There’s two sides to this equation. On the one side it’s through the eyes of the customer. What’s your story, how does your story paint a picture of the growing problem your solution solves, speaking to both the emotional and logical sides of your buyers brain.
And on the other side it’s through the eyes of your people, sales, marketing, consulting and customer success, those people that spend time with your customers, prospects and partners. They must be able to tell the story effectively, at the same time tailor it to convince stakeholders of the differentiating value your business provides.
Bring these two things together in harmony and you have a winning combination of positioning value and driving a winning sales (buying) process that delivers predictable results.
So let’s explore this through the eyes of the customer, designing an experience that differentiates you from the competition.
Design your story
…. what’s the story that touches emotions and also speaks to the logical and analytical side of the brain. You want your customer contact to feel compelled to make a change, mobilise change within their organisation.
Design your path to value
… identify the milestones or steps your customer must take in order to realise the commercial value of your solution. Things they worry about. These are typically strategic priorities or ongoing challenges they’re working to solve.
Identify your value acceleration levers
…. What are the topics your customers think about on a daily basis, topics that link the path to value to your capabilities. Capabilities that make it easy for you to visualise how your customer can increase the speed in which they realise value.
Establish your customer benchmarks, performance statistics from your customer base that validates your acceleration levers….
If you don’t have a raft of statistics to use, then use independent research that validates the performance of each value acceleration lever.
Identify independent research that brings credibility to your value acceleration levers…
you want to build confidence with your customer that what you’re talking about is validated by other credible organisations.
Identify which case studies that support your value acceleration levers…
prime examples of where your other customers are doing things well, that link to your value acceleration levers.
Your story, and content is what you must focus your customer on, whenever they try to focus on the features and functions as the differentiating factors, bring them back to the reason why they’re talking with you, they want value for money, they don’t want features and functions. They might think they want features and functions but it’s your job to help your customer see what they don’t see, by visualising the path to value and showing them how they get there, at the pace they want.
Value comes in different shapes and sizes for your customers, typically it’s one or all of the following:
- Revenue: is top line revenue or profit most important. What’s the number and by when does it need to be achieved.
- Lowering total cost of ownership: what are the current costs, current performance of the marketing program and if growth and cost are an equal factor then what multiple needs to be achieved.
- Efficiency (time saving): we all want to save time, however reducing manual effort by reducing the number of clicks is not relevant when it comes to revenue or profit. How can you help your customer achieve their objectives in the shortest time possible.
- Speed to revenue: your clients have a Moria’s of things to deal with behind the scenes, other teams competing for resource and budget
Identify which one of the above is most important to your contact and qualify how much of a priority it is within the business to solve it, and whether achieving the agreed value is more important than anything else.
This leads nicely onto the sales (buying) process, and specifically how you help your customer or prospective customer successfully purchase your solution. And it starts with defining criteria that will be used as the basis of the purchase decision. Without this, reaching consensus with stakeholders influencing the decision, will result in disappointment!
Look out for my next blog post where I’ll explore buyer milestones and the importance of managing buyer and rep behaviour as the biggest predictor of close rates for MarTech and Marketing Services businesses.
For a friendly chat or to swap notes on the above, DM me on LinkedIn or Twitter.com/Alex_Supero or drop me a call/WhatsApp +44 7951 220113
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