Pitches become conversations. Hesitation becomes confidence. “No decision” becomes a conversion.
Regardless of the economic climate, the plight of B2B sellers is the same: How do you quantify and communicate financial justification for highly scrutinized B2B investments? At the same time, how do you build confidence and connection with buyers along the entire journey? The racetrack of evolving tech (and more complex business needs) could spin the heads of even the most agile sellers; add an inevitable economic downturn, widespread cost-cutting, vendor consolidation, and Zoom fatigue, sellers who lean on traditional, “one-size-fits-all” product pitches and spreadsheets rarely make it to the finish line.
Even pre-pandemic,67% of companies said they underperformed at getting executive-level prospects to buy now, rather than later. Today, as we face a looming recession, successful B2B sellers are fully immersed in customers’ business pains, finding opportunities to maximize their budget with solutions that offer real, ROI-laden, measurable value.
Moving from pitch to purpose across the entire buyer’s journey
More than half of companies say making a clear ROI case highly influences their purchase decisions. In a 2022 Gartner survey, B2B buyers selected the content for business case development or value assessments as the most valuable information for making a final purchase decision. For many companies, value selling tools, like traditional sales decks and spreadsheets, are clunky and outdated, tough to manage across the organization, or simply nonexistent. These tools may tell the story of your product or service – adequately (and often too broadly) outlining features and benefits – but they often fail to tell the story of your prospects’ unique and evolving business needs.
As budgets tighten, revenue teams navigating a downturn are more likely to move the needle with reluctant buyers if they’re supported by value messaging, tools, and training that can help them have the right conversations at each stage of the buyers’ journey. This means moving beyond the traditional product pitch, investing in training to improve value storytelling, and offering diagnostic assessments and business value quantification that drives purchase decisions, and ultimately, winning more deals. Value is a (insight-driven) language; when sellers know how to quantify and communicate business value to customers and give them the justification to confidently invest, everyone wins.
Value enablement programs deliver benefits across revenue teams, including:
● Uplevel seller performance through personalized, relevant, value-driven conversations with prospects.
● Ability to connect products to a customer’s unique value drivers, by providing the metrics buyers actually care about.
● Improve buyer education and confidence as they work to gain internal buy-in for investments.
● Increased buyer motivation, by showcasing priority business challenges impacting their business and the cost of doing nothing.
● Reduced churn and improve retention, by providing Customer Success teams with an easy way to quantify the value.
Value Selling to Personalize the Buyer Experience
Today, companies have access to self-service tools that can be personalized to suit any level of complexity an organization needs. The right value enablement program supports the entire buyers’ journey, sequentially delivering the right messaging, insights, financial justification, and differentiation. It facilitates a much less impersonal and draining buyer experience; buyers engage with content that addresses their unique pain points, allowing them to see themselves in the solution.
Regardless of the economy, sales reps are responsible for generating revenue. As buyer spending slows, the market becomes even more competitive, and achieving quota becomes more difficult. Reaching into a value selling toolbox is the most recession-proof way for sales organizations to stay engaged with buyers at every step and ensure deals don’t end in “no decision.”
Proven results of a value selling approach include:
● Increases buyer engagement and conversion rates
● Reduces stalled pipeline opportunities
● Generates higher revenues from new and existing customers
● Accelerates sales cycles
● Increases average order values
● Grows competitive win rates
The best value enablement platforms provide these key benefits, among others: visibility into usage across all valuable tools and the ability to assess sales performance, the ability to measure win rate and ACV, the ability to identify at-risk opportunities and the ability to identify which sales reps have the highest success and share those case studies across the organization. Adopting a value-selling approach empowers everyone involved. Sellers gain the tools to engage prospects in a stickier, more meaningful way and can rely on compelling insights, learning to turn the focus on the customer, rather than the product. Buyers not only benefit from a more personalized experience, but they acquire the tools that both identify and solve their own business challenges. In a looming recession, earning confidence in investment is increasingly less about how much prospects know about your product and more about how much confidence they have in the ROI it will bring.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dan Sixsmith, SVP of Value Enablement at Mediafly
Dan is an industry expert in value selling with a long history in marketing, sales, and customer success leadership positions for B2B technology companies in addition to creative service and digital marketing agencies. Dan came to Mediafly in 2018 with the acquisition of Alinean and currently leads Mediafly’s Value360 solution working cross-functionally to support revenue generation and customer retention.