If you are in sales then you have heard the term “Build Value” But what does that mean exactly? Not only that, but what is the OTHER side of building value? I think you need to start with what does the target person value? Do they value their time, money, reputation, their people or employees? What do they value? Why do they value it, and what will it do for their business if they fix the problem? I will give you an example of something we recently encountered. A potential client did a consultation with us and we discovered some interesting things about their business and the way it was running. This person started a great business to a very targeting audience and really had a great product at a great price. Through the consultation we also discovered that they wanted a better functioning and better looking website to reach people on a regional level and have sales really explode in the next quarter. Great! We had a comprehensive plan to redo the website to make it much easier for people to connect, learn and ultimately purchase product. We went over the pricing in a proposal and it was a solution to the problem of needing a better looking website.
A few days later we got an email that they are going to stay with their current service provider (GoDaddy & Website Tonight) and just hope that sales pick up. What??!! Hope? That is never a good strategy. At first we were a little blown away, how on earth could a GoDaddy Website tonight website be better than a fully custom website? Then we got to talking in the office, we didn’t build enough value in NOT doing business with us. We talked a lot about what it would be like to DO business with us, but we didn’t talk about the consequences of NOT doing business with us. We built value in our product, our service and the results, but we didn’t talk about what would happen to the clients business if they didn’t do this.
Now trust me I am not talking about fear-based selling, I personally despise that! Don’t tell me to do something because my competitor is or might, that never works. I am talking about specifically talking about her goals and how they will not be reached any other way than with a website overhaul. I don’t care if they didn’t go with us, but to stay with the poorly built, hard to navigate and very poorly done SEO website they have now is just senseless! After thinking about our conversation though, I am not surprised; we didn’t address the pain which I believe is the other side of value.
You see, we as humans always want to do 2 things, feel good and reduce pain. You feel good when you think you got a great value on a purchase, you feel pain when you miss out or something becomes difficult. That part of the conversation is very rarely talked about with sales people. Since we have changed our consultations to talk about what the client is missing or what pain they might feel by not fixing these certain things in their business, sales have increased. We have even had some people go with another service, but still fixing their business woes that we discussed so in the end, we did our job in the consultation. Of course we always want to build value in what we provide, but we also need to talk candidly about what will happen if their business heads down the same path it is on. After all, if what we offer was something that didn’t keep them up at night we would be doing a consultation. So sales people, do not sell based on fear, but rather address the other side of building value and address the pain in a very real way.