So, what is value?

What exactly is the ‘value’ of what you are trying to sell? Are you sure you really can pinpoint and communicate it? And do your customers understand and actually value it? Ultimately, customers buy stuff that has a value for them – that’s a tautology, but nevertheless true. So the big question is: What is value? And what is the specific value of your offer?

Let’s start with a generic definition: On the most elementary level value simply is something that provides some sort of benefit to someone – or at least they believe that it does.

A more formal definition could be this: ‘Value for a customer refers to the perceived benefit or satisfaction gained from a product or service. It encompasses not only the quality and utility of the product or service but also the emotional and psychological benefits, such as convenience, brand reputation, and customer experience.’

Of course, this still does not answer what value is in each and every case – but we know a few more things that should help you with your value – in fact, your value proposition.

The main things about value

Three things are crucial when it comes to value:

1. Value lies in the eye of the beholder. Now, you might argue that a monetary value, e.g. savings of x amount are an objective measure of value. But the question is: Does your target persona actually care about money? Imagine a really technical role, which is measured e.g. on how smooth something works, or how cutting edge a solution is – would this person care about money? Maybe somewhat, but it’s not going to be a driving factor. Tell the same to the finance manager of a company and you obviously will get a very different result.
2. It doesn’t matter what kind of value you believe you put in your offering. If Value is subjective, this should be clear: If you put some really clever feature into some of your products – but your target customers couldn’t care less about it, all you have produced is a pink elephant. And you’re in for a rude surprise.
3. Value needs to be communicated. It doesn’t help if you believe that your product is valuable and rely on your customers to understand for themselves what is in it for the: E.g. to infer from a technical description, what a cool box they are looking at. And this is even more true in case of highly innovative products. These products will need extensive communication and explanation – asking questions like ‘what do you need?’ is not going to cut it. To quote Henry Ford: “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘Faster horses’”.

The relevance for B2B sales

Now, what does that mean for you in B2B sales? You need to understand the real, persona-specific value of your offer – otherwise you really don’t know what you are trying to sell. You need to systematically analyze and understand what value you can provide to which of your customers – and more precisely, each individual customer persona. And you need to do this for all the stakeholders that might be involved in the sales process on your customer’s side.

For that, it’s crucial to understand your customer personas – the deeper, the better. You need to see through your customer’s eyes to understand what they might value: Interestingly, this is something that is done extensively in B2C sales, but often forgotten in B2B sales, being replaced with an anonymous ‘customer’ in may sellers’ minds.

Finally it’s essential to find ways to communicate this value in such a manner that your target personas not only understand that value, but also feel the need to act – aka to buy. Some of the tools in your box could be solution selling, consultative sales, Challenger sales, storytelling, and so on, and so forth.

Conclusion

Value is only value, if your customer perceives it as such. In order to make your offering truly valuable to your target market, stop thinking in features and in product terms – and step into your target customers’ shoes. And when I say target customers, I mean really into the hearts and minds of your target customer personas – the CEOs, CFOs and CTOs, the technical directors, operations managers and the field service force. Try to see what your offering does for them that would help them achieve goals or solve problems, in short what they would see as valuable for themselves in their roles and as persons – and make sure you communicate this value. This is not the ‘total’ of sales, of course – but it is its very basic foundation. Without value to sell, it will become really difficult, no matter how fancy and elaborate your sales approach will be!