Growth
April 28, 2022

How Do You Start the Customer Value Conversation?

Increasing close rates for B2B sales requires firms to have a very open and honest discussion about customer value. When approaching such a critical conversation related to business success, sales professionals must be straightforward yet not overbearing, allowing customers to understand the total value and impact that an offering provides. 

As a B2B sales expert, you want to tell customers what you’re going to say, then tell them what you’ve said, thoroughly explaining the value proposition when selling what the service is capable of doing and illustrating how it benefits the customer on multiple levels. Clarity is important; stressing how the service meets expectations along each of the value elements is important and having a confident approach based on conversational intelligence provides multiple selling points you can use to close deals with business buyers.

Starting With Key Financial Numbers Focuses Customer Value Meetings

Expressing a service’s value is impossible without definitive numbers and measuring those numbers against the perceived value of the service from business buyers. Based on the understanding of the business, B2B sales professionals can immediately present the total impact and value. They can then establish the point of the conversation, then identify the functional and emotional elements that boost value. 

By being direct about how much money the service saves business buyers, B2B sales reps immediately focus on a meeting’s core purpose and set a foundation to discuss how much customer value the service is capable of offering. 

How Can the Switch From Price to Value Be Made?

Switching from price to value can be a difficult transition and can lose business buyers if you don’t know how to position value appropriately. Statistics show that 77% of brands are easily forgotten, and it starts with the quality of conversations and meetings. Making a good value statement comes down to conversational intelligence, analyzing the buyer signals that emerge, and formulating a solid engagement strategy to entice B2B buyers to invest in a service. 

If the value statement catches B2B buyers off-guard, it can create a lot of awkwardness. For one, if a sales representative is unaccustomed to talking about value, it’s likely because the representative is inexperienced in broaching such a topic. Or, the representative is concerned about how the B2B buyer perceives the conversation. Either there is some concern that any mention of financial incentives may cause backlash or that sales professionals are miscast for making the wrong judgments about B2B buyers. 

To successfully make the switch from price to value, sales professionals cannot be tentative to deliver the desired outcomes. Customer value conversations garner conversions at higher prices and don’t necessitate winning a value argument right away. By using conversational value, sales professionals can integrate a vision of value that the buyer instantly gravitates towards, becoming a basis for follow-ups. By implementing a value vision, sales reps extract better conversational value by garnering more engagement signals that refine approaches during meetings and establish deeper connections that create a better understanding of the value proposition. 

Directly Addressing Customer Value Quickly Identifies Challenges

Immediately plunging into customer value conversations elevates customer engagement, helping sales professionals to understand what a customer’s pain points are and if there are any challenges hindering their enjoyment or attachment to a service. The straightforward approach validates the sales opportunity or determines whether it’s not as valuable as initially presented. Highlighting keyword mentions of customer value makes identifying value easier and can be achieved using conversational AI software. 

Value conversations with customers should never be one-line assertions. Sales professionals draw attention to key claims and talk about where the math behind the value being presented comes from. Leveraging value early enough in the sales cycle improves performance and immediately presents a fair exchange as you’re providing the benefits the service offers to match the professional and personal demands that buyers have. 

Don’t Overly Rely on Products/Services and Customer Data 

Leading sales calls with product/service information, or a wide overview of customer data is a formulaic way of approaching customer value conversations. Too many representatives talk about service features without elaborating on service outcomes, leading to unproductive meetings as there is not enough emphasis on addressing business problems and solving them. Switching to customer value conversations drives customer-centric engagements and leads to more meaningful meetings directly addressing issues. 

Also, value propositions lack sales confidence with an overreliance on data. Being data-driven is well and good. But, needing to frame the entire value conversation around data disengages business buyers unfamiliar with your terminology. Analyzing the quality of past conversations and communicating the data in a way that’s easy to understand (and not time-consuming) allows sales professionals to articulate value. This gives business buyers more incentive to ask questions and create stronger engagements that provide more accurate insights, which facilitates improved value conversations going forward. 

Improving your customer value conversations require conversational intelligence to highlight the important points and boost the performance of remote sales teams. Versational provides a conversational assistant solution to ensure team leaders connect with their teams in the most effective ways possible and give employees the praise they deserve. Try our product for free today. 

Be the first to hear about exciting product updates and trends in speech AI and work productivity technology

Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

Start your free extended trial

2 minute setup. Try all features free for 30 days
Try for free
2 minute setup