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Focus on Value Based Sales:
Increase Sales by Using
Value Based Leadership
How can value based sales help your business grow? Use value based leadership to create a unique value proposition. Then use sales training ideas and sales training games to model how to sell value.
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In today's highly competitive global market, focus your small business sales efforts on value based sales.
Value based selling will help you position your products and services on the basis of value rather than on the basis of price.
Focus on the value in the overall solution that you and your business provide. As well, as the value in the relationship with your employees (from sales, to customer service, to shipping and even invoicing).
Your Unique Value Proposition
What's unique about your business? How do you differentiate your business? Sell Value.
Most small business owners have a hard time differentiating their business from their competitors. So develop your sales differently: demonstrate value based leadership.
All your customers expect good customer service, the best quality, the best delivery, and the best price.
All your competitors say they provide the best service, the best quality, the best delivery and the best price. (Who is going to say "I have mediocre service, average quality, inconsistent delivery and high prices"?) That level of best is what customers have grown to expect.
So how do you differentiate yourself enough to build a brand (your business) and grow your business?
How do you do this? You develop sales training strategies that model value based selling.
You ensure that your sales team (even if only a team of one - you), understands clearly how value based sales works - how it engages and retains customers.
What else do you have to offer?
Focus your small business strategies and sales efforts on building a strong and unique value proposition for your business, and then build strategic relationships with targeted customers.
Value based selling is more than competitive pricing:
It's about selling your products or services in a way that helps your customer gain an advantage or solution.
Perhaps your product will save your client money and lower their costs. Perhaps your service will result in your customer being able to lower its inventory or respond better to seasonal demands on inventory.
Whatever you focus on, make sure that your business culture accepts and supports value based selling (or customers will receive mixed messages - and that's not good).
Work to find value in your small business that is unique; and not easily replicated by your competitors. You are selling the unique value you and your organization brings to your customer's bottom line.
Focus on that value and develop a marketing mix strategy and a sales strategy that delivers the value to your customers.
And if your small business is a home based business, make sure that you 'know your worth'. And understand that you have your own unique value.
Sales and Your Business Strategy
To succeed in today's complex global economy, you need to clearly understand your industry's economic and driving forces, the market environment you operate in, and to have an intimate knowledge of your customers' business.
When you understand the relationship between economic forces, your market environment, have completed a competition analysis and understand your customers thoroughly, you will be able to position yourself and your business to become long term solutions providers by demonstrating value based leadership.
And when you connect that relationship with marketing strategies and sales tactics, you will be able to drive sales and business growth while increasing profit margins and decreasing costs; for both you and your customer. That's the goal in value based sales.
And a value based sales approach works for both business-to-business markets or business-to-consumer markets.
Do you know what the strengths and weaknesses of your customer or prospective customer are?
Do you know what opportunity or threats your customer's business or industry faces?
Your customers want to work with business owners who understand their needs.
That means you need to focus on understanding your customer's business performance indicators and how your product or service can help them achieve their goals (for example, reduce inventory costs; increase lead generation; increase sales to a specific market segment or demographic).
A commitment to value based sales will help you grow your sales.
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Selling Techniques
Successful selling experiences require using more than one technique.
Yes, face-to-face selling (particularly through relationship building) is often one of the more successful tactics.
But other techniques and strategies include building touch points and sharing information.
In other words, educating your customer or prospect on your products and services and also providing information that will help your customer in their business; making sure that your products or services are highly differentiated from competitors' offerings and communicating that differentiation effectively; and clearly understanding what your customers need in terms of value and delivering it.
Communicate with your customers and prospects in person; over the phone; through the mail (yes, letters, cards, coupons and order forms have high response rates if well designed and well executed); over the Internet through blogs, emails, social media, webinars, and your website; through print materials such as catalogues, coupon books, brochures, business cards, flyers and more.
Build your sales approach as a campaign:
Plan to make contact on a regular and frequent basis (not too frequently to the point of irritating customers or too infrequently to the point of being forgotten) and align your campaign with a strong identity program that is consistent with your brand.
Customer Relationship Management
Customer loyalty is built by giving value first in all aspects of your business. As a small business owner or manager, you need to commit to offering the best products and/or services.
Ensure that you regularly ask your customers for input and feedback (and both listen to it and act on it) to continuously improve your processes.
Your customers will respond to the value that you add, not only to the solution you propose but also to the relationship you build together.
Buyers Needs and Wants
What do customers want? Market research says that customers have an expectation of good quality, good price and good service; that is the minimum requirement for doing business today.
What more do you need to provide?
Knowledge. Reliability. Consistency. Communication. Discover what your customers value, and provide it.
Note: customers have unique and individual needs; they do not all value the same things. Make sure you clearly understand what each individual customer or market segment wants or needs.
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Sales: Making Contact
In a business to business selling environment, it used to be that it would take between seven or eight touches to make a sale (or not, since not all contact means that a prospect will buy).
In this Internet age, it takes more touches.
Why? Because we have become both 'ad blind' and somewhat 'insensitive' to touches.
What this means to the small business owner is that your communication (and touches) need to be different from others (not imitations or copies of what everyone else is doing), it needs to be believable and sincere, and it needs to be memorable.
The Sales Cycle
In a business to business sales environment, the selling cycle takes longer to close (and is often more complex) than ever before.
To effectively grow your sales, you need build a plan that will help you to optimize your efforts.
Focus your planning efforts on a lean sales process that: will solve your customer's problem or challenge; has value (i.e. reduces time and/or cost); provides not only what the customer wants but more than has been identified (over-delivering); and that provides a solution that offers convenience, high quality, a price that is acceptable, competitive and covers the business' costs, and exceptional service.
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