The term “a ship without a rudder” fits the profile of many sales organizations today. I often find that company leaders have failed to deliver proper tools, thoughts, and processes to guide their sales team to success. Specifically, I’m referring to a company’s value proposition.
Lead with Value Proposition
In many of my new engagements, the value proposition is completely missing, and the company’s “client facing sales conversation” is created on the fly by sales reps to fit the situation of the moment. This is a problem which affects everything in a detrimental way. It can easily deteriorate your forecast, as sales teams often chase opportunities outside the company’s desired targets or capabilities. These are always harder to manage and close. Even worse, a prospect or new client may never learn of your real value and capabilities! The enormous amount of time wasted chasing deals that ARE NOT PROBABLE can be, if redirected, a wonderful springboard for significant growth opportunities with targets that appreciate your value proposition.
This lack of corporate direction may lead to unwanted deals or deals that don’t fit within your core offerings. Trying to jump through hoops to honor a sales rep’s concoctions, especially when considering larger clients, can not only overwhelm your organization, but possibly destroy your company’s ability to compete should the word get out and affect your reputation.
If you think about it, chasing just one or two “one-offs” a month, especially for smaller sales teams, can stress your company’s bandwidth and suck the momentum out of forward motion. While you should be creative, competitive, and flexible, do it inside your value proposition. It doesn’t take long as they stack up to max out your company’s post-sales ability to perform satisfactorily. When a client makes decisions based on wayward promises, managing those promises can become a significant distraction to healthy growth. When your company is asked to perform outside the business model, evaluate the risk and benefit, always reviewing the “What if it all goes south?” scenario. My experience shows that if you know your value and who receives it best, with an appropriate prospecting campaign, you can find more deals and win them versus a single “on the edge, one off.”
Who is Your Target?
One of the hardest things I do is getting a business owner to define, “Who is your target, and what unique value do you provide for them?” It sometimes takes months for them to answer this question. Most start chattering about the years they’ve been in business and their service response times, etc. Here’s a hint, “It’s not about you!” When you’re creating or defining your value proposition, you have to sit in your target’s chair, and look at your company from their point of view.
To get insight on creating their value proposition, dealers often send out surveys and ask questions such as, “What do you like about our company?” and “Why do you do business with us?” Those answers are pushed into a false value proposition statement because the answers to those types of questions provide an evaluation of how well you are at customer service and relationships. They are often answered by middle to lower management and not your target. Therefore, they are not your value proposition.
With a defined target, you fulfill a very important part of your market strategy: your sweet spot. Identifying the profile which would most likely be your best target empowers every step of your marketing execution plan because of the focus it provides.
Dealers have long sought business from anyone that has a heartbeat. When you think about it, an appropriate value proposition and target identification significantly increases your forecast accuracy. You’ve eliminated (as much as possible) the approach to companies or targets that are “less likely” to engage and move through your sales process.
You Hit the Target, Now What?
By now you get it! Your business needs a well-defined value proposition. However, a value proposition isn’t just made up. To assure success, your value proposition must be based on real needs or concerns of the most likely target candidate within your marketplace. This candidate would find your solution very valuable and obviously be someone you can serve well within the current capabilities of your company. Value that’s real is easy to deliver and well received.
Telling anyone that you’ve mastered the MPS audit process, can optimize their print fleet, or you can save them 20%-30% hard cost savings, isn’t your value proposition either. Although these statements are valuable when properly used, they are simply attributes of an excellent sales or client relationship process. Your value proposition helps a stranger answer the question of why they would ENGAGE YOU (when they know nothing about you). It comes from KNOWING and UNDERSTANDING them SO WELL that your values are crystal clear and desirable.
Think about a time in your life where someone seemed to know your exact position, problem, or concerns and had a solution for you! Do you feel that? That’s the feeling your value proposition should create in your target. So now you can see that it’s not about you or your products. It’s completely about them and their real life, day-to-day situations or concerns.
An MPS value proposition could sound something like:
“Mr. Jones, we understand that most business owners like yourself are extremely talented and educated in the execution of business. However, most owners feel they should be getting much more value and performance out of their technology infrastructure. Whether it be an enterprise-wide productivity gain or providing the needed visibility for better cost management, we are that type of partner. The clients who’ve engaged us for this type of solution believe their company has moved to a more competitive position and are now able to focus on more front end growth initiatives.”
You can most certainly create multiple value propositions based on different targets, solutions, or market strategies. However, your words must MEAN SOMETHING to your target. The value proposition is a bridge that turns a stranger into a credible, trusted expert. That’s You!
Value Proposition and Sales
Once your value proposition is set, it must be driven into the sales team. Decide once and for all that your sales team will focus on the right targets and deliver the right message, (your message), to your marketplace. By perfecting your approach in this manner, your team will transform their sales funnel to include the most likely, most probable deals available within your marketplace, and your forecast accuracy will go up! Then, you simply manage sales activity to drive volume.
If you don’t define your value and fail to provide the proper leadership to your sales team, they will chase anything out there to find their next deal. That’s akin to “treading water holding an anchor.” Sooner or later, they’ll either let go (lose the deal), or you will drown. Both of these waste your time. Tell them your value!u
