The Power of the Sales Value Proposition

CATEGORY: Cold Calling, Preparation, Prospecting

Recently I’ve had a few people tell me that they could never make it in B2B sales. I completely disagree with their logic…here’s why.

The first person was saying that they don’t have the personality for sales. You know my thoughts on that. You can read all about it in an article I wrote called, can anyone be successful in sales?

The other person said they were not convincing or persuasive enough. They thought they needed to be a hard-core-closer. This is a common misconception of business to business sales. I can understand why people would think that it’s important to be like this in industries like, real estate, insurance, car sales, mattress sales, furniture sales.

Basically, business to consumer type sales would benefit from the being more aggressive.

However, you would not survive long in the business to business sales world if you acted like that. You can’t do that when there are multiple influencers and decision makers.

No, if you want to be successful in business to business sales you must understand how to deliver value propositions that connect with issues your clients face.

Let’s discuss the power of the sales value proposition.

What Are Value Propositions?

Value propositions are systematic ways of explaining why a particular feature of your product or service is important to a client’s goals.

Companies that have a one-of-a-kind product or service are few and far between. So, if everyone in a particular industry have such a similar product, how is there such a large gap between the ones at the top of the industry and the rest of the pack?
Easy. It’s their unified ability to use value propositions.

Who Uses Value Propositions?

Top organizations spend a long time with their messaging, marketing, and value propositions. They know how their products or services relate and make a difference to their clients. Any company that is serious about selling why one thing is better than another is a master at this. The company that is the best in the world in this area, in my opinion, is Apple.

Think about it. Phones. Computers. Laptops. Is Apple the only vendor that sells these items? Of course not! But they do it better than anyone, right?

Here’s a link where you can see amount of effort they put into their messaging, marketing, and value propositions. Their World Wide Developer Conference.

Why You Must Use Value Propositons

I agree with the statement that “sales is a transfer of emotion.” However, it is not always the case. What happens when the decision maker cares about the bottom line or they want to learn about the details of why one thing is better than another?

That’s where the sales person who is persuasive and transfers excitement gets into trouble. At the end of the day, sales people aren’t always presenting to the ultimate decision maker and we are relying on an influencer to relay our proposal and value propositions to another person.

We lose, more often than not, when we were persuasive because our contact will struggle in explaining the why.

The real power of the sales value proposition comes from how, if you deliver them correctly, people REMEMBER what you said! That’s critical in you winning or losing the sale.

Don’t overlook the power of having this strong messaging and the results that come from delivering a message that resonates and stays with your prospect throughout a sales cycle.

Summary of The Power of the Sales Value Proposition

In the commodity sales world, you need to stand out. That doesn’t mean to do something crazy and unforgettable. You need to show the customer the reasons why your product or service will best align with their goals for their organization.

Most of all, you need to get this across and have them remember it throughout their proposal evaluations. Value propositions help make sure they remember why they should go with you.

Learn about how to create value propositions that connect to what your clients care about inside of our Modern Sales Academy.