Value Messaging is Absent

Industry sales training firms and consultancies like Force Management®, LeadBridge, and CEB’s Challenger™ to name just a few of perhaps hundreds, continue to be backed by positive testimonials. For example, Force Management’s training gives salespeople the soft skills they need to create sales conversations and planning, LeadBridge supplies salespeople with IT related scripts and company backgrounds, and Challenger Sales™ helps Reps tailor a company’s solutions into innovative ideas and insights with executives.

With all the beneficial qualities that each possess, they appear to fall short in delivering substance in the form of account-specific C-suite value propositions and quantifiable business outcomes content specific to each executive.

“U.S. companies spend $70B annually on training averaging $1,459 per Rep yet when it comes to equipping Reps with relevant knowledge the ROI of sales training is disappointing.”
Harvard Business Review, 2017.06

Typical Training

The bulk of Sales training firms have built successful models consisting of commanding the message, improving the sales conversation, but leaving it up the Sales Rep to physically articulate their value and differentiation; especially in financial terms. Without this, salespeople fall back on selling features, do not differentiate using clear and concise business measures, and inevitably sell too low. The industry norm on training typically focuses on generating a repeatable framework to guide the customer conversation and creating ramps to multiple levels of the organization through a message that transforms with the audience.

“Companies unable to articulate business value experience 24% longer sales cycles and 20% deeper price discounting.”
SiriusDecisions, IDC

However, 90%+ of all Sales Reps are unable to quantify their business outcomes, present it with financial acumen, and align it with the prospect’s P&L. Therefore, guiding your messaging to decision makers and executives without financial value is like speaking a different language when out of the country.

You have 5 Minutes!

It can take at present, 12-14 touches to connect and engage with a target account executive. The higher up you go, to the Sr. Decision maker and C-suite, it can be considerably longer. With only seconds to connect to senior-level target account decision makers in email or on the phone, and at best a few minutes in person; quantifiable and account aligned business value is critical to establish credibility and the beginning of trust.

“Any strategy lives or dies on the basis of the customer value proposition.”
Frank Cespedes, Harvard Business School

What’s Missing?

Strong openings. Asking discovery questions early on may be effective when selling to mid-level, but it is a big indicator of unpreparedness as you move up the chain. Sales reps need business outcome knowledge and financial acumen before they make the call.

Sales conversation substance. Competitive selling is not always repeatable across accounts and industries. Sales Reps need to be equipped with value messages that apply to new audiences as account-specific insights.

C-Suite Access. Training in soft skills and account-specific financial messaging facilities C-suite selling opportunities. Vendors need to add to their Sales and Marketing teams, researchers who can bring together quantifiable outcomes to present to executives.

Value Messaging Per Account. Training sales staff in soft skills and sales tactics can only go so far. Teams need to be equipped with value messaging for each account they hold. Value for each account builds longer relationships and help salespeople command their message.

Bridging the Gap

Sales training and the array of frameworks do a good job but with varying degrees of success. Some as low as zero. With many accounts of success, there is still a gap. SPEEDSHEETS fill that gap by including C-Suite grade business cases and research that aligns vendor business outcomes with target account-specific value and 10K initiatives. It hits home into the heart of the target C-suite.

When this is paired with the skills salespeople learn from Sales training, they can command messages to executives and key decision makers. SPEEDSHEETS give salespeople access and relevant account value to align their message.

Revenue Accelerators is the ONLY provider empowering Vendor Sales & Marketing teams to easily and more rapidly acquire high-performing opportunities from accessing and engaging Decision Makers and C-Suite. By defining the Vendors solution’s financial value, aligning it into Target Account objectives and business initiatives and using 1:1 ABM value messaging in SPEEDSHEETS; we transform Product to Value selling overnight for faster and easier selling. www.revenueaccelerators.com