We in the SaaS world love to show off our product in a deal. So we feature-compare, talk about high-end user adoption, and demo our sleek UX.
Of course, getting into the product is essential to any sales cycle, but you’ll see more wins when you can anchor that demo to value. Perhaps your product can make their business more money, reduce spend, save them time, reduce risk, or provide other crucial benefits.
So what is value selling?
Value selling is the process of understanding a prospect or customer’s strategic priorities, articulating how your solution supports those priorities, and ultimately demonstrating the resulting financial and strategic value they will get from using your solution.
By selling on value, you can maximize your revenue while reducing risk and getting the deal through faster. Value selling helps you speak the language of executives and convince finance that your solution is worth the price.
Value selling reduces risk in a downturn
Selling on value is especially important in a downturn when new investments face higher scrutiny. Companies are searching for ways to ensure ROI and cut costs to provide a financial cushion to help them weather the storm. They are looking to right-size headcount and address other costs that ballooned during periods of growth. One of the first places they look to save money is tech spend, which means they begin reevaluating their current tech stack and looking for ways to consolidate.
In normal economic conditions, your existing pipeline is precious. In downturns, it’s the lifeblood of your company’s survival. To close those deals, you’ll need to lean hard into value, so your prospects understand the impact your partnership provides.
What’s in it for me? Why value sell?
- Get deals through even when unbudgeted
- Beat revenue leak by winning deals at a lower discount rate
- Play defense against competition
One other critical component to consider: You’ll get finance on board earlier. Since budgets are under heavy scrutiny (or nonexistent), finance plays a key role in the sales cycle. If you can proactively demonstrate that your offering furthers the business’s strategic objectives and offers qualitative and quantitative value, you have a leg up.
How to get started
When you value sell, you’re trying to accomplish three things:
- Tie your deal to an executive goal
- Develop an executive level narrative with quantified ROI
- Answer why and how “our solution” with tangible use cases and demonstrable value
To build this unique value story, you have to start with research. This includes independent research and conversations with the prospect. Your early stage conversations need to get to the bottom of how they make their money, what their goals are, and their current state. Then, you take that information, assess how your partnership will help, and craft it into a value point of view.
Your value point of view takes what’s important to them and tells the story of how your solution can support those goals, along with the potential impact.
As you learn more in each conversation with your prospect, keep building on your point of view. Continue anchoring to their priorities. Show how your solution helps them reach those goals.
A quick note: One of the biggest misconceptions about value is that you just need to flash up a big ROI number to win. But it’s so much more than that. Without a clearly articulated narrative and a justification for the numbers you show, a big ROI number won’t sell your product, in fact, it will discredit you in some cases. The numbers support your story, they don’t stand alone.
Run revenue with value selling
Value selling can elevate your product from a set of features to a strategic business solution. You may also find that your pitch attracts executive-level attention, accelerates your deal cycle, reduces risk, and maximizes the contract value.
Budgets are tight, but you can win your share by showing how your solution will make a difference for the company.
Want to see value selling in action? Fill out our Revenue Leak Assessment calculator to see how much you stand to lose and how to stop revenue leak in your business.
Don’t let revenue leak impact your bottom line. Clari’s Revenue Platform gives every revenue-critical employee one place to run revenue. Learn more in Forrester’s latest study, The Total Economic Impact™ of the Clari Revenue Platform.
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