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Aligning Value
Calculating and communicating the value of products and services to the executive customer
 Program Benefits
How can salespeople get beyond price and express the value their offerings bring to their executive customers? Aligning Value, from BTS,
changes the way salespeople think about and interact with executive customers by unveiling proven techniques to communicate their offerings in the context of what each customer values.
This interactive, experiential learning program enables salespeople to calculate the true value of their offerings and empowers them to be more successful when calling on executive customers. This program is customized and tied to real prospects/accounts. The first half of the program examines how to calculate the value of product and service offerings. The second half explores how to best express value to executive customers using proven strategies.
Aligning Value helps salespeople:
- Calculate the qualitative and quantitative value of their offerings.
- Translate the value of their offerings to each individual customer.
- Shift from making presentations to leading interactive, consultative conversations.
- Uncover the links between their offerings and the unique business challenges each customer faces using high-impact questions.
- Employ models to express complicated, abstract concepts.
- Practice building relationships by focusing on the customer's success and aligning their offerings to real customers.
Program Description
Aligning Value charts a new course for sales teams by offering a powerful model for consultative selling through value-oriented discussions with executive customers. The session builds on proprietary research conducted with leading executives at global organizations across a variety of industries. The research indicated that executives give their business to trusted advisors, those salespeople who provide them with strategic advice to navigate through the difficult challenges they face.
Aligning Value embraces the principles of experiential and action learning. Each implementation is strategically customized to ensure relevance and participant retention. Prefaced by individual prework, the one-day program includes two half-day components that leverage breakthrough map technology. Participants learn in table groups of four to eight, tapping into the full power of their collective knowledge and experience. The program concludes with extensive work and presentations on real accounts to allow participants to practice these new techniques.
Map One: Calculating Value
1 − Value Calculator
Participants evaluate how their offerings provide specific qualitative and quantitative value to their customers. They describe the profits or savings that the offering generates and apply quantitative formulas to estimate profits, savings, or other benefits.
2 − Value Calculator Cards
Participants review the carefully customized Value Calculator cards that provide a verbal description and a formula for determining the monetary value of product and service offerings to an average customer. They consider their own customers and select Value Calculator cards that will have the greatest impact. Then, they apply the formula to their own customer and calculate the customer-specific value of their offering.
3 − Personal Value
Participants reflect on their strengths and consider how to leverage and communicate the unique ways they bring personal value to their customers.
4 − Building Value Model
Participants use the Building Value modelto develop a sales strategy for their offerings, linking each Value Calculator card to the layer with which it offers the most strategic relevance.
Map Two: Expressing Value
1 − Connecting Value to Business Challenges
Participants discover that planning for a meeting with an executive requires more than reading the client's 10-K. They consider executive business challenges in a current account and strategize how to link and communicate the value of their offerings in the context of those challenges.
2 − High-Impact Questions
Participants learn how to transform their questions from simple, open-ended inquiries to challenging questions that get customers thinking about their businesses in new ways. They learn distinguishing characteristics of high-impact questions and practice writing these questions for another current customer.
3 − Communicating Value with Models
Using the Value Calculator cards, high-impact questions, and a mental model, participants work in teams to prepare a presentation for a different customer that focuses on value, not just features and benefits or business solutions. Then, teams role-play the customer presentation to the group.
4 – Account Planning
Teams use the Aligning Value Worksheet to create an account strategy for a different account from their prework and present their strategy to the group.
5 – Role-Plays
Working in pairs, participants role-play a meeting with an actual customer, applying their newly learned value-alignment techniques to build the customer’s perception of value. Then, they provide coaching and feedback to each other. 6 – Final Debrief
Participants process their learning experience and discuss how they will apply value-alignment strategies in the field and in their account planning.
Implementation/Customization
Aligning Value is a one-day program. The program requires one trained facilitator per four to six teams of four to eight people each. The Value Calculator cards are customized to the exact programs and offerings the salespeople work with. Role-plays can be customized to meet client needs. Specific language, forms, and best practices may also be integrated into the learning experience as appropriate.
BTS - World leader in Customized Business Simulations |
