Good salespeople know how to quantify the value of their solutions. Great salespeople know they’re not the only ones in the game. This is how you apply their knowledge.

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How to measure your solution’s value

A key feature of Value-Based Selling is being able to measure the monetary value of your offerings.

Not all organisations have this information available for their salespeople. If that’s the case for you, don’t hesitate to reach out to current customers. Simply tell them that you would like to better understand how they made their decision, and how they derive value from your products or solutions.

Can they measure how they improved in monetary terms? If not, what’s the difference between before and after implementation? If your solution can’t be measured in time or money saved or earned, you still have to focus on making your offerings as tangible as possible.

Use this information with your current opportunities. Remember to phrase the information as questions:

“One of my customers experienced an X% increase in process Y. Can we estimate how it would play out in your organisation?”

Understand how your customers prioritize. Then decide where to spend your time

When you have quantified the expected results together with your customers, you need to understand how their decision-makers prioritize their various projects. When talking to your former customers, ask them how they made their decision. Why was your solution prioritized? Why not? Which standards did they use and who was involved?

When you know this, here are a few questions you can steal:

• “If we were to achieve similar results here, how would you prioritize this project?”
• “How do you evaluate the different projects you’re considering, and what do we need to demonstrate for you to make a decision in this quarter?”

These questions accomplish a few things:

• You demonstrate that you genuinely want to understand how they work and help them make a decision, whether it’s a yes or a no
• Equally important, they enable you to choose where you spend your time. If you can’t demonstrate the necessary ROI or NPV for one of your opportunities, move on to the next. It’s a very common mistake to spend time on unwinnable opportunities. 
  

  How can you improve your capabilities in Value-Based Selling?

  Find out at our workshop at DI (Dansk Industri / Danish Industry Association) on December 14th from 13-16. The first workshop was great fun and we had some very interesting discussions about how to improve Prioritization and Value-Based Selling Capabilities. When you succeed, expect more satisfied customers, increased profitability and less discounting.

  Look at the matrix below. That’s one of the outputs of the Assessment we’ll give you access to. Together with Associate Professor at CBS, Selma Kajlic-Maglajlic, I have developed a research-based scale showing you where you are, and where you can improve.

  Send a mail to me or Søren Münster at somu@di.dk to sign up.