General Sales
It's All About Business Results
By Jill Konrath
Apr 1, 2004, 10:53

(Note
About Author: Jill Konrath is the author of the emanual
Winning More Sales. This emanual
contains over 160 pages of hands-on sales guidance. It includes
over 550 questions to help you:

• Turn
  prospects into buyers


• Win
  competitive situations


• Conduct
  effective executive meetings
  
  
  
  To obtain your copy visit: http://www.salestrainingcamp.com/products_main_winningmoresales.htm)

Have you
ever felt like buyers could care less about what you're selling?
If so, you've learned a critical selling lesson because it's
absolutely true.

They don't
care if your product is technically superior to anything on
the market. They don't care if you're the world's foremost authority.
They don't care if you have the most robust system or the Good
Housekeeping Seal of Approval. And they don't care if 99.5%
of your customers think what you offer is the greatest thing
since sliced bread.

All customers
care about is what your product or service can do for them!
Period. Nothing more, nothing less.

Customers
don't want a drill - they want a hole.

Customers
don't want CRM software - they want a bigger share of their
client's business, increased profitability or reduced cost of
goods sold.

Customers
don't want team building - they want faster decisions so they
can increase their operational efficiency or pursue new markets.

Customers
don't want a new brochure - they want to sell lots of their
new products.

That's why
your value proposition is so important in today's market.

What's a
Value Proposition?

It's a concise
statement of the outcomes a customer gets from using your product
or service. It's all about their business results - not your
offering.

That's why
a well-honed pitch is worthless in today's crazy marketplace.
And that's why even a finely timed, exquisitely delivered presentation
is virtually useless in generating sales results.

Clearly
articulating your value proposition is an absolute necessity
for getting your foot in the door of big companies. Yet most
people and companies find it extremely difficult to articulate
their own.

In a recent
survey of new product launch failure in big companies, 75% of
senior executives cited a poor value proposition as a major
factor in their miserable results.

And most
small businesses have never even heard of a value proposition.
When challenged to create one, they're stymied.

It's like
writing your own resume - you're much too close to your offering
to see it objectively (like a customer).

The Challenge
of Finding Your Value Proposition

Right now I'm in the process of launching my new Sales Genius
program. It's for large corporations with 50+ people in the
sales force. I'm just starting to contact key decision makers
from targeted companies.

I'm so excited
about this service I can hardly stand it! I want to tell everyone
I know about it - and that's the trouble. Get me started and
I can ramble on for a half hour about what it is, why I developed
it, how different it is from anything else in the market, how
cost effective it is and more.

Does the
VP of Sales care? NO! Not one little bit. All he or she wants
to know about is how it can impact their sales.

So I've
had to force myself to slow down to focus on my value proposition.
These are the questions I used to assess my new offering from
the buyer's point-of-view:

• What
  problems are sales organizations from big companies facing
  today?


• What
  are the business impacts of these problems?


• What
  business results would my clients get from using this new
  service?

My value
proposition was hiding in the answers to those questions, but
it took a while for me to define it from a customer's perspective.

Here it
is: Sales organizations will be able to ...

• Drive
  more sales by leveraging the expertise already in their sales
  force.


• Shorten
  time-to-performance with new hire sales reps.


• Shrink
  time-to-profitability on new product introductions.


• Slash
  on-going training costs to virtually nothing.

In any product
or service there are multiple value propositions. As a seller,
you need to know them all. Then, when you research a targeted
customer you can pick and chose from them based on what you
discover is happening in their business.

Your value
proposition is the necessary foundation of all your sales and
marketing efforts. To get into big companies today, being able
to clearly articulate it is an absolute business imperative.

Here are
several more examples:

• We help
  product development teams reduce project turnaround time by
  a minimum of 32%.


• Our
  software helps companies balance out their workflow, enabling
  them to delay the purchase of multi-million dollar presses
  and significantly reduce overtime expenses.


• Our
  new product cuts failure rates by 22% over six months resulting
  in substantial cost savings in rework and quality assurance.

Your value
proposition must be stated in business terms. It must address
key issues faced by your prospective clients. If

possible, include numbers, percents and timeframes.

And it's
not about you at all. It's about the positive impact your product
or service can have on their organization.

Make sure
you invest time to figure out your value proposition - nothing
is more important if you want to get your foot in the door of
big companies.

About
The Author: Jill Konrath helps salespeople get their
foot in the door and win big contracts in the corporate market.
Sign up for her free e-newsletter by sending an email to jill@sellingtobigcompanies.com.
You get a free "Sales Call Planning Guide" ($19.95
value) when you subscribe.

Contact
Information:

Jill Konrath

www.sellingtobigcompanies.com

jill@sellingtobigcompanies.com