"When values, thoughts, feelings, and actions are in alignment, a person becomes focused and character is strengthened."
John C. Maxwell
Stop for a moment, sit back and now reflect upon this question...
How much value are you creating for your clients and prospects to help grow your sales and their business?
All too often, I hear salespeople, sales management and those in executive management sing praise to the importance of creating value for their clients and prospects. Inside a sea of sales sameness, VALUE; irrefutably becomes one of the single biggest aspects.
However, in order build value, how many know the true meaning of value? Why is this so important?
"Know thy value, know thy worth"
Merriam-Webster defines value as:
- The monetary worth of something
- A fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged
- Relative worth, utility, or importance
- Something (such as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable
My question to all of you...
How many know what you're worth?
AVOID SWIMMING IN THE SAME OCEAN
There are way too many of you in sales that act like 'walking, talking brochures', as you simply regurgitate product information. Your clients and prospects aren't buying into your facts and features.
In fact, most aren't even product oriented in their thinking; what they're focused on is finding a solution to their challenges and solving their problems. This is what creates value for them.
When you pound your chest and rattle off great wizardry about your products, you fail to position you and your knowledge as the answer to their pain, frustration or aspiration.
Instead, all you've done is position yourself as a commodity, swimming in the deep blue sales ocean known as the 'sea of sameness'.
Attention sales community...
You've allowed the buyer to base more of their purchasing decision on price, thereby pressuring profit margins as they crush you with the sales sameness hammer.
A true sales professional creates value through the eyes of their clients. With 20/20 vision, they clearly gain the opportunity to be viewed like none other in the marketplace as if they've almost created a new market segment of one.
They have effectively repositioned themselves from their competition. Price now becomes a less dominating factor within the purchasing decision. I get it, at some point price does become an issue, but if they perceive unique value, price will never be THE issue.
"Creating value not only transforms sales effectiveness, but it also provides insulation from the price hammer."
CREATE AN ALIGNMENT OF VALUE
Building strong relationships and understanding holistically what value means, lays the foundation for becoming valuable.
Sales professionals create value alignment.
INTERNAL VALUE
A sales professional understands their value. They know value is deeply cemented within the foundation of their business house.
What makes you valuable?
People won’t ever engage in a business conversation nor buy from you if they don’t even understand why they should pay attention to you.
A sales professional understands their value statement is their promise. It's the value they deliver, communicate and our held accountable for fulfilling.
Given client expectations and the competitive business landscape, a sales professional consistently reviews their value statement as part of their personal business strategy. They spend time with their clients to see if they're actually meeting and fulfilling the aspects within their value statement with them.
On a daily basis, a sales professional will ask themselves...
- What do I represent?
- What is my ideal self?
- How would I describe myself?
- What are my values?
- What is my vision and mission?
"How well do you know your value statement?"
CLIENTS VALUE
A sales professional always looks at things through the eyes of their clients. They develop a true understanding of what they value. They realize all clients value different things; as there's no cookie cutter model and how to create it for them.
The same can be said for different people within the same organization. A sales professional gains an understanding and builds credible relationships with all of the people making up the buying team. This is to ensure their sales communication is appropriate for each one of them.
"Sales professionals do not cut corners and assume they know their client's value"
By strengthening the relationship, a sales professional is able to get a better sense of the current business situation and where their clients want to be; as this information is used to position their value to address their clients' initiatives, goals, desires, and challenges.
A sales professional will spend as much time as is it takes to gain an understanding of their client's value. They know taking shortcuts and skimming over key details will result in a failure to create and communicate value.
COMPANY VALUE
Company values are the guiding principles that are most important to a sales professional about the way the company works.
They align their values to the company's to create a value based go to market strategy. Words they align to...
- Being accountable
- Making a difference
- Serving others
- Doing what is right
When alignment of values happen, people understand one another, everyone does the right things for the right reasons. Value alignment helps the company as a whole to achieve its core mission, taking care of their clients and employees.
When values are out of alignment, with people working towards different goals, with different intentions, and with different outcomes; this ultimately damages work relationships, productivity, job satisfaction, and creative potential.
"How well do you know your company's mission, vision and value statement?"
In the end, a sales professional marries both values together in harmony and uses this to take care of their clients as well as to grow new opportunities.
ALIGNING VALUE REQUIRES PAYING CLOSE ATTENTION
Done with precision, building value positions sales professionals with a greater chance to grow sales and long-term business relationships.
I encourage you to go back and analyze some of your best client relationships.
Grab a sheet of paper and start asking yourself some of the following questions:
- Do I know what my client's value?
- Do they know what I value?
- Do they know what my company values?
And if you struggle at any level to answer, then I believe uncovering these could be the path to strengthening and insulating your relationships from hostile take-overs.
In order to crush your sales, I encourage you to pay close attention to the strength of your relationships, tolerance for change, your client's current situation and always ask questions.
It's imperative that in today's competitive business landscape, sales professionals must marry their value, their client's value and their company's value together in complete harmony; one that is uniquely suited to promote growth and better business.
I understand, I get where you all are coming from. Every day, I walk in your shoes. I am fully committed to helping your sales team integrate social aspects and heartfelt strategies into your current sales process to grow new business. I want you to get results. This is why I am passionate about doing this the right way, the genuine way, the authentic way! It's about understanding value before visibility.
Selling From the Heart is making a difference! I poured my heart into every page of this book and I think you're going to love it. You can find it on Amazon in paperback, kindle and in audio. You can click on the book image below and this will take you to Amazon.
In a world full of empty suits, I'm passionate about helping sales reps succeed by getting valuable before they get visible. I help sales teams understand the true value they bring to the market.
I appreciate getting the opportunity to share my stories. Integrating the use of social and sharing my story on LinkedIn was my “game-changer” in the highly competitive office technology world. With great pride I transform, challenge, coach and inspire sales teams to grow new business by helping them share their story and how they communicate it out by integrating the use of social inside the sales process. You can follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and on my podcast by clicking on Selling from the Heart.
