The Art of Communicating Real Value

What if the true worth of a product isn't found on its price tag? Join us as we unlock the mystery of value in sales, exploring how individual needs transform simple transactions into meaningful exchanges. Through entertaining stories, like my adventures with a gym membership and the unexpected lessons learned from a quirky car repair, we unravel how personal motivations such as convenience and pride shape what buyers perceive as valuable. This episode is packed with insights that empower salespeople to shift their focus from just selling a product to truly understanding and communicating its value.

Navigating the sales process based on client needs can make all the difference, whether you're selling mobile phones or complex medical monitoring systems. My journey in the mobile phone industry taught me the pitfalls of assumptions and the power of truly understanding client values. We extend this lesson to intricate sales scenarios involving life-saving technology, showcasing how upfront costs can pale in comparison to the profound benefits and security these solutions provide. As you listen, you'll gain a deeper appreciation for evaluating the broader implications of your offerings, ensuring you're equipped to convey their true worth in any situation.

Chapters

• 0:00 Understanding Value in Sales Processes
• 13:22 Selling Based on Client Needs

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

A few days ago, I was reminded by a question that I used to get fairly regularly when I was doing sales, particularly trade shows, for some reason, but it would also pop up now and again on client visits, and that question was what is it worth? Now you may well have received that question yourself and, frankly, the simple answer, and probably the correct answer, is to say I've no idea. What is it worth? Because a lot of people get confused between price and value, and this is an area where I've certainly seen people who are new to sales struggling and in fact, salespeople who are struggling tend to get a little bit confused themselves. They actually don't understand what the value is of the solution they're offering. So what is it worth? Well, yeah, I don't know, because what people are actually asking is what's the price? And sure, you'll have a ticket price, you might be doing a discount on some sort of a deal, whatever's going on, but that's the price. So that's the monetary value of whatever it is that you're offering, whereas what is it worth? That really is what value it holds for the person who's buying it.

Speaker 1: 1:48

So if I'm looking at a gym membership, what is it worth? So, obviously there's a cost, presumably every month I might pay, or maybe I do a yearly payment. But what is it worth to me? Well, that really depends on what I'm getting from the membership. I might be really committed to it and it could be quite a lot. It could be that I have a health issue. I need to really get my fitness better and in doing that I can be there more for my family. If I have children, I might be older. I might want to spend more time with grandchildren and be active. So what is that worth? You know how do you put a monetary amount onto that kind of a question. So where I'm getting to with this is that it's really important as salespeople that we understand what the value is of what we are offering to the people who are buying it, and that is not the ticket price. It is very rarely the ticket price. Often the two things are completely separate.

Speaker 1: 2:53

So recently I've got an older car and one of the back doors decided to take a return trip to the 1970s and not have central locking anymore. So I paid 50 euros. A friend came in basically did the work for me, but repaired the car. So what is that worth to me? Well, did the car function. Yes, could I open the door? Yep, it was a bit inconvenient, but it was no more inconvenient than the cars that I used to own when I was younger and when I first started buying cars. None of them had central locking, so I'd have to manually unlock and lock all of the doors. So I can argue that making that repair to the car was worth nothing at all. It didn't change the functionality of the door, other than it made it a little more convenient to get in and out, and I don't use that door very much.

Speaker 1: 3:48

So what is the value? Why would I spend some money, get somebody else involved? Or the alternative was to spend a lot of time looking at YouTube videos and probably getting very, very frustrated and spending several hours taking this door apart so that I could change this particular unit. So why would I spend that money, make that commitment of time, get somebody else involved to do all of that? Well, part of it's convenience. So what price do we put on convenience? Another part of it might be resale value of the car, but frankly, it's a very old car. In fact, it just went past 200,000 kilometers a couple of weeks ago, so it's a really old car. So in terms of resale value, does it make any difference? Probably not, because I'm not going to get much money for it if and when I sell it.

Speaker 1: 4:43

What about more of an egoic thing? You know, just the personal pride in having a vehicle that works properly. Well, that's also part of it, because I was in fact due to pick up some friends from the local railway station a few days later and that was definitely a factor for me. Just the and I guess it is a pride thing, maybe it's an ego thing about having the car where all the doors work properly and not having to make an excuse or apologize that one of the doors doesn't open properly and I have to kind of reach in from my driver's door at the front to open up the back door. So these are the factors that came into play when I made that decision and the reason that I'm going through all of this maybe laboring the point a little bit, going through all of this, maybe laboring the point a little bit is that as salespeople we often don't know all of the reasons why somebody is making a sale, but the fact is that the more of those reasons we do know first of all, the more of an argument we can make the more of an argument we can make if you like to persuade that person to just, you know, get out the credit card or write out the order, do whatever it is so that we get the business.

Speaker 1: 6:06

But also we understand what the value is to that person and what I'm driving at here and the whole point of this, and hopefully it's fairly obvious what I'm talking about. But the value is not the ticket price of the item and in fact the value might have several different aspects to it and all of them may not necessarily be apparent when we first start to talk to this potential client. It may be they've come to us looking for a particular solution and it may be that some of these factors they won't talk about. I wouldn't really talk about the ego thing, but it's good to understand that. And because it is a nice car, it's an older Range Rover, so that in itself, I guess, is a clue because, looking at a more expensive brand, most people definitely not everyone, but most people would really want to have that car function pretty well and it looks reasonably good as long as you don't look too closely. So it's looked after, it's clean, so there are clues in all of that, although there wasn't a salesperson involved in all of this.

Speaker 1: 7:13

But if there had been a salesperson involved, you look at the information that you're being presented by the person you're speaking to. So if you're selling something in their home, what is their home like? Is it tidy? Is it clean? Has it been well maintained? How do they present themselves? Are they tidy? Are they scruffy? Do they worry about their appearance, do they not? All of these things give you clues about what's important to that person as a potential client, and by and being aware of those clues, taking a note of them, it starts to give you at least some indications of what's important to that person. So if you had a client, obviously I don't know what you sell. But if you speak to a client and they're very well-addressed, they're very smart, they're very clean, that's telling you one thing about that person's values, whereas if you're speaking to somebody else who's very scruffy, very dirty, maybe smells a little bit you know these are this person has another set of values. Now, I'm not saying one set is right or wrong. What I'm interested in here is how you make use of that information that is being presented to you by that person.

Speaker 1: 8:39

And again, the point is that we have a lot of clues presented to us by our clients. How they dress, how they present themselves, is one. There are many others, obviously, I've already mentioned their home, if you do the kind of work where you go into their. Obviously I've already mentioned their home if you do the kind of work where you go into their home. So I've done professional portrait work and that was done, shooting people at home. So one of the things I would do with the camera, I should add but one of the things I would do when I visited, because I'd normally quite often try and visit before I did the shoot, or if I did on the day of the shoot what we do, I'd get there early, we'd have a chat and I'd talk through the shoot without getting any gear out and then, because that way I actually presented myself as a person and not the photographer, and that way they connected with me as a person, so that allowed me to get better results. That's just another. I'll sort of throw that in there because that might be handy for the kind of thing you're doing.

Speaker 1: 9:36

But what I would be doing in that meeting, as well as just having a chat to my client, having a cup of coffee with them, talking about what we do on the shoot, if there are any particular things they wanted from the shoot, any particular photographs. I'm looking around because where most of the money was made was definitely not on the shoot itself, because that's time, time for money, and what I'd be hoping for is to basically end up with an order of several thousand pounds. So people at the time were just doing photo sessions for a couple of hundred pounds. It might even be 50 pounds. Again, with photography it's a kind of difficult area because there are no set prices. So you may be in that kind of an industry or you may not be, but again, you've got to choose, kind of choose your clients, but also deliver for them.

Speaker 1: 10:30

So I'd be looking around their home, looking at the kind of furniture they had, if they had any pictures up, what were the kind of frames they had? Was it very modern? Was it very traditional? Was it very monochromatic? Was it white, black, greys, or was it a very colourful environment they had. And all of this gave me a clue about the kind of photographs they were likely to buy. Would they buy black and whites? Would they buy color photographs and also the frames that I could offer them.

Speaker 1: 11:00

So when I was doing that, I had a couple of framers local framers I would use so I could physically go down there, build a relationship with the framer but also physically pick up the work but I also had a set of samples and there were a lot of them physically pick up the work, but I also had a set of samples and there were a lot of them. So, by going into somebody's house before the shoot and then I would go and do the shoot and then normally a week or two later I would come back and do a presentation of the best photographs and at that time we would be looking at what photographs they wanted to order and we'd be looking at the framing and I'd also have the mounts and things like that for them to look at. But again, that's another example of where being observant, looking at the information that is presented to you, can be helpful in telling you more about what's important to your client and therefore, when it comes to presenting value, what is of value to that client. And so, coming back to where we started from, really this is really the key thing. When somebody asks you what something is worth. Usually you don't know, unless you know that person. Maybe it's an existing client, you understand what's important to them, but this is really the key thing when you present any solution. Yes, it will come down to a financial transaction, but in order for that monetary value to make sense, it needs to present good value to the client. Now, another thing to remember is that what's a lot of money to you may not be a lot of money to your client. Again, it comes back to what's important to them. May not be a lot of money to your client Again, it comes back to what's important to them. So one of the things definitely to do is not to apply your own numbers, let's say, to what's expensive and what isn't. That's really for your client to decide. They make the call on that. So, first of all, let go of that one, because that's an area again where I've seen some salespeople hold back because the monetary value, the numbers that they're looking at, are a lot for them personally, but they don't know what the client is willing to spend, and it's certainly a mistake I've made in the past.

Speaker 1: 13:22

Another job I had, a kind of temporary job, was just selling mobile phones, cellular phones, and a client came in and I just assumed that she would not really want an expensive phone. In fact she bought one of the most expensive ones I had. And again, there was that lesson being learned the hard way. So this is what I'm telling you now so that you don't have to do that, so that you don't have to do that. But what's important, what is of value, is determined by the client. So I'll give you one other example, quite a different one.

Speaker 1: 14:03

So one of the things I've sold in the past is remote medical monitoring systems. This was the kind of thing that would have two sets of kit, was a kind of thing that would have two sets of kit. One would be portable and would go with whatever the application was. So, for example, it could be for an ambulance service, where this kit might be fitted out in an ambulance and the other part of it would go to headquarters, wherever that might be. And what this kit did the bit that went into the ambulance would include cameras and also a satellite transmitter and receiver.

Speaker 1: 14:41

And the reason it was satellite was that this could be used by pretty much anybody anywhere, as long as you had satellite coverage. So it wasn't dependent on the cellular network. It wasn't dependent on even the government radio networks that might be used in case of emergencies. This was in Australia, so an emergency might be a bushfire situation. So again, you wouldn't use cellular networks, because the cell sites can be damaged and if you've got everybody panicking or phoning one another to see if they're well or not, the network gets flooded with calls. So you need to have a separate network.

Speaker 1: 15:19

So the idea of this satellite system was that it could be used in ambulances anywhere. It could also be used in aircraft, in ships, anything like that, and then this second unit was be used in aircraft, in ships, anything like that, and then the second unit was essentially used in headquarters somewhere and that could be linked to anybody anywhere just using the regular internet. So the person that might get involved might be a specialist. So one example not a very nice one, but it's the reality of some of these situations is that if someone was attending a road traffic accident and somebody had been badly injured and the difference between life and death might be amputating a limb, most ambulance people aren't trained to do that, but using this system they could quickly set up some cameras just around the patient, have a headset so that they can listen to the specialist who's at the other end of this system via satellite. The person at the other end could actually control, remotely control the cameras so they can control the view, they can zoom in, zoom out, pan, all of that kind of thing so they can see, they can choose which camera angle they want to look at and they can be telling, talking that person through at the other end, talking them through the procedure so that the person who was the patient had the best possible chance of survival.

Speaker 1: 16:49

Now, that system at the time I was selling it would cost a basic system about $40,000 to $50,000. So it was roughly $20,000 at each end. There were options, obviously, with that, but that would essentially be what it would cost. So you could argue that that's an awful lot of money to add into an ambulance, so you probably wouldn't put it in a fleet of ambulances.

Speaker 1: 17:14

But one of the situations that I was looking at was in a remote mining situation, because some of my clients were involved in mining and they might be in Indonesia somewhere, just as an example, but wherever they were they were at a remote site and this could be any kind of remote site. It just happened to be mining in this instance and the argument was that if you had somebody injured, first of all a lot of these sites they might have a basic first aider, but they wouldn't necessarily have a doctor or certainly anybody with a huge amount of medical experience. So the first thing to consider was that the on the ground medical support was pretty limited, pretty basic. So without this kind of a system, what that person who is responsible for the medical care of people and, looking at a situation where somebody's been injured, they would have to make a call on whether or not they could stay where they were or if they would have to evacuate, be evacuated somewhere. So problems with that.

Speaker 1: 18:20

First of all, if you're moving someone, that could make the situation much worse. Secondly, if you're looking at certainly an air evacuation, that can cost a few hundred thousand dollars because you've got to get a helicopter in or some sort of aircraft coming to pick that person up and get them out. They then have the problem of just production. Whatever that person was doing, presumably they're there because they need to be doing that role and there's unlikely to be a spare. So you then got to sort out how you handle that. Do you fly somebody else in from somewhere else, does production stop for a while, or maybe for an extended period if that person can't be quickly replaced.

Speaker 1: 19:01

So when you start stacking up all of these factors, each one of them has a monetary value. These factors, each one of them has a monetary value, and what that final figure is, the client would obviously need to make a call on that, but the chances are very much that the final figure will be many times the cost of installing that equipment in the first place and having that as a kind of insurance. And other applications might be in aircraft, because some of the larger aircraft do actually have a space on board where the crew can sleep. You could also put a passenger who's been taken ill there. If it was the difference between diverting and not diverting, that can make a huge difference to the cost of the airline, because diverting an aircraft is very, very expensive.

Speaker 1: 19:52

So these are just examples, but I'm hoping hopefully one of them in there is something you can relate to and hopefully it's given you a little bit of food for thought so that next time somebody asks you what, whatever your solution is worth, um, I mean, maybe not tell them, I don't know, say that you don't know, but at least you can start to quantify what the value of your solution is for them in their situation. So I hope you found that useful. That's it for this podcast and I'll speak to you on the next one. Bye for now.