INTERVIEW Sales Skills
“Following sessions on how to sell value the results showed a dramatic increase in profitability to an average of
9.6 per cent, based on a sales value of £1.5million” David Graham consultant for Customer Enterprise
The Value of Selling
Comms Business talks to David Graham, consultant for Customer Enterprise with 30 years experience in the
development of sales, about why he says managers and resellers should focus on moving sales professionals
from a discounting selling approach to one of value-based sales.
There is an ever increasing
awareness and desire to be,
or be seen, as a value-based
provider of products and
services which is being driven
by a number of market factors,
including;
• e fast moving pace of
technological change.
• End user buyers are continually
changing their behaviour in
terms of when and how they
engage with resellers.
• In highly competitive markets
the requirement for resellers
to increase their prot
margins and dierentiation
is paramount and essential to
their ongoing success.
When you take into account
that B2B buyers are, according
to the Corporate Executive
Board, typically 60% on the
way to a buying decision before
actively engaging with your
sales team, these changes in
behaviour mean that if a reseller
is late in engaging with an enduser
the only leverage available
is discounting which inevitably
leads to loss of margin.
The Value of Value
David Graham consultant
for Customer Enterprise said
“e impact that value-based
selling can have is signicant.
We recently conducted a reseller
value-based selling pilot where
a specic area of business was
achieving an average margin
of just four per cent. Following
sessions on how to sell value the
results showed a dramatic increase
in protability to an average of 9.6
per cent, based on a sales value of
£1.5million.
“Signicantly, the additional
prot the reseller made was
equal to a 7:1 return on the
investment made.”
So, how was this achieved,
and the approach taken?
“To help quantify what is
and how to measure value-based
selling there is a formula that
we use and share with sales
professionals: Value-based selling
=> Cost of change + Risk.”
Graham says the key to
achieving real value in a sale
revolves around creating insight in
the end users mind and that here,
the factors that help create insight,
can be seen in the graphic.
Looking at the other side of
his value based selling equation,
‘the cost of change’, there are a
number of factors Graham says
that need to be explored and
understood here, such as:
© peshkova-stock.adobe.com
• Changing of processes to
move to new partner.
• Moving away from existing
relationships.
• Working with a new partner.
• Implementation resources.
Assessing the risk element
the factors that need to be
weighed include, personal and
company risk, and potential
disruption to business.
52 | Comms Business Magazine | July 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
/peshkova-stock.adobe.com
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