Amplify Your Revenue Success in 2022 with these 5 Strategies

Chief Revenue Officers (CROs) and their organizations are facing more pressure than ever. With staffing challenges nationwide, today’s leaders need strategies that distinguish their sales and customer success teams as both contributors to the company’s overarching goals and as a great group to be a part of. While the bottom-line impact of value selling is undeniable, humans are not always receptive to change. So how do you get your team to adapt and embrace the potential of value selling? Give them powerful ways to win fast in the 2022 selling cycle.

1. Empower your champion: When you can make your champion a hero, the power of their advocacy can make all the difference. In most instances, your salespeople will not be in the room when the purchase decision is made. One of the best ways to make sure they have set the stage for the best outcome is to cultivate an effective internal champion. Value is the essential tool in this.
   As your champion is having to fight for resources to fund your product, giving them the insights to speak in terms of value, especially with higher-level executives, is essential. This is about the bottom-line impact your product can make within the organization. By using a tool like DecisionLink’s ValueCloud®, your sales team can arm their champion with a business case that they’ve co-created, anchored in terminology relevant to their company, and showcasing their business realities. Having this level of detail is a powerful confidence booster. And with a strong financial argument and comprehensive analysis, they’ll have what they need to shine in front of the C-suite. The key to closing the deal for your team can also elevate the profile of your champion. It’s a win-win.
2. Simplify to scale: When it comes to value-selling, often salespeople make the mistake of thinking they have to highlight all of the value drivers their product delivers. The reality is, your champion can only keep a handful top-of-mind, so it’s better to stay focused. You want to ensure your team can tell a simple, compelling story that resonates. We believe the magic number of value drivers is three. With this kind of focus, your sales team has time to build business value cases for more prospects and the focus to make a more effective pitch. By empowering your entire team with this guidance, you can quickly scale your value selling efforts because the approach is more manageable. Another way that everyone wins.
3. Align value with business outcomes: With value selling, the key is to stay wholly focused on business outcomes, not features and functions. In fact, building ROI calculations based on functionalities can actually backfire because every competitor will try to recreate your measures. It is easy for competitors to undercut you with similar capabilities sold at a lower cost.
   However, aligning your value drivers with an organization’s strategic goals precludes this competitive maneuver. Instead, your sales conversations are up-leveled value discussions rather than feature-focused pitches. This opens up access to C-level decision-makers and gives your team the best tools to arm their champion with (see #1). After all, it’s value, not features, that connects you to your buyers. It is what compels them to buy. Value selling requires understanding your prospects’ strengths, challenges, profitability, risks, market disruptors, and trends. Use this knowledge to align your service with their desired outcomes and your buyer will feel that their needs are seen, understood, and addressed.
4. Demonstrate value always: In the SaaS world, customers vote with their dollars every year. So, it’s in your interest to give them a reason to continue picking your solution. Customer value management is key in customer success arenas. Companies with world-class customer retention do so by demonstrating value throughout the customer journey. While you may need to adjust or adapt outcomes over your relationship with a customer, continuing to measure value post-sale drives success. Organizations that only provide value information when it’s asked for face significant risk of churn. With a platform like the DecisionLink ValueCloud® that automatically measures value throughout the relationship, you can shift from a reactive to a proactive approach to communicating value delivered. This encourages a customer lifetime mindset—providing opportunities for renewal, up and cross-selling, and content for building case studies to attract new customers.
5. Focus on what sets you apart — value: Your customers aren’t really interested in what your technology does functionally. They want to know what it will do for their business from the big picture sense. No one cares about tech specs. They care about outcomes. Your prospect knows functionally what your product can do even before they start talking to you. Your sales team’s job is to focus on what your technology can do for them. By centering conversations on your customers’ needs and highlighting the three core value drivers that will make a difference for their business, every conversation will clarify how your product or solution will help them achieve their desired goals. This is the foundation for justifying pricing, securing support at various organizational levels, and getting the win.

CROs today are charged with piloting their company’s success by aligning strategic goals with growth-driving solutions. Value selling is an essential component of this. With these five strategies top of mind, value selling can permeate your organization and take your team to the next level in 2022.

If you missed our webinar this month with top revenue executives from Fictiv, Accurent, Smartsheet, and more speaking about this very topic, click here to learn more strategies to amplify your revenue success this year.

GET TO KNOW OUR PANELISTS:

Ty Flippin
Head of GoValue Solutions at DecisionLink.

Michael Hubbard
SVP, Customer Success, Services, & Support, Smartsheet

Chris Jones
Head of Global Field Operations, BetterCloud

Pete Mansel
SVP, Sales (Americas), Accruent

Joanne Moretti
CRO, Fictiv