Amidst the current economic uncertainty and the era of Frugalnomics, solution providers realize the need to elevate their value to prospects and customers. It’s essential to clearly articulate the proposed and delivered value to maintain boost win rates, accelerate decisions, reduce discounting and assure retention and expansion.
Many organizations have shifted their messaging towards a more value-oriented approach, introducing value selling training, developing ROI calculators for sellers, launching value calculators on their websites, or hiring value engineers. However, with each department working independently on their value initiatives, a comprehensive implementation of value throughout the buyer’s journey often gets overlooked.
This can lead to a lack of understanding of the buyer’s needs at each stage of the relationship and the absence of a systematic roadmap to deliver what a buyer wants and needs.
In response to this, we’ve developed the Value Lifecycle, a capability and maturity model designed to guide your journey towards value excellence. But first, let’s define the Value Lifecycle.
The Value Lifecycle assists solution providers in building value at each stage of the buyer’s journey and the customer lifecycle. Think of it as a circular, continuous engagement process with four key steps:
Attract: This initial outreach to buyers focuses on their challenges and value success stories to pique interest. At this stage, Marketing and Business Development Managers (BDMs) use value-driven social, email, and video marketing to connect with buyers, leveraging content such as infographics, e-books, white papers, and assessment tools.
Engage: The engagement stage educates buyers, encouraging change by identifying key pain points and strategic initiatives. By amplifying the cost of inaction, this phase promotes immediate action over procrastination. Here, Sales engages with prospects to understand their pain points, align use case capabilities, and estimate potential value.
Sell: The selling phase focuses on justifying the investment in the proposed solutions for the buying team and creating a persuasive business case that effectively communicates the value story. Sellers, Sales Support, and Value Consultants / Engineers collaborate with the customer to recommend specific solutions and create compelling use cases and business cases.
Retain & Expand: After deployment, this stage involves validating key metrics and confirming the impacts and value realization regularly. It leverages the realized value to advocate for retention and inspire expansion. At this stage, Customer Success and Account Execs (supported by Value Consultants in larger organizations) work to prove that the proposed value has been realized. In today’s scrutinized business environment, it is crucial to justify past investments before expanding relationships.
At the core of the Value Lifecycle is the Value Office. This entity coordinates the engagement process and the teams involved. It focuses on key metrics, value storytelling, quantification models, and tools. Given the critical role of value in differentiation and customer success, we believe a Chief Value Officer is essential with larger solution providers to define and orchestrate these efforts.
The Bottom Line
To effectively implement Value, solution providers need to transition from siloed value initiatives to a more coordinated approach that considers value across the entire buyer’s journey and customer lifecycle.
The Value Lifecycle serves as a comprehensive guide, outlining the necessary people, processes, tools, and intelligence required to cultivate Value excellence.
Click here to get a copy of the Value Lifecycle Assessment, illustrating in detail each step of the Value Lifecycle (registration required) – https://genius-drive-39843197.hubspotpagebuilder.com/value-lifecycle-assessment
Checkout our discussion about the Value Lifecycle in this webinar: Crafting Superior Customer Journeys – https://www.finlistics.com/crafting-superior-customer-journeys
