Business value selling techniques turn your B Players into A Players
Within just 30 days you can easily boost your B Players meeting effectiveness using value selling methodologies. Read on to learn the pillars of success used by high performance selling A Players.
High-Performance Selling
How do we elevate the “B” Players effectiveness in meetings? High-Performance Selling. There are six important tasks that most “A Player” sales reps perform before they meet with a prospect, whether an important, strategic one or just opening a new opportunity. It goes hand in hand that other less experienced sales, reps being the proverbial “B” or “C” players, would want to emulate and learn from the A players. These tasks are straightforward, support consultative selling, and lead to thought-provoking questions and a deeper sense of engagement with your prospect or customer as it demonstrates how your expertise is important to them – their business – improving their revenues and lowering their costs!
“ I look at myself as a business leader and not a CIO. I talk to my team about how to have different types of conversations…don’t talk about how great the new smartphone is — talk about how it will increase sales calls, drive up revenue growth, and improve market share.”
CIO, Global Consumer Goods Company
No shortcuts, please
Of paramount importance is to do the proverbial prospect and account due diligence and research. This includes understanding the target account and executive’s initiatives, be it their business or personal agendas. Public domain information, annual reports, and shareholder letters are the standard method for obtaining this information. Try to find CEO statements on how they are driving growth and initiates. If you can, try to align a similar customer of yours to what may be an industry concern at the target accounts executives. Use ABM to send 1:1 messaging. Use compelling value propositions and value selling techniques.
Commonly, the CEO’s objectives trickle down to all divisions or business units and to a host of decision makers and executive leaders. Indirectly, all programs still connect to the CEO in making money, saving money, and avoiding business risk. So, research how your target account makes money and where their financial gaps are. Priceless!
Who are you, again
Just about all executives have crammed schedules and will be unsure of why this meeting may be on their calendar. The average executive gets 120+ emails a day and has 4-6 hours worth of meetings. Maybe you arrived at his door following an Account-based Marketing (ABM) campaign? A cold call? A referral? When you walk in or get on the phone, first remind them who you are and what you will be speaking about. Talk about the business and if you can, any personal attributes for this meeting. Don’t forget to mention the value you bring on specific insights into their issues or problems. Act as a trusted advisor and sell using a consultative selling methodology, not faking as a Trusted Advisor. All these factors relevant to business value selling.
Be Relevant and Right Away
Right out of the gate, to help establish yourself as an expert, ideally, as a peer to peer, you want to validate that you are respectful of the executive’s time and get right to the point. Deliver a new way of addressing a problem, industry insights, sell the business case, and a different point of value and lean heavily on having the financial value that can fix their problems…after all, it’s THE LANGUAGE of decision makers, of their bosses, and ultimately the board. Influence decision makers by selling directly to them, sell top-down or sell bottom up but sell value and align to the executive leadership to get a seat at the table. Stay on value and don’t crumble under the guise of sell features, even when they push you. They all want to see how YOU can impact the bottom line.
Ask intelligent questions
Try to place emphasis on value points and product features and how they drive improvement to the business and the KPI’s or metrics that decision makers and execs use to run the business. If you’re meeting with the CFO, bring up your Sales Playbook, or Challenger Sale process containing their cash flow analysis as significant. Bring up your differentiators in value with a solid NPV and IRR and above all, a good 5-year cash flow statement. This is what the decision maker spends time on and so should you! To the CIO, take a risk. To the COO talk measuring technology and IT effectiveness and performance.
Two Ears and One Mouth – high-performance selling players listen
You need to probe and ask revealing questions and count to 10. Silence is an intense weapon of choice for A Players and B Players alike. Silence exudes confidence and confidence extracts more meaningful information. A winning dialog with a prospect or client is where the other party does 80% more of the talking. Needs-based selling is all about this. Your role is to coach the conversation so that you learn the critical action steps needed for a win. Sales 101 = learn to fully comprehend a prospect’s or customer’s problem before proposing a solution. High-performance selling players will listen more than they talk.
Add value to the conversation
Control the attraction to reveal your Products or Solutions value too early. Yes, talk financial value and know how to speak to the C-Suite, but do NOT focus on how the gears work or how the donuts are made. It’s the money and process that sells early in the sales cycle, the product will follow. If you pitch, you insult. If you pitch, you could be premature. If you pitch, you’re NOT ONE with the question. Listen, repeat what you hear, use reference “stories”, cite statistics, talk about their business and personally, be an expert…. leave the product in the bag. VITO selling helped get you the meeting, Trust-based Selling keeps you in the room. High-performance selling players don’t pitch — they score by listening.
Over 87% of your prospects will “close themselves.” That’s right…they will ask… “what happens next” or “we are ready”. Sales from the 90’s are over, now customers want to be empowered. Let them be and they will reward you for your confidence, dignity, and industry perspectives and insights.
Financial value is not just about ROI or revenues and costs. It’s thinking like a peer to a decision maker, standing-in like a peer. When Sales & Marketing align and move in unison to a collaborative result, the benefits extend to everyone in your company who needs to provide a customer-centric, outcome-based sales and marketing culture. In the end, you get a stronger consultative selling methodology and greater results.
Need to get more meetings with those C-level executives? Want a presentation filled with business outcomes and metrics that will blow them away? SPEEDSHEETS from Revenue Accelerators are designed to do just that. SPEEDSHEETS deliver account-specific and personalized, executive Business Value Narratives for the “front end” of demand gen and the sales cycle. Sales reps need to be differentiated—Revenue Accelerators gives you the tools to get the meetings with coveted decision makers and C-level executives and show them why they not only need your solution, but they need it now.