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Value-Added Selling. How to sell more profitably, confidently and professionally by competing on value not price. Tom Reilly. 3rd ed. 2011. ISBN 9780071702683.  This is the complete sales book for anyone who wants to break out of the zero sum game of selling on price.  Great point in the book- when asked, a majority of B2B customers see that 25% of the value of the products they buy comes from the salesman himself. Ask yourself, what have you done to deserve to take the meeting with the high value prospect? have you done the work to bring value yourself?

This is a  very current salesman’s bible.  Plus its a  very practical easy to read guide to getting the job done whether you are a part of a huge well supported multinational team or a single sales guy in a start up.  He starts where you need to and has lots of guidance for the sales person who has been forced into a price only style but wants to move to selling value ( the smarter way).  A must have for a sales manager and a salesperson who wants to be a high earner.

If selling on price has you or your organization trapped in a cycle of tightening of margins and unrelenting price pressure then this book is essential to your sales team and will be  a very valuable resource for you.

Related articles

• Accelerate the sale. Kick start your personal selling style to close more sales, faster. Mark Roberts. (regnordman.com)
• Implementing a Value Based Sales Approach – part 3 of 4. What sales must do. (regnordman.com)

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Value-Based Pricing. Harry MacDivitt & Mike Wilkinson.2012. ISBN 9780071761680.  This is one of the best texts on this topic I have run up against so far.  First the descriptions of pricing and how it is arrived at is succinct, clear and bang on the money.  Second this is the first pricing book that really identifies how many objections that sale can find with changing the pricing strategy  as well as the huge obstacle that sales is to implementation.  Then they do show you how to capture customer value in order to extract the price you deserve. The case studies at the end of the book are a bonus for those serious about implementing value based pricing. This is a must have reference for sales and marketing organizations as well as CEO’s.  Plus with both authors from the UK, they do not waste a word- it is all clear and valuable.

Related articles

• LinkedIn Poll – Where does pricing have the most impact in the sales funnel? (leveragepoint.com)
• Webinar – Improving the Value Proposition for New Products with Dick Braun of Parker Hannifin (leveragepoint.com)
• Implementing a Value Based Sales Approach. Part 2 of 4. Marketing (regnordman.com)
• The Art of Pricing: How to find the hidden profits in your business. Rafi Mohammed. (regnordman.com)

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Accelerate the sale. Kick start your personal selling style to close more sales, faster. Mark Roberts. 2011. ISBN 9780071760409. This is the right stuff for selling.  Well organizer, very readable with good sidebars from in the field.  This is a short pithy collection of best practices in sales at every stage of your development.  I always find something useful in every sales book and this one is chock full of great ideas, statements and responses. Worth reading all of it and then keep it as a reference. You will use it.

Related articles

• Sales Training Buyers and Companies Blog (customerthink.com)
• 7 Common Sales Mistakes, and How to Avoid Them (quicksprout.com)
• Live person selling can be more profitable than web orders (valueacceleration.wordpress.com)
• Strengths Based Selling. Tony Rutigliano & Brian Brim. (regnordman.com)
• Come On – Lets Be Honest Here Salespeople (kevinkellyohio.wordpress.com)
• B2B: Fresh Ideas to Reignite Stalled Leads and Accelerate the Sales Funnel (bjconquest.com)

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The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success. Wayne Breitbarth. 2011. ISBN 9781608320936.  This is a true how to do book, with enough why attached that the reader can understand the power of this tool.  A comment I picked up on was:  ignoring LinkedIn now  is like 10 years ago ignoring email. There is only one way to learn to find out how useful it can be.  He  splits the book in two, first making yourself easy to find ( fill in a proper profile)  and then how to find and approach others on LinkedIn.  Every person in any business can make good use of this book.  Buy it, read it and use it. Well written and a quick read.

Related articles

• How To Formulate an Effective LinkedIn Strategy (tosachamber.org)
• Strategies for LinkedIn Success for Small Businesses in Ventureneer Webinar (prweb.com)
• Belden To Do LinkedIn Presentation for Spalding University Alumni (prweb.com)
• LinkedIn to Offer Marketers More Value via ‘Follow Company’ Feature (hubspot.com)
• Pleasant Hill Chamber to Host Social Media – LinkedIn Business Building Workshop August 10 (prweb.com)
• L4B 5: 6 More Ways to Power Lead Generation via LinkedIn (blogs4bytes.wordpress.com)
• How to Get More Leads With LinkedIn By Using My Simple Learn, Lurk and Link Strategy (customerthink.com)
• How Many LinkedIn Connections Should I Have (edenchanges.wordpress.com)
• L4B 6: 7 Step Approach to Generate Leads via LinkedIn (blogs4bytes.wordpress.com)
• Do the Work! Overcome resistance and get out of your own way. Steven Pressfield. (regnordman.com)

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How to Generate Real Sales Results from Digital Tools Like Social Media, Webinars and e-Content

Best Practices for Using Leading Edge Tools for Sales Success.

I am measured on results.  At Rocket Builders we have found that today’s digital tools give us those results.

- most sales people have not been successful using social media to generate revenue

- most webinars fail to engage the prospect sufficiently to advance the opportunity

- most content a salesperson shares with a prospect raises more questions than addresses the buyer’s needs

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The first three parts of this series  have talked about the shift required in selling  today due to buyers having the power to decide when they will interact with you.  I also talked about the work that marketing and sales have to do to get ready to sell on value not price. This part discusses some of the training that has worked to change habits and beliefs.

In our training implementations we use short role playing (recorded) as part of the regular sales meetings. Each play has a short focus topic which is aligned with new or updated supporting assets.  Very quickly we find no lack of sales volunteers/commentators to play out and critique the
roles (sales people are so shy). Humor is important here.

Having the session recorded allows the client to build up a sales training library /resource for those who want to review on their own time. (This helps the salesperson who is on the road and misses a meeting)  The role playing goal is to clearly indicate the gap between preferred and poor approaches.  Some of popular topics have been:

• Buyers lie and other tales for sales virgins (discounting/negotiation)
• Beware the premature proposal, practise safe selling (discounting/knowledge)
• What buyers really mean when they say, “Your price is too high.” (negotiation)
• How buyers go to school on you. (negotiation)
• Fight the urge to broadcast in presentations, we are not the BBC (Communication skills)
• Do you deserve to take the meeting? (Knowledge of the customer)
• The customer does not care about you and that’s a good thing (Value and results)

The organization needs to be focussed on value not volume for this change to work.  If value selling is  new to the company, your market may have been trained to respond to pricing (allowing your product to be commoditized). Fixing this is a separate topic which others have addressed. (Nagle et al)

There is more information on pricing and value in the following series of posts.

Leverage Point

What can you do about pricing for value ?

The intent in this series was to give the reader a different  POV  showing a way out of the declining returns from push marketing and selling. By looking  first at the buyers process and meeting their needs all through in the process, marketing and sales teams are better positioning your company for higher profits and shorter sales cycles.  By adopting this approach a company is also setting themselves up as being different from the others in the  marketplace.  This also adds to your competitive position.

My warning is that this takes hard thoughtful work and attention to the details in execution.  Doing this poorly will leave you worse off than not doing it all.  Doing this well will just make you all very wealthy.

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In order to sell based on value, the sales team must know (and believe in) the value their product brings.  The previous post sketched out the how marketing needs to extract and describe the value stories.  Now  the sales department needs to learn and add new skills based on the value stories coming from the  marketing department.  The proper evidence, examples, testimonials, and success stories will help grow a salesman’s confidence to successfully sell on value.

These are not quick skills to learn as old habits and beliefs are hard to change.  There is also a basic skills gap in the younger sales forces. There are fewer firms that still provide a quality sales training program. Many of those new to sales will learn their basics  in the school of  hard knocks, which leads to bad habits.

A proactive sales organization, recognizing this,  can shape a sales person’s behaviors toward value  selling through a planned combination of training and reward systems. By shifting comp schemes toward a very heavy weighting on margin vs volume, salespersons will shift their approach.  This will not happen however if the revised relevant support material from marketing is not present.  A further impediment is having a C-Suite which still recognizes volume and lacks the maturity/patience to shift to margin based rewards.

We know that questions on pricing  will occur in two separate parts of a sale,  the early “give me a ballpark (budget)  price” time  and the  very late stage when the “your price is too high” negotiation statement occurs. Sales departments  which show success in growing margins and profits by using value selling techniques  possess well crafted  resources and training to anticipate these pricing question times.  This is a team effort between marketing, sales, customer service and finance to make this adjustment.

A great reference for thought leadership on this is Ardath Albees website

Next some successful training tactics for value selling organizations.

Related articles

• Implementing a value based sales approach. Part 1. Introduction. (regnordman.com)
• Strengths Based Selling. Tony Rutigliano & Brian Brim. (regnordman.com)

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Go for No! Yes is the destination No is how you get there. Richard Fenton & Andrea Waltz. 2010. ISBN 9780966398137. Quite a surprising book.  In less than 80 pages its the “story” of how one sales guy was able to dramatically turn things around.   It is built around what we know how self limiting goals cause us to ‘quit early’.  Rather than counting the number of closed deals you count the number of “nos” each day.  Failure to talk to enough people is one of the big self limits to sales.  I liked the book and would recommend it as a good addition to your sales library.  It’s good for a boost and a reminder of the basics.

Related articles

• Go For No by Richard Fenton and Andrea Waltz (bayintegratedmarketing.wordpress.com)

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Social Media Sales Revolution. The new rules for finding customers, building relationships, and closing more sales through online networking. Landy Chase & Kevin Knebl. 2011. ISBN 9780071768504.  Brand spanking new from McGraw Hill and very current.  I am researching resources for a Social Media for Sales course we are presenting this fall.  This one is a good fit.

The author has a great line at the end:

Your prospects have moved but left a forwarding address. That address is found in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and the blogs they write.

The first chapters explain why the old outbound sales prospecting methods are giving lower returns. The book then shows the proactive sales person exactly how to leverage the new tools for 30 minutes a day to improve his sales numbers.  The chapters on really using LinkedIn and Hootsuite are priceless. I was able to immediately improve my LinkedIn profile.  As a result I had as best ever  one day increase in my Klout score.  The coverage of Twitter and Facebook is also valuable.  Could be the sales efficiency book of the year for me.  Most others have got this all wrong.

This is a must buy for the salesperson who wants to win.

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How to Sell at Margins Higher Than Your Competitors: Winning every sale at full price, rate or fee. Lawrence L. Steinmetz & William T. Brooks. 2006. ISBN 978-0471744832.  (also Kindle).  This is a small but detailed book and one I recommend to any sales manager charged with getting margins up.  A bonus with the book is a complete addenda that lists all the ways professional buyers will mistreat (beat up ) a seller in order to get him to crack on price. if you have been there as a sales man you will recognize some of these immediately!  Buyers lie in order to get you to lower price.  If they could get it from someone else at a better price, why are they still talking to you  (unless they can’t get delivery, quality, service or they are not allowed).  The authors discussion of the price buyer is excellent and thorough.  What I appreciate about the book is that it is more than a list of what happens, they then give you tactics that are useful in the sale.  I have been at this a long time, and never knew the breadth of tactics in this book. I have already been able to use a few in the last few days to great results. (What do they say about the old dog, new tricks?)  Their one chapter analysis on setting prices gives the practitioner immediate tools to help decide where you should stand.  They are dead set against letting the market determine price – you have to.  An essential book for your sales library.

Related articles

• You’re Working Too Hard To Make the Sale. More than 100 insider tools to sell faster and easier . William T. Brooks & Tom Tavisano. 2nd Ed (regnordman.com)
• Consultative Selling. The Hanan formula for high-margin sales at high levels. 8th Ed. Mack Hanan (regnordman.com)
• With sales vs. profits, listen to your market, not your ego. (vailchris1.wordpress.com)