Despite the well-documented benefits of value selling—improving win rates by 48%, increasing deal sizes by 35%, and accelerating sales cycles by 25%—adoption remains surprisingly low.
Less than 1 in 5 sellers are currently leveraging this proven strategy, and even less when it comes to customer success reps, leaving significant revenue opportunities untapped.
During a recent Enterprise Value Collective Jam Session, Value Consultant and Engineering leaders gathered to address this pressing challenge. The session focused on sharing advice around one critical question: “How do we drive adoption?” The collective’s insights shed light on the obstacles to adoption and offered actionable solutions to ensure more sellers embrace value selling and unlock its full potential.
Here’s the top advice, the Lucky 13 best practices for value adoption excellence from our Enterprise Value Collective leaders:
1. Executive Support
Value leaders emphasized that executive sponsorship is critical for fostering a culture of value selling within sales teams. Executives must be actively involved in driving initiatives and setting the expectation that value selling is a priority across the organization, ensuring alignment from leadership to frontline sellers.
2. Codified Business Value Story and Playbook
A standardized and repeatable business value story is essential. Leaders advocated for creating a playbook that guides sellers through outreach, discovery, and presentations, ensuring consistency in how value propositions are communicated to prospects and customers. This playbook serves as a foundation to engage customers with clear, quantifiable business outcomes.
3. Business Value Framework for Quantification
At each stage of the sales process, a well-defined framework for quantifying value is necessary. Value leaders argued that this framework enables sellers to articulate financial and operational impacts with precision, creating a strong foundation for justifying the investment to decision-makers. It brings rigor and credibility to every conversation.
4. Value Automation Integrated into CRM
Leaders agreed that automating value selling tools and embedding them into CRM platforms can significantly boost adoption. By integrating value metrics and insights directly into the sales workflow, sellers can access data-driven value propositions and leverage them seamlessly during their engagements, improving efficiency and effectiveness.
5. Training and Certification of Sellers
Training sellers on value selling isn’t enough—it must be complemented by certification. Value leaders highlighted the importance of formal programs that not only educate but also certify sellers to ensure they have mastered the concepts and can apply them in real-world scenarios, leading to higher confidence and adoption rates.
6. Direct Deal Support with Sellers
Value consultants underscored the need for direct support in live deals. By working alongside sellers on active opportunities, value engineers can provide real-time feedback and hands-on guidance, helping sellers internalize the value messaging and apply it effectively in high-stakes situations.
7. Coaching and Practice with Sellers
Coaching sessions that provide sellers with continuous feedback and opportunities to practice are essential for sustaining value selling behaviors. Leaders advocated for regular workshops where sellers can refine their skills, simulate real-world sales situations, and receive guidance from experienced value engineers.
8. Simplify the Content, Leverage AI
Simplification is key, according to value leaders. They encouraged simplifying value selling content to make it more digestible and using AI tools to streamline the creation and personalization of value propositions. AI can help automate data collection, insights generation, and even content delivery, making it easier for sellers to engage with value-selling techniques.
9. Stratify Users (Sellers) by Propensity and Need to Adopt
Adoption strategies should be targeted, value leaders noted. By stratifying sellers based on their likelihood and need to adopt value selling, organizations can focus initial efforts on creating a “success set” of sellers. These early adopters can serve as champions, demonstrating the benefits of value selling to the rest of the organization and helping to scale adoption over time.
10. Promote Peer Success of Sellers and Customer Successes
Sharing success stories is a powerful motivator for adoption. Leaders stressed the importance of highlighting peer successes within the sales team and showcasing customer outcomes achieved through value selling. These examples build credibility and excitement, inspiring more sellers to embrace the approach.
11. Promote Collaboration, Chat Groups, and Support Networks
Establishing a strong community for sharing best practices was another key point raised. Leaders suggested creating collaboration spaces such as chat groups or support networks where sellers and value consultants can share insights, ask questions, and solve challenges collectively, fostering a culture of continuous learning.
12. Center of Excellence, Orchestration Hub Across the Lifecycle
A Center of Excellence (CoE) can act as an orchestration hub to drive alignment across various teams—sales, marketing, product, and customer success—throughout the entire sales lifecycle. Leaders highlighted the importance of having a centralized function that champions value selling and ensures a consistent approach across all stages of customer engagement.
13. Continuously Evangelize and Promote the Benefits
Lastly, value leaders agreed that continuous internal promotion and evangelism are crucial for maintaining momentum. Regularly communicating the benefits of value selling—such as increased win rates, larger deal sizes, and faster sales cycles—can keep value selling top of mind for sellers and encourage ongoing adoption.
The Bottom-Line
Driving value selling adoption requires a multi-faceted approach that combines leadership support, clear frameworks, targeted training, and the right tools.
With value selling adoption currently at just 19%, value leaders identified actionable strategies to close the gap—from executive endorsement and value automation to peer-driven success stories and coaching.
By simplifying content and tools, stratifying seller engagement, and promoting continuous collaboration, organizations can realize the full potential of value selling, leading to significant improvements in win rates, deal sizes, and sales cycle acceleration.
See what the research says here – https://geniusdrive.com/new-study-highlights-the-impact-and-adoption-challenges-of-b2b-value-selling/
