6 Key Principles To Creating Value

When you read books, listen to podcasts, attend seminars, or engage in any educational pursuit, you’ll start to notice a common theme.

At first, it’s subtle, but once you catch it, it becomes impossible to ignore.

It’s about creating value.

We are rewarded when we bring value to others.

Yet, it bewilders me that we spend so little time collectively exploring what it truly means to create value within our organisations.

Introduction

Value is a term that often gets thrown around in sales conversations, marketing materials, and email communications. However, the concept of value is frequently misunderstood. In this post, we'll explore six essential principles that can help you create real value for your prospects and customers, ultimately improving the quality of your sales pipeline.

Before we dive in, let's explore the term value. A few years ago, with a blurry camera, and awful audio, I took to Youtube to create an alternative definition of value in the context of B2B. (I've gained some more confidence since then haha)

At its core, value is attained when customers consider a product or service important or beneficial enough to justify spending their time, money, and resources to achieve a specific outcome.

Call me biased - that's fine. But I then saw Alex Hormozi - you know the guy who has a few hundred million under his belt - share his value equation publicly and it wasn't that dissimilar. This of course leads me to believe that I'm only a few years out from having a few hundred million under my belt - but lets get back to value!

Here's the 6 principles

1. Value is Relative and Context-Specific

The first principle to grasp is that value is not a one-size-fits-all concept. It varies greatly from person to person, influenced by individual circumstances, business environments, and roles. Understanding this relativity is crucial; what might be valuable to one prospect could mean very little to another. Therefore, it’s essential to contextualise your value proposition based on the specific situation your prospect is facing.

Understanding Context

To effectively create value, you need to engage with your prospect to uncover their unique context. This involves asking questions that reveal their current challenges, goals, and industry-specific needs. By doing so, you can tailor your message to resonate with their specific situation, making your offering more relevant and appealing.

• Example: If you’re speaking with a prospect in the healthcare industry facing patient data security challenges, tailor your conversation to focus on how your solution ensures compliance with healthcare regulations, addressing a key concern specific to their context. This resonates more than a general pitch on data management features.

2. Tie Value to Desired Outcomes

For your prospects to recognise the value you offer, it must be clearly linked to their desired outcomes. This means you should strive to understand what your prospect aims to achieve- their goals, objectives, and key initiatives. Or my personal favourite - issues, challenges & opportunities. Without this clarity, it becomes challenging to demonstrate how your solution can meet their needs.

Establishing Clear Goals

Encourage prospects to articulate their objectives explicitly. This not only helps you understand their priorities but also enables you to align your value proposition with their desired outcomes. Establishing this connection is key to demonstrating how your offering can contribute to their success based on what is important right now.

• Example: Suppose a prospect’s goal is to reduce operational costs by 20% over the next year. Align your messaging to illustrate precisely how your solution can help achieve this outcome, perhaps by automating resource-heavy tasks or streamlining processes to cut costs. You want to move away from speaking about day to day fires - these are typically crappy things that Prospect's learn to develop workarounds for.

3. Ensure Clarity in Your Value Proposition

Clarity is vital when presenting your value proposition. If prospects don’t understand what you’re offering, they won’t be able to see its value. Articulate your solutions in a way that is easy to comprehend, allowing prospects to grasp the benefits of your offering quickly.

Improving Communication

Reflect on past interactions where clarity was lacking. If a prospect has expressed confusion about your offering, take that as a cue to refine your messaging. Clear communication can make the difference between booking a meeting and losing a potential sale.

• Example: Avoid using technical jargon when explaining your platform to a prospect. Instead, share a relatable example—such as how a similar client reduced workflow time by 30% within the first month of implementation—demonstrating the benefits in plain language that resonates with their needs.

4. Assess the Importance

To help prospects determine the value of your solution, you need to uncover what is important to them relative to everything else happening within their world. This can be achieved by asking insightful questions that reveal their priorities and the implications of their current challenges.

Asking Powerful Questions

Engage your prospects with questions that delve into their organisational context. Understanding the impact of their challenges on their objectives will help you position your offering as a solution that addresses their most pressing needs. Word of warning, things become important based on the context a Prospect finds themselves in. This is why it's hard to simply assume something will be important at any time in the year - and to ignore all the other principles

• Example: During discovery, ask questions like, “Where does this sit on your list of priorities,” or, "What would the situation need to be in order for this to be addressed immediately?"

5. Evaluate Worth in Terms of Input and Output

Prospects need to assess whether the effort required to implement your solution is worth the potential benefits. This involves understanding what inputs are necessary from their side and whether those inputs are manageable compared to the expected outcomes.

Balancing Efforts and Rewards

Help prospects see the balance between what they need to invest (time, resources, etc.) and what they stand to gain. If they feel that the effort outweighs the benefits, they are likely to perceive your offering as unworthy.

• Example: Be upfront about the initial setup required for your software & services, but balance it by explaining that once operational, it can save 20% of their team’s time monthly. This transparency helps the prospect weigh the initial effort against long-term benefits, making the value easier to appreciate.

6. Understand the Reality of Your Prospect’s Situation

Finally, it’s crucial to understand the reality in which your prospects operate. This involves recognising the different levels of value:

• Level 1: Assumed Value - This is the initial value proposition, often based on assumptions about what might be important to the prospect. This is where a lot of organisations stop when it comes to creating value. They make some assumptions and then they keep bashing prospects phones and inboxes until they get a response, give up or get blocked at domain level. This is not sustainable.
• Level 2: Perceived Value - This occurs when you connect your offering to the prospect's specific context and desired outcomes. You discover the connection through research, powerful questions and 2-way dialogue. It makes it easier for a Prospect to attain value from what you're sharing based on a dotted line that's between connected to what's important to them and what you're promising to deliver.
• Level 3: Realised Value - This is achieved when prospects experience the benefits of your offering, often during or after the sale. You help Prospects to realise value when it's proven. It's undeniable.

Moving Towards Realised Value

To enhance your pipeline quality, focus on moving opportunities to the third level, where prospects can experience the value before making a purchase decision. This could involve offering trials, demos, or preliminary discussions that allow them to see the potential benefits of your solution firsthand.

• Example: Encourage your prospects to test a trial version of your software in their environment. This allows them to experience the real impact, such as reducing errors in reporting, and gives them a tangible sense of realised value before making a purchasing decision.

A final thought

Shifting your perspective on how you approach value in sales can lead to stronger relationships with customers and better sales outcomes. By focusing on understanding and activating value, you can position yourself as an OSS (Omniscient Symbiotic Seller) rather than just an ordinary commission-hungry salesperson.

As you implement these strategies, remember that delivering value is an ongoing process that requires continuous engagement and adaptation to your customers' evolving needs. Embrace this mindset, and you will see the positive impact on your sales results.

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