Posts with Category "Value Proposition"

Turning the Question "What do you do?" Into a Conversation About Value

Avoid these six conversational mistakes in new business relationships.

You’re at an industry event mulling over which cheese will go best with which crackers at the buffet. The person next to you introduces himself. You introduce yourself. Then he says:

“So tell me, what do you do?”

The challenge is to communicate the key elements of your value. When we work with our clients to teach them how to sell, we tend to focus on helping them learn the right things to do, such as you’ll find in our article 6 Building Blocks for Communicating Your Value Proposition.

Knowing the right thing to do will help you get on the right track. However, even those on the right track can get derailed by common mistakes. It’s often just as helpful to know what not to do as it is to know what to do.

Here, then, are the most common mistakes we see people making when trying to answer the question, “What do you do?” and ideas for how to avoid them...

[click to continue...]

4 Comments Topics:

The New Rules of Selling, Part 1: Play to Win-Win

By John Doerr

Are you playing to win-win?

Rule #1: Play to Win-Win. (This post is the first in a series of blog posts on the new rules of selling.)

Win-win is a common negotiating philosophy. The idea is to find solutions that satisfy the interests of both parties, and maximize value on both sides. Since repeat business and referrals are so important in complex sales, employing win-win as part of your selling technique and philosophy should be a foregone conclusion.

However, in the name of "win-win" many salespeople get so tied up in the name of “providing value” during the sales process that they:

[click to continue...]

2 Comments Topics:

6 Building Blocks for Communicating Your Value Proposition

By Mike Schultz & John Doerr

Even when people know their value, many find it difficult to describe it.

Let’s say someone asks you the simple question, “What do you do?”

How do you answer? Of course, you need to get your value across, but as we note here, when communicating your value proposition, you don’t want to deliver the same canned speech for everyone.

What you need to do is first craft, then learn to deliver specific nuggets of information you can use to get your value across. Put all these nuggets together, and you have what we call a value proposition positioning statement.

[click to continue...]

4 Comments Topics:

A New Way of Thinking about Value Propositions

By Bob Croston

Confused why your value prop doesn't work? You shouldn't be.

“We build brands…”

Back in the late 90s when I was a running a marketing firm, this was the beginning of our value proposition. We thought it was brilliant… until we started using it.

This was how we were going to engage prospects. The only problem: nobody found it all that engaging. You can’t sell what you can’t describe, and in prospecting situations, where you may have just seconds to make an impression, if you’re not engaging and easily understood, you’re toast.

I now know we were expecting too much from one simple statement...

[click to continue...]

0 Comments Topics:

4 Things to Do When Clients Pressure You for Lower Fees

By Mike Schultz

“Your fees are too high; can you do it for less?”

In the highly competitive marketplace we hear dreaded phrases like this all of the time. The easy thing to do is to offer a discount, but that cuts into your profit margins and sets a precedent for the future. You don’t want to become a victim of discounting gone wrong.

So what do you do when clients push back on your fees?

The glib answer is: focus on your value. It's trite, but true. If it's worth it to the client they'll pay for it. But when faced with price pushback, many are at a loss for what to do at that moment.

[click to continue...]

2 Comments Topics: