One aspect of successful sales, B2B or otherwise, is anticipating your prospective buyer's alternatives. This allows you to have strategies in place to rebut objections and differentiate yourself. To determine which questions are topmost in their minds, understand how they evaluate their alternatives.
Most of your prospects will focus on price once they think they have found a product or service that will meet their needs. It’s normal to want to know how much something will cost. However, it’s best to avoid responding directly to this question until you have established the problem and the value of solving that problem.
Figuring out what to charge for your product may seem as simple as adding up what it costs to make plus a percentage you call profit. Unfortunately, this “markup” or “cost-plus” method is common and can result in money left on the table and unnecessarily slower future growth.
B2B sales typically have long marketing and sales cycles due to the nature of the offering. Today’s buyers will put off talking to a sales representative as long as possible before finally committing to a first meeting. You need to prepare for that first meeting before a potential customer ever asks for one. That meeting is unlikely to include the final decision makers but use it to lay the groundwork for the sale as though it did.
If you aren’t selling on value, you are leaving money on the table. The question is, how much? Let’s go through the three problems with not selling based on value. Each of these events result in lost revenue and profits. Altogether, it can add up to a significant amount of profit lost.
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and Return on Investment (ROI) are similar methods of proving cost effectiveness that perform best in different situations. In fact, if you use a TCO tool at the wrong time in the sales process, you are taking big risks. Let's take a closer look at which tool is better for your business.
Traditional sales techniques have always concentrated on closing the sale. Once the sale was complete, there was no further reason to engage with the customer until you had another product to sell. Until a few years ago, software solutions were sold the same way.
While it may seem like customers only focus on price, many of them actually place a higher importance on other attributes. By skillfully framing the conversation using your knowledge of those attributes, you can move their focus from price to value.
The most successful sales reps focus on understanding the customer's business, especially when it comes to solution selling. These sales reps engage in what some have now dubbed “The Challenger Sale.” But what exactly is it and how does it align with value selling? Let’s take a closer look.
Has your sales cycle grown longer and more complex? Are you challenged by new buying behaviors that exclude you in the early stages of discovery? Chances are you’re also faced with more restrictive corporate and financial oversight, which shifts purchasing authority to CFOs and inter-departmental committees. How can you get the attention of buyers and decision makers in such a dynamic sales environment? A proven approach is value selling, a strategy that develops distinct sales messages focused on the bottom line. When all is said and done, prospects want to know how investing in your solution helps save money, increase sales and revenue, and achieve pertinent business goals.
