The Value Proposition: the centerpiece of a sales presentation

I recently gave a networking workshop.  My focus was the "elevator speech"--the speech that you give when someone asks you what you do for a living; the speech that the listener gives you thirty seconds to deliver and rolls their eyes when you never get to the point.  The centerpiece of the elevator speech is the Value Proposition.
Wikipedia defines a value proposition as "a promise of value to be delivered, communicated, and acknowledged.  It is also a belief from the customer about how value will be delivered, experienced and acquired.  A value proposition can apply to an entire organization, or parts thereof, or customers accounts, or products or services."
The value proposition of the products or service that you sell are the things that distinguish them and separate them from the competition--what is often called the features and benefits.  The value proposition can also be the benefits that you bring to the sales process or the organization that you represent.  The value proposition is a statement summarizing why someone should use your product or service over anyone else's.  It is absolutely essential that you think about this and internalize it and practice it and use it every chance you get.  It doesn't need to be long--in fact it should be short and to the point and represent the soul of who you are and what you're selling.  Some examples:
Uber, the car service:  1. Pickup in less than 5 minutes; 2. Lower prices than a taxi; 3. An app to track your car's approach; 4. Cashless transaction; 5. A rating system that guarantees security.  "Tap the app, get a ride."
Slack, the messaging service: "A Messaging App for Teams who put robots on Mars." And "All your tools in one place."
Evernote, an online note storing app: "Remember everything."  "Provides the ability to organize all your notes in one place so you never forget a great idea."

What is the essence or the soul of your business or service?  Once you have determined that, put it into as few words as possible and internalize it and use it until it becomes a part of you.
Every business should have a value and every employee should understand and buy into that value; every person should have a value and should be able to vocalize that value and believe in that value.
This idea is worth thinking about--long and hard.  What is your value?  What is your company's value? What is their product's value? 
People tend to believe in a person or product that has value.  People tend to buy a product or service from a person who believes deeply in what they're selling and can express that value briefly and confidently and from the heart.

Customer Centered Selling: Four Important Steps

Customers must be at the heart of any sales process.  I have discussed in previous blogs about relational selling versus transactional selling.  Transactional selling is not customer centered, by definition.  For a transactional salesperson getting the order is more important than doing right for the customer; meeting sales goals supersedes making the customer happy.  Relational selling is customer centered. Relational salespeople know that they will live with the results of the sale and therefore they make sure the customer is well-served.
Everything these days is becoming "customer centered".  Netflix "learns" what you like to watch and features the programs similar to ones that you have watched in the past.  Amazon "learns" your buying history and "suggests" things that you might like.  The future of selling is knowing your customer better than your competition does and being able to use that knowledge to service them better, to make sure your customer gets the solution that is best for their needs.
Four things to do before making your first sales call on a new customer or even your second and third call on an old customer:
1.  Look up the company on Manta (www.manta.com).  This will give you an overview of the company's ownership and number of employees.
2.  Go to the company's website.  If there's an "About" tab, click on it.  Learn everything you can about the company--websites are great sources of insight into the company's culture, no matter how large or small the organization.
3.  Go to LinkedIn and look up the company's president and any of the people that you're meeting with.  LinkedIn gives tremendous insight into a person's interest, if they are keeping up their profiles.
4.  Check other social media outlets to get even more insight.  Does the company have a Twitter feed? A Facebook page? 
Putting yourself into a selling situation without knowing everything you can about the customer you're trying to sell is like coming up to bat with a broomstick.  You may hit the ball, but you've reduced your odds by a whole lot.
Do your homework.  Get to know your customer before making your pitch and tailor the pitch to his needs.  

No More Excuses: Write it Down!!! Keep a Bullet Journal

In my 44 years in sales, I can't tell you how many times I've asked someone if they did something and the response was: "I forgot".  The simplest way to solve this problem of forgetting seems to be the one that people resist like the plague:  keep a list; write it down; look at the list every day.

There is a movement becoming hugely successful in the U.S. almost overnight, called "Bullet Journals".   "Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future" is their value proposition.  Ryder Carroll is the inventor of this enormously popular organization scheme.  While the concept is simple (using pen and notebook), the critical component of this idea is that you have to spend time reflecting on the journal--what are your current tasks; where are you headed.  Writing things down is not the end point; reflection on what you wrote is the end point.  Hundreds of thousands of people are using Carroll's method.  Check it out:  www.bulletjournal.com.

I use a system called Evernote (www.evernote.com)

I can forward emails right to Evernote that I need to see later, put reminders on these emails or notes; create notes and reminders and take notes, typed and handwritten, right onto the app.  I have been using Evernote as my "bullet journal" for years.  But putting something somewhere is meaningless if you don't spend time reflecting on your notes: what got done (delete it)? what got delayed (change the reminder to a new date)?  what needs to be done by someone else (forward it)?  

Don't try to test your memory.  Write things down; make lists; keep a bullet journal--and then go back over it every day and cross off what you did and move what you didn't do to the next day.

Write it down; and look at the list every day and stop using the excuse "I forgot".  

And for each item in the journal, ask yourself: "what is the next step; where do I go from here with this task or project?"

Eleven Extra Steps: Lessons from Louis Rudd

Louis Rudd on his journey across the Antarctic

Battling wind gusts up to 60 mph, dragging a sled weighing hundreds of pounds, Louis Rudd and Colin O'Brady, separately and alone, with no outside help, crossed the Antarctic recently.  O'Brady won the "race", completing the journey in 54 days; 56 days for Rudd. The trip was 925 miles covering approximately 16 miles a day.  Some days they couldn't see their hands in front of their faces.  The amazing thing is that they are the only two to survive this journey and they did it at the same time.  But that is not the lesson here.
For a lot of us, every day seems like a journey across the Antarctic--pulling 400 pound sleds and battling 60 mph winds.  Walking 15 miles a day means pushing forward one step at a time, 30 steps a minute, counting every step, struggling for every step.  And when Rudd was exhausted for the day, when he couldn't take another step, he took eleven more steps.
Why eleven?  It was once calculated, Rudd explained, that if the famous English explorer, Robert Falcon Scott and his team, had taken 11 more steps each day of their expedition in the early 1900's, they would have survived.
When you're tired, and you need to get one more quote done, make one more sales call, answer one more customer service question, satisfy one more customer's urgent request--remember:  Eleven More Steps.  Success demands Eleven More Steps.  There is no easy way.  Hook up your 400 pound sled and drag it Eleven More Steps.