No matter what you are buying, you have to believe that you are going to get value from it. If you have a meal in a restaurant, there are two levels of value you can receive. First, the simple act of eating provides you with sustenance and nourishment to keep going for the next few hours. However, any food can do this. The real value in a meal out is in the experience, which can include the taste of the food, ambience of the restaurant, the service, the company etc. All of this is difficult to put a price on and therefore equally difficult to value. Two different people can easily value the same experience quite differently.
In any business scenario, there is the same requirement to evaluate the value of any deal. This is easy if it is a case of buying and selling shares, if you make more money than you spend, it is good value. However, buying a new laptop for an existing employee is more difficult to define. Are they that much more productive with the new laptop? Can they do things that they could not do before hand?
For the sales person, defining the value of a potential sale to a customer can be very difficult. They must think like the customer, understand the customer’s exact needs and be able to translate their product’s features into value for the customer. In order to do the deal, the customer must believe that they are going to be better off having bought the product than if they had not.
Value does not have to be measured purely in monetary terms. It could involve reduced risk; for example, replacing some equipment in an assembly line with another which breaks down less frequently will reduce the risk that the assembly line will be stopped for repairs. It could involve higher productivity; for example, replacing three machines with one which does the same job in half the time. While there is a cost involved in the purchase of the equipment, it is small compared to the savings gained by increasing productivity or increasing uptime of an assembly line. All of these demonstrate value but if the customer cannot understand how they will gain that value, they are not going to be convinced to buy the solution.
Value is very much in the eye of the person spending the money. The role of the sales person is to demonstrate clearly that their product offers value. This could involve demonstrating how it has provided value to other customers or by allowing the customer to have a trial of the product. If you cannot persuade the customer of the value, it is highly unlikely that they will proceed.
To be able to build a value proposition for a customer, you have to understand their needs or problems and you have to understand the impact that these problems are having on their business. Until you understand the cost of an inefficient process or the risk of lost production, you cannot quantify the value of your product. This should all be understood early in the sales process to give yourself the best chance of continually stressing the value to the customer.
Ultimately, if you cannot explain how the customer will be better off for having bought your product, you are going to struggle to make a sale. Understand their needs and translate the features of your product into value for the customer, related to those needs. That’s what sales is all about.