The Power of Customer Value - A Revolution in Sales Performance

There are three powerful reasons why you should take a close look at how you can use the customer value inherent in your products and services to greater advantage.

1. ‘Procurement’ only buys on cost? – Think again!

Recent studies from the International Procurement Leadership Forum (IPLF) and others show that purchasers are looking to determine the value that prospective vendors can deliver. A survey from the IPLF shows:

“…an additional 23% of value available from concentrating on strategic supplier management, across multiple value levers. This equates to an average value of €500m for each respondent and far outstrips the average annual cost down target of 5.5%.”

Those sales teams that can clearly demonstrate tangible value will have a clear and growing competitive advantage. However, we believe it likely that Procurement will occupy this space ahead of Sales. The implication for Sales is obvious.

2. The evidence for success

Those of our clients that use their customer value effectively increased their average deal size by 112% and their sales margin by 13%.

Just another outrageous claim? Well, before you dismiss this one, these are not our figures – they're our clients'.

You see, our clients all had one thing in common – they struggled to articulate their customer value or didn’t believe in customer value or believed that they were fully exploiting their customer value. In fact, most companies are failing to exploit between 50% - 70% of their potential customer value.

3. No way back for laggards

Such is the power of properly exploited customer value that those who fall behind in deploying it will find it almost impossible to defend against it or catch up once the competition has gained the competitive advantage.

Why we need a revolution in sales performance

Consider these two facts:

For the moment anyway, it is unlikely that your customers will have a buying process that is capable of distinguishing the potential value of your products and services from your competitors.
Our experience shows that companies are competing with less than 30% of their value!

Put them together and it's plain to see that the customer has only one choice - to buy on price.

Selling using your customer value, or Value Based Selling, deals with these issues by providing you with an enhancement to your existing sales process that fills the gaps in the customer's buying process.

The Customer Value Module guides both parties to adopt the right behaviours needed to secure a quality decision and provides the tools that allows the customer to understand the full potential value of your products and services - if you will, a guided selling and buying process that powerfully differentiates you in terms of both your selling style and overall value.

What are the benefits?

Ok, what would a 'Customer Value' based sales module offer you?

It is compatible with all mainstream sales processes.
Sets you apart in process, solution and performance.
Empowers your team to engage the executive level.
Engages all key customer people.
Gives the customer powerful new insights into its own business that were otherwise unavailable to it.
Empowers the customer to operate and own the determination of value.
Empowers the customer to differentiate between vendors.
Documents how value achievement will be accomplished.
Measures the value achieved to assure client retention.
If properly implemented will, on average, increase deal size by 112% and margin by 13%.
Gives real competitive advantage and avoids becoming a laggard.

The Customer Value Module

So, what are the process steps?

We approach Value Based Selling as a simple six step enhancement to your existing sales process that you can jump in to at the most appropriate point, depending on your existing sales processes and the amount of work in this area you've already put in.

1	Understand – What is it and is it right for us? You don’t mess with your sales process without a very good reason and without understanding what you’re going to change, why you’re going to change it and what you expect to get back for the risk and cost of the change. So step 1 enables you to understand the issues, the challenges and the rewards. We have created a set of Executive Briefings that aim to help you bring into sharper focus the power that is inherent in your customer value but also explores the right way and the wrong way to implement the customer value module. The executive briefings will place you in a position properly to judge whether Value Based Selling is right for your organisation and, if it is, how safely to enhance your existing sales process.
2	Identify – Let's identify your customer value components We'll help you identify the potential value in your products and services so you're best positioned to determine how to quantify the benefit you offer and how to adjust your value propositions.
3	Measure – Let’s quantify your total customer value This step is about assigning measures to each of your value components and determining the scale of potential value, both tangible and intangible, available for your customers.
4	Communicate – It's no use having great numbers if your customer wont believe them The evidence is overwhelming – conventional ROI tools don’t work. We equip you with a Value Simulator that provides a clear and crisp articulation of exactly where your customer value comes from and allows your customer to see all of the logic, assumptions and data used to calculate the value.
5	Skills – it’s the only way your customer will believe the numbers Our experience suggests that customers in general are not good at making complex purchasing decisions - and the clear implication for vendors is that customers are ill equipped to distinguish between different vendor offerings. The sales techniques and processes that you use need to guide your potential customers through all of the key steps needed to uncover the value of your products and services so that they can be both comfortable with the result and provide sufficient evidence to convince other, more sceptical, colleagues.
6	Track & Deliver – track your customer value to your customer's bottom line Stay sticky with your customer and help them track the value all the way to their bottom line. Create great case studies, improve renewal rates and expand your footprint with the customer – all based on undisputed empirical evidence of value delivered.

The Customer Value Module

To learn more about our Customer Value Module, how it came about, how it works and why it's better than traditional selling techniques, view the webcast.

To see what our customers think of our process, take a look at their feedback.