery conversation can’t all be questions, either. You need to come prepared with value-added information, whether that’s third-party insights into industry trends, more information on your product/services, or a customized demo.

III Create Sales Opportunities You Can Win

7. Earn Time on Their Calendar

• Nothing will have a greater impact on your success than the attitudes you hold toward yourself, your prospects, and the activity of prospecting.
• Vortex Sphere of Influence: You can leverage all the ways in which your company impacts the market, increases awareness, and provides assets to influence potential buyers. This ecosystem of interactions and content is what we call the
• The Vortex Sphere of Engagement: Includes all of the channels and methods you’ll use to increase familiarity, educate and add value to create opportunities, and engage with potential buyers.
• The A-I-M framework
  • Anxiety: Creating anxiety triggers the “curiosity mechanism” in the brain, which strives to find a solution or understanding.
  • Influence: Once you’ve piqued their curiosity, move it in the right direction by speaking to the value you’ve brought other customers in the past.
  • Motivation: Circle back to the problem you can solve that provides enough value to inspire motivation and action.
• Hello, Connor. My name is Julie with ValueSelling Associates. You do not know me and were not expecting my call. The reason for my call is to see if you are available next Tuesday or Wednesday to understand more about your challenges around sales activity and possibly share how other customers have overcome these challenges with us.
• [NAME], we work with executives like you in the [ENTER INDUSTRY NAME] industry and have helped them solve this challenge as well as others including: [INDUSTRY-SPECIFIC CHALLENGE] [INDUSTRY-SPECIFIC CHALLENGE] [INDUSTRY-SPECIFIC CHALLENGE] Are these challenges you are currently wrestling with?
• [NAME], our customers include [Three INDUSTRY RELEVANT CLIENT NAMES], and in working with them we’ve seen: [INDUSTRY-SPECIFIC RESULT] [INDUSTRY-SPECIFIC RESULT] [INDUSTRY-SPECIFIC RESULT] We may not be a fit for your company now, but I’d like to schedule 15 minutes when I haven’t caught you off guard to discuss your challenges in more detail. I have time [ENTER DAY] and [ENTER TIME]. If that works for you, I will send a meeting invite to [CONFIRM EMAIL ADDRESS].
• Uplift your network by giving recommendations to colleagues and clients, and don’t be shy about asking for them either.
• One effective and underutilized tactic is to give unsolicited recommendations to clients.
• If you start with anxiety, that first email might look something like this: [PROSPECT NAME], I am sending a similar email to [COWORKER], [COWORKER], and [COWORKER] to determine who at [COMPANY NAME] would have the most interest in speaking with me about [LIKELY BUSINESS CHALLENGES]. Working with other companies and executives in your role, we have achieved [VALUE RESULTS] and [BUSINESS RESULT]. I have time [SPECIFIC DATE RANGE (e.g., Tuesday and Thursday afternoon PT)] to talk in more detail. If that doesn’t work, please suggest a time that does.
• If that second email focuses on influence, it will read like this: [PROSPECT NAME], I shared a Forrester report with you on LinkedIn and believe this one from McKinsey provides even more key insight into [LIKELY BUSINESS CHALLENGES]. We’ve worked with other [INDUSTRY] executives like you to take advantage of these unique market conditions, and I’d like to schedule 15 minutes to provide more information to guide your thinking.
• Aim to spend 2 hours each day on targeted outreach — that’s in addition to list preparation, research, CRM updates, cadence personalization, understanding the sphere of influence, analysis, practice, and dedicated skill improvement.

8. Uncover Business Problems Worth Solving

• Objectives relate to goals; issues relate to the operational gap to achieve those goals. The objective may be to increase revenue; the issue is how they’re going to do it.
• Sales reps were prohibited from doing a demo until they understood the issue and problems a prospect was addressing. If you haven’t uncovered issues and problems worth solving, don’t waste your time pushing a solution.
• The best sales professionals are actually problem experts. They diagnose before they prescribe.
• To be successful, it is critical to connect to and confirm that the prospect’s understanding of your solution is complete and correct and to do that from the prospect’s perspective and in the prospect’s language.
• So, start with your solution — ask yourself: What do we provide that’s different from any alternative? When you have the answer to that, the next question is: Why would a company or individual need that capability? Now you can shape those statements into direct questions that will help your prospect to understand and confirm in their own terminology how your product uniquely solves their business issues and problems — and satisfies the questions they must resolve in order to purchase.

9. Eliminating No-decision Opportunities and Improving Forecast Accuracy

• The Four Questions for Efficient Qualification
  • Should They Buy?
    • What’s driving their need to change and to change now?
    • Can you clearly and effectively position your product/service as the unique solution to the specific problems that make the business issue so convoluted in the first place?
    • You should have answers to the following questions: What is the high-level business issue? Is this issue measurable, time bound, and related to the business objective? What are the problems that are getting in the way? Does your solution solve those problems? Has your prospect shared what they need? In the prospect’s mind, is your solution the best alternative?
  • Is It Worth It?
    • You should have the answers to the following questions: Has the prospect identified how they will measure success? Have they defined the expected outcomes and time frame? What metrics will be impacted, and what is the baseline to determine improvement? Does the prospect think those results are achievable? Is the quantified, agreed-upon value or outcome more than the investment? How does your business outcome impact the individual? Is there enough personal value to support the change? Does the prospect agree to the quantifiable impact?
  • Who Can Buy?
    • You should have the answers to the following questions: Does this purchase price logically fit with the prospect’s authority level? Do you understand their decision-making process? Who is involved in the decision? Who is the final decision-maker? Once the decision is made, who executes the decision?
  • When Will They Buy?
    • A critical component of the plan is a timeline that the buyer agrees to — and one that includes milestones and specificity on what has to happen before, during, and after the purchase. The timeline begins with the end in mind. The end from the prospect’s point of view is the outcomes they expect from your product or service.
    • You should have the answers to the following questions: Does the timeline map to the time-bound business issue? Does the timeline include the timing of expected outcomes or value? Does the timeline end with the positive outcome expected by the prospect? Does the timeline include all of the necessary departmental reviews, e.g., legal, procurement, and data compliance?
    • Are these departments aware of the timeline? Is the timeline agreed to in writing?

IV Enable the Buying Process

10. Reverse Engineering the Buying Process

• Sales is the facilitation of buying via the transference of confidence from the seller to the buyer.
• Differentiation must go beyond product capabilities. To begin your search for the differences that matter to your buyer, examine three areas:
  • Customer Experience
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Risk Mitigation

11. Speak Value to Power

• You don’t have to be an executive’s peer to sell to the C-suite.
• The secret to selling to the C-suite is being relevant, credible, and engaging executives in business conversations.
• Many salespeople fool themselves into believing that someone other than the final decision-maker can sufficiently sell for them internally.
• A senior vice president at a company with 52 employees probably carries less decision-making authority than a director at an Adobe or Intuit who oversees a few hundred individuals. Don’t just look at a person’s title on LinkedIn — closely examine their roles, responsibilities, and span of control.
• Depending on the company, the individual with the budget to fund an initiative may not be the final decision-maker. For example, a vice president of sales might have the budget to fund sales training and need approval from the CEO to actually buy.
• Use the following questions to identify power:
  • Who else besides you is involved in the decision?
  • Who else is affected by this decision?
  • Who has the budget to fund this initiative?
  • What or who could stop this initiative?
  • How have decisions and purchases of this magnitude been made in the past?
  • Have you sought approval for a purchase on this scale in the past?
  • Once the final decision is made, what happens next?
  • Is there anyone who could veto your decision?
  • If you had to get more funding, who would you turn to?
• When it comes to executive access, the most dependable tool at your disposal is referrals.
• You will likely run up against two distinct types of human gatekeepers: administrative assistants and middle managers.
• When engaging these admins, your best bet is to be direct and ask for help – Under what circumstances would your chief sales officer be willing to take a meeting?
• Avoid voicemail. Human-to-human connection is the way to go. Ask if the person you want to talk with is actually in the office, what’s the best time for reaching them, and what’s the best way to set an appointment.
• During the very first meeting with a mid-level prospect, set the expectation that you need to meet with the CFO, CIO, CEO, or other top executives who are most impacted by the success of the project or involved in the decision-making process.
• One of the most effective tactics is to negotiate what we call a top-to-top meeting. Offer to bring an executive from your company to the next meeting with the gatekeeper and the target executive from their company.
• You’re probably wondering what bargaining chips you have at your disposal — start here:
  • Information that’s not publicly available — whether it’s client-specific, an internal roadmap of panned solution upgrades, etc.
  • Expertise — taking the previous example, this might be an implementation journey roadmap or consultative advice on a business process issue the prospect is facing.
  • Access to satisfied customers — speaking with clients who have been in their shoes is a fantastic way to build trust and open the doors to power.
  • Extended trials, customized environments, and loaner equipment/services — here again, access to solutions that solve smaller, immediate needs are a highly effective option.
  • Embellished deliverables — items like the bespoke ROI analysis are tremendous tools for instilling confidence.
  • Pre-sales support — bringing in an SME from your organization to answer outstanding questions and walk through technical implementation.
• If the previous tactics fail to produce results, consider going around this individual. It’s risky. You could damage your relationship with that person beyond repair, but if you can’t access purchasing power, the sale is already at risk.
• One email with a subject line like, Do you still want to connect on a call next Thursday?, when the prospect has no idea what you’re talking about will obliterate your credibility and chances.

12. Handling Objections and Negotiating on Value, Not Price

• Objections are a buying signal. While it might feel like you’re about to lose the deal, objections are typically a negotiating tactic or a cloaked request for more information.
• Objections typically fall into four buckets:
  • Fit: Start by answering one question from the prospect’s point of view: Why does your difference matter?
  • Value
  • Power: Can they buy?
• Plan: The sharp angle close is summed up by this question: If we come to an agreement on (value, plan, etc.) is there anything else that could stop you from moving forward?
• Begin the negotiating process with terms & conditions and with deliverables — price is always a function of these other two variables.

V Cement Customer Relationships

13. Land and Expand: Strategies for Account Penetration

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14. Creating Brand Advocates and Customers for Life

• Top performers also make a habit of extending their activities well beyond the signed purchase order — they follow the mutual plan through the implementation process, monitoring along the way, ensuring they hit those key milestones where value is realized and confirming its impact.
• What have you done to add value to a key customer this week?
• Small, personalized interactions across regular intervals are the key to staying top-of-mind and hooked into what’s happening at your client companies.
• Common areas for improvement:
  • Regular, value-added customer interactions and check-ins
  • Closing the loop on negative feedback
  • Providing quick solutions to issues with implementation
  • Ensuring all customer-facing roles have the tools to efficiently understand the client’s business issues and path to value realization
  • Being prepared to add value and learn more with every interaction
• Customers don’t expect perfection — they expect responsiveness