Leveraging Value-Based Selling to Effectively Sell a Premium-Priced Product
About the Customer
This client is one of the world’s largest wholesalers of technology products and services, assisting most Fortune 1,000 companies. With annual sales over $43 billion, it delivers a full spectrum of global technology and supply chain services to businesses around the world. They are a global organization with a workforce of nearly 30,000 people and are a trusted name in their market, with decades of dependable relationships with their clients.
The Challenge: Implementing A Value-Based Selling Process
This client had a new software solution that had been on the market for more than a year. This new software was considered by the experts in the market to be superior to their competitors’ products in every way imaginable. By using this software, their customers would be able to:
- cut project management time by 50%
- increase employee engagement and job satisfaction
- increase staff productivity
- improve marketing efforts to target new customers.
When our client brought the product to market, they were positive that the notably higher price (nearly 3X that of its competitor) was justified; in fact, some customers had even told them that the price was well worth it.
In reality, after the product was launched, salespeople in the organization were struggling to overcome price objections presented by their customers. In fact, most of the salespeople had convinced themselves that the product was priced too high, and efforts to position its value- and not just the price- began to wane and a race to the bottom began.
This trend crept into all sales pipeline and opportunities review discussions, and the sales leadership felt that, despite a far superior product, the sales team was not equipped to look beyond a tactical discussion of pricing.
The Ignite Selling Solution
We ensured that salespeople could justify the price of their solutions by translating business process improvement to real economic value. We developed a value-based selling solution that focused on turning their marketing message value into a measurable economic impact. The sales team also learned how to identify other critical decision criteria their customers were using beyond price.
Armed with this information, we taught the sales team how to influence the decision criterion that directly correlated to the economic value of their new software. The result was a renewed energy and success rate around this one product, and a diminished impact of price-sensitive buyers on other product lines as well.
Helping sales reps learn the other critical decision criteria beyond price was a necessary step in creating a value-based selling approach and mindset. Too often, salespeople only focus on the benefits articulated by Marketing, but lacks the ability to adequately quantify that value in ways that help their customer improve their business results. Our solution was designed to help the current sales team realize and more easily articulate how value drives business decisions, and not price alone.
Results and Return on Investment
The move to focusing on economic value instead of price helped our customer create a niche for their product, and they saw an immediate jump of 30% in their ASP (average selling price). This renewed positioning helped the product maintain its share in tight markets, reduced perceived commoditization and quality concerns, and helped safeguard profitability against reducing margins or jeopardizing future positioning in down markets.
Over the past 20 years, we’ve participated in hundreds of national sales meetings as sales trainers, coaches, and consultants. When it comes to sales training at such events, we’ve seen firsthand what works and what doesn’t. Contact our team for a discussion today.