The dangers of value selling.

We all know the benefit and necessity of selling value, thereby justifying a more profitable price. However, value selling can certainly have downsides if not done right. Here, I will give you an example from my personal life, as I have done several times in the past.

My house's simple asphalt shingle roof is 30 years old and needs to be replaced. Consequently, I contacted several local roofers to get a quote for a new roof, and how they tried to sell me the new roof demonstrates the dangers of value selling.

Three of these roofers I connected with said they needed to inspect the roof in order to provide a quotation. I found this odd because, first off, replacing a roof that is 30 years old for an experienced roofer must be something that they did hundreds, if not thousands, of times, so my roof should not offer any surprises. From a purely technical point of view, I don't understand the actual value of the inspections. Secondly, because satellite images are available to measure the size of the roof, there's no reason to inspect it for that particular purpose.

These three roofers also wanted to sit down with me and my wife and review the condition of the roof and their work. I reluctantly obliged. Each occasion took about 45 to 60 minutes, as if they wanted to teach me how to change a roof. Lots of boring technical and building technique details. But of course, they were trying to convince me that changing the roof is really complicated, and because it's "so complicated," it requires specific skills that only they have, and consequently, they can justify a higher price. They tried to value-sell. For me, it was just a total waste of time. It created sales fiction that was utterly unnecessary.

But one roofer took a very different approach. They did not ask for a meeting to go over the details of the roof; instead, within a couple of hours of my reaching out, I received a message that they had measured the roof using satellite images and provided me with a detailed proposal, an actual contract, that specified exactly what they would do and what it would cost. The company also said that over the years, they've been replacing thousands of 25 to 30-year-old roofs, and they know the typical condition of such a roof, so they can scope the work without any inspection and, more importantly, without any need to try to convince me how difficult it is to replace the roof. And their quotation was about 30% lower than their competition's. The actual work all the roofers quoted me was the same.

Naturally, I decided to award the project to a company that appeared to be easy to work with, and that took a technology and modern approach to business, not those who tried to waste my time trying to convince me of the difficulty of a commodity service. And that was lower in price.

So, what do we learn from this?

When selling value, the value is in the prospect's perception of value, not sellers the perception of value that matters. Or assumptions of the buyer's perception of value. For me, this was very clear. I see no value in knowing how to replace a roof or the building techniques required.

(In a way, this event reminds me of a couple of occasions when I've been buying a new car, and the car salesman desperately wanted to show me the engine. Something I have no interest in even checking out. There are people whose sole job is to know what's happening under the hood so I don't have to. They're called auto mechanics.)

Instead, what's essential for me in this case was to find a company that appears easy to work with, provides its services at a reasonable price, and uses technology whenever possible. Those roofers who did not get the business this time could possibly have changed my opinion by taking another approach to the selling process and finding out what's important for me instead of assuming that they could deliver a perception value by almost teaching me how to replace a roof. This is something anybody in sales needs to think about. Find out (i.e., ask the prospect in a roundabout way) what is important instead of assuming what said prospect values.