One of the top sales trends of 2024, value-based selling is a practice that takes a traditionally canned approach and transforms it into a personalized selling relationship. By shifting your sales practices toward value-based selling, your team will build more loyal customers, increase win rates, and improve product knowledge.
Securing team buy-in to switch your sales strategy to a value-based model is easier when your team has a clear idea of the benefits and methodology involved in selling value. Here are some of the top value points to emphasize and steps you can take to make this shift.
What Is Value-Based Selling?
Traditional selling focuses on the product and what it does, while value-based selling focuses on the customer and their needs. Through value-based selling, your sales team will highlight how your product can solve the customer’s unique pain points and add value through each stage of the sales process.
This strategy relies on your sales team’s knowledge of your product, and their ability to pivot features into customer-specific value points.
Benefits of Value-Based Selling
With this sales model, your team has the opportunity to:
- Boost your profit per sale: Value-based selling focuses on the unique benefits and outcomes your product or service delivers to the customer rather than competing solely on price. By aligning your solution with the specific needs and pain points of your prospects, your team can justify higher pricing, leading to an increase in profit margins per sale. When customers see the true value in what you’re offering, they are more willing to invest at a premium price.
- Increase your team win rate: Once customers understand the unique value your product has for them, they are more likely to sign. Implementing this strategy across your customer base boosts your overall win rate and accelerates your sales efforts.
- Build loyal customer relationships: Value-based selling allows your team to connect with customers on a more personal level. Rather than winning them over with the right price, your team conveys the utility of their product through proof of concept. As your product continues to solve customer pain points, your buyer loyalty will increase and produce long-term relationships.
- Enhance their product knowledge: Transitioning to a value-based sales model requires your team to know how your product can solve unique issues, rather than just its top features. This methodology encourages your team to increase their depth of product knowledge, making each salesperson more effective and increasing their ROI.
However, before you can start seeing these benefits, you must first understand how your team’s sales process will shift from selling products to selling value.
How to Start Value-Based Selling
If you think this sales model is right for your brand, follow these guidelines to design a strategy that works for your team. With a strategy in place, your team can leverage value-based selling to meet modern customer expectations.
1. Prioritize Research
Your team needs to have a clear understanding of your customers’ wants and needs before approaching them about your product. Prioritizing the discovery phase will set your team up for success later on by identifying pain points that can be addressed during demos.
Tools like interactive video demos can streamline this process by helping identify the features your customers care about most. They commonly offer engagement metrics to pinpoint which features are most important to highlight during in-person sales interactions.
2. Pinpoint the Product Value
Once they’ve identified the problem your customer is trying to solve, your sales team must come up with a strategy for highlighting your product’s value throughout the sales process.
Some common value propositions include:
- Time-saving
- Cost-saving
- Effective scaling
- Return on investment
- Increased security
- Boosted productivity
Knowing exactly what issues your product resolves (and how) allows your salespeople to communicate its unique value for your customer.
3. Avoid Rushing the Pitch
An essential part of the value-based selling process is establishing a relationship with your customer. Bombarding them with sales materials right away makes your team seem impersonal and pushy.
Even if your team is already aware of your customers’ needs, your sales reps should still take the time to ask customers personally during discovery. This also allows your team to fill in any knowledge gaps before offering solutions.
4. Communicate Value Points and Offer Guidance
After establishing a connection, your sales team can start offering suggestions that can solve your customers’ problems.
Not only is this a time for your sales team to pitch your products, but they can also offer up helpful resources like blogs or worksheets to build customer trust and product knowledge without the pressure of a traditional pitch.
Once your team has built trust with your customers, reps can start to highlight the exact benefits of your product. Encourage your sales team to use real-life examples that match your customer’s pain points so they can see firsthand how they may use your product to solve common problems.
5. Maintain Value Post-Sale
Even once your team closes a sale, the relationship they build with customers during value-based selling can continue to produce results. By staying in touch with your customers about product updates, training, and potential upsell opportunities, your team can convert a positive relationship into future revenue.
Build Your Next Sales Strategy
Value-based selling is just one of the many new trends in digital sales. To learn more about what’s going on in the sales industry, check out our blog or take a deep dive into our research for expert-level insights on how you should be selling.
