Think About It… the e-book version

by Todd Youngblood

“A laser-beam focus on developing compelling value statements enabled one company to reduce their average sell-cycle by two days. The time saved produced over $241,000 worth of additional selling capacity per rep per year.”

Is a value statement needed to get a prospects attention? To quote my teenager, “well, duh…” Before you dismiss this month’s newsletter as too elementary, ask the best rep in your company to quickly jot down the value statement for each of his or her top three opportunities. Can either of you take pride in the results?

How hard can it be to write down a clear, concise statement of the tangible results of applying your product or service? I’ll even make it easier. Instead of plowing through all the possible ways value could be derived, just give me one way a single, specific customer decision maker could realize value.

Don’t just sit there reading this. Think of your current most significant opportunity and write out your value statement.

Is what you just wrote a shining example of sales best practices in action? Does it include a specific, provable dollar savings and/or revenue increase for your customer? Did it take you more than thirty seconds?

OK, for those of you who played along so far, something different now seems obvious. Putting together a truly compelling value statement is anything but trivial. It takes real work. That’s why most reps in most situations just don’t bother. They assume, that the customer is smart enough, experienced enough, already interested enough to put two and two together and figure it out himself. (Yikes!)

Step by step, here’s a process to follow:

• Identify your rival(s) – What are you selling against? Typically it’s a similar product or service delivered by another supplier, a customer with a “do-it-yourself” bias or inertia – a satisfaction with the status quo.
• Define your differentiators – What specifically is it that makes your offering different from the current state and/or the competition?
• Identify your benefits – For each differentiator, answer the question, “So what?” Why is the differentiation good for this specific customer? Why should your customer care about the differentiator?
• Quantify your benefits – This is the hard part. Unless you are really lucky or blessed with lazy, dumb competitors, an unspecified “better, cheaper, faster” just isn’t good enough. How many? How much? How often?
• “Dollarize” your benefits – This is the fun part. Always convert the quantified benefit into dollars and cents. For example, “Reducing your production cycle time by 12%,” is one thing. “Producing an additional $732,859 worth of end product per week,” is exactly the same thing …but a whole lot more interesting!

Without getting into your sell cycle, average opportunity and deals per rep per year metrics, I can’t really tell you how many dollars worth of additional – and free – selling capacity you can generate by following the above formula. I do know from experience, however, that most reps do not follow it and are really, really terrible at articulating compelling value statements. Maybe it’s time for some “laser-beam focus” of your own…