Do You Know Your Customer's Value Proposition? What Are You Doing To Help Them Deliver It?

We know that a clear differentiated value proposition is critical to sales success. Over the past month, I have been writing about various aspects of developing communicating and delivering differentiated value to your customers. I'll stay on the same theme, but take a slightly different direction.

How many sales professionals understand the core value propositions of their customers? Do we know how our customers present their value to their customers and differentiate themselves from their competitors? Most good sales people have a pretty good idea of this.

Now, here's the twist---what do you do to help your customers deliver on their value propositions to their customers? Do you know---more importantly does your customer know and do they see it as an important contribution to their value proposition?

Now you are probably thinking, "Dave, I've bought your stuff up until know, but you are getting pretty far out there. We are just a small component of what our customers do."

Try thinking about it in these ways:

1. Remember the old story, "for the lack of a horseshoe, a kingdom was lost." Think of the value delivery chain--start with your customer's value proposition, work backwards through the value delivery chain and see where you fit in and how you can contribute. I've found if very useful to engage the customer in doing this--often they don't know where they fit in. Mapping it out on a whiteboard can be a very interesting and enlightening discussion for both you and your customer.

2. Take the classic quality and process analysis approach. There are internal and external customers. Think about your direct customer, who are their customers? They may be internal or external. What is your direct customer's value proposition to their customers, internal or external? How do you contribute to that value proposition? Does your direct customer see how critical you are in helping them deliver their value proposition?

Your customers are worried about defining, communicating and delivering value to their customers. Show them how you help them in delivering differentiated value, make your offerings an integrated part of their value delivery process. You become indispensable in their offerings.

Create Value In Every Meeting

A few days ago, a reader contacted me with a great question: "Dave, you always talk about creating value in every meeting with the customer. What do you mean? Is it realistic? How do I get what I need accomplished?" Thanks, for the question and keeping me from being glib.

Let me back up a minute. One of the most common issues that comes up when I speak with sales people is, "we can't get meetings with customers, how can we sell if we can't get in front of customers?" I see the same issue, sometimes I have difficulty getting customers to meet, what's up?

In truth, we have done it to ourselves. Customers don't want to see us because too often we waste their time --- and they are so time pressured that one more sales person wasting their time is unacceptable. We spend our time pitching our products without understanding what they are trying to do.

How to we create value in every meeting?

It starts with planning and preparation. Shooting from the lip doesn't work. If we aren't prepared, we are wasting the customer's time and our time. The best sales professionals prepare for every meeting.

In planning the meeting, a key question we have to ask ourselves is "What's in it for the customer to participate in the meeting?" We always know what's in it for us---we're trying to advance our position through the selling process, but until we can answer the question about what's in it for them, we will waste their time.

If we can't define what's in it for the customer, then we should cancel the meeting -- we aren't ready for it.

Now, let's talk about this concept of "what's in it for the customer?" We aren't talking about solving world hunger, we are talking about using the customer's time well. At the end of the meeting, the customer should have the reaction, "That was a good use of my time, I'm glad we had the meeting."

Think about it, if we pass that test for every meeting, customers will no longer avoid us, we will have less trouble getting meetings with them, customers may even start to look forward to meetings.

But if we are so focused on creating value for our customer, how do we achieve our goals? Frankly, the two are in separable. Early in the customer's buying process, we want to understand their goals, problems, challenges. We want to understand what is standing in the way of them achieving their goals. Here, the customer is focusing on themselves, they are describing what it important to them.

We might, during these early meetings help the customer in other ways. We might help them clarify their thinking about the issues and priorities. We might help them to look at their business in different ways. We might help them understand what they should be considering in seeking solutions to their problem.

Later in the buying process, we are helping the customer understand potential solutions to their problems. We are showing them the results they should expect. We are showing them how to manage the risk and achieve results.

Through this process, we are a partner to the customer in defining and solving their problems. Sales people only pitching their products, features and functions leave the task of solving the problem on the customer.

So how do we create value in every meeting or interchange with the customer:

1. We plan and prepare. Until we can answer the question, what's in it for the customer, we don't have the meeting.
2. After the meeting, we want to make sure the customer says, that meeting was a good use of my time.

For some tactics and tips on doing this, send me a note to ask for our Call Planning Checklist. It is a pragmatic guide to creating value in every meeting.

Three Questions

Last week, I published a post: First, Let Your Customer Finish Their Sentence, Then Ask Three Questions. In it, I addressed an issue that very experienced sales professionals often have---that is, being so "prepared" to provide solutions that they never give their customers a chance to tell their story.

Not only is interrupting offensive to customers, but it presents the opportunity to miss a lot in really understanding what they want and need. I suggested sales people would be better off, letting customer complete their sentences and tell their stories. I also suggested that sales people follow up with three questions.

I taunted my readers with guessing what those questions might be, asking you to email me if you wanted my version of the three questions. Since then, I have been inundated with ideas and emails. There have been some exciting offline conversations. To some degree, I am sorry to have taken such an interesting conversation off line and intend to fix that in this post.

So what are the "three questions?" I'm not sure there is a right answer to this. Also, these three questions will be just the beginning of a conversation in which you will want to engage your customers---hopefully you will ask many more as you probe.

When a customer has described a situation, issue, or problem, generally, the 3 key questions I tent to think of are:

1. What is the impact of this issue on you and on the business? It is important to explore the impact both from a personal and business point of view. Try to quantify this impact because it becomes a key element of your value proposition. Drill down and make sure you really understand the impact of this issue.

2. If this issue were to be resolved, what would the impact be on you and the business? This may sound a little redundant to the first question, but here you are trying to explore new opportunities or things they can do if the problem is eliminated. Generally, people are so focused on problems, they become blinded to what the problems are keeping them from doing. This is an area of tremendous opportunity for the customer and asking this question gives you the chance to explore these opportunities. Again, try to quantify so that, because this is part of your value proposition.

3. In terms of all the things that you are working on, where is this in your priorities? If it isn’t in their top 3-5 priorities, it will never get done. As sales people, we tend to leap on issues that we can address. Customers tend to let us continue to discuss those issues, even if they are a low priority. For us to make a sale, generally, we have to be in the top priority of issues they are addressing.

For those of you that have had any type of "SPIN Training," you will recognize these questions as a variant of the SPIN approach.

Does this make sense? Would you take a different tact?

Are You Playing To Win? Sales Professionals Need To Leverage New Capabilities.

Webinar: Driving Demand in a Demanding MarketJuly 15 1:00 PM PST / 4 PM EST

As a sales executive, you know how difficult it is to increase revenue while decreasing costs in today's selling environment. You’re under pressure to produce sales. Missed deals are costing you money. You need new ways to get smarter and more productive quickly – not more of the same. But which new sales strategies will help you uncover hidden demand and maximize revenue potential without breaking the bank?Tune in to our live webcast to hear a panel of experts discuss strategies on how to boost sales and cut costs to impact your bottom line right now.Join our panel of specialists to discover:

Tips to get your sales team smarter and more productive.
How to identify the right deals and avoid wasting time on dead ends.
Tools that help manage and measure critical sales performance metrics.
The role Technology can play in making an impact on your bottom line.

Brent Leary is a CRM industry analyst, advisor, author, speaker and award-winning blogger. He is co-founder and Partner of CRM Essentials LLC, an Atlanta based CRM advisory firm offering tools and strategies for improving business relationships, with a client list including RIM, Sage, Microsoft, Intuit, and Cisco. Recognized by InsideCRM as one of 2007's 25 most influential industry leaders, Leary is also a past recipient of CRM Magazine's Most Influential Leader Award.

Dave Brock is President and CEO of Partners In EXCELLENCE, a global consulting company focused on performance improvement in sales, marketing and business strategy. Partners In EXCELLENCE has trained over 100,000 sales professionals, globally, in how to outsell and outperform their competition. Dave is a trusted advisor to executives in the high technology, industrial products, and professional services, and has worked with the largest organizations in those sectors as well as start-ups. Brock blogs at Making A Difference, his website is Partners In EXCELLENCE.

David Bonnette is Group Vice President of Oracle's North American CRM sales organization, overseeing Oracle’s market-leading CRM portfolio for North American commercial markets. He leads a team of nearly 150 people and has built his organization around industry, segment, and product specialization. In transforming the culture to emphasize Innovation, Collaboration, his team is acutely focused on developing communities that create sustainable, material value for Oracle’s
customers.

To register for this Webinar, click on this link: The Sales Game Has Changed, Are You Playing To Win?