In my past two posts, I’ve discussed why your value proposition may not be working well, and how you can build a value process to replace it. This final post in the series covers the benefits of the change.

When you build a value process instead of a value proposition and work to achieve the four agreements with your prospect instead of presenting and demonstrating your company and your product, you will generate a “win” for both you and your prospect.

Your prospect wins:

• Your prospect reaches a better understanding of the problem he’s trying to solve – actually, in some cases realizes that a nagging situation that seems to be” just the way it is” is a problem that has a valuable solution.
• Your prospect works with you and uses this understanding to arrive at a better solution than he would have if he had gone through a traditional vendor evaluation.
• Your prospect has a clear understanding of the outcome and the value he will receive for his investment – and will be recognized for that in his company.
• Finally, your prospect starts to build a valuable vendor relationship with you as the solution gets implemented.

You win:

• First, of course, you get the order.
• You attain a better understanding of your prospect’s business, of the problem you will be solving, and of the outcome you will be providing your prospect. You will be providing a better solution, you will have a smoother implementation which should lower your cost of delivery, and you are much more likely to have a delighted customer in the end.
• You will have differentiated yourself from your competition along the dimension of value versus investment. This allows flexible pricing and gets you higher margins for the solution you provide.
• Finally, you have created a superb reference to use as you work on your next sale.

As you can see, moving beyond a traditional “Value Proposition” and thinking about a value process instead, can provide significant benefits to both you and your prospect. The value process will also help you attain a much higher closing percentage as you qualify early and work closely with your prospects.

It’s a small but fundamental change in the way you sell that will provide big results.

As always, I welcome your comments, arguments, and analysis.