Mastering the Value Conversation to Sell What Matters Most to Your Customers with Andrew Bailey

Why you have to check out today’s podcast:  Learn how to communicate value to your customers so they get what they want, and you protect your own position in terms of profit and margin  Discover how to strategically negotiate to win a sale at a higher price  Find out why lowering costs and increasing value doesn’t need to be a trade-off    Andrew Bailey is a Value Pricing and Price Negotiation Specialist. He is the founder of Commercial Strategy 4. He helps you unleash your pricing power to sell more, more often, and at a higher price to achieve the profits you deserve.  In this episode, Andrew shares strategic ways to communicate your product’s value through value selling.    “The value selling journey is about understanding what the customer perceives as value.”   - Andrew Bailey    Increase Your Pricing Knowledge: Become a Champions of Value INSIDER!   To sign up go to insider.championsofvalue.com.     Topics Covered:    01:27 - How Andrew got into pricing: a discovery: focusing on pricing and margins is a much more powerful way to maintain and grow profits, than starting the year with a big sales gap to fill    02:45 - What keeps him in pricing: taking people through the journey of realization to more fulfillment in their business    04:40 - Expounding on what selling value means: Getting focused on what this looks like, what they really do for people and quantifying that, so they really get a great fix on what drives value for their customers and how they can help their customers by delivering value    05:27 - Andrew’s thoughts about value when creating new products or new features: go back to the pricing term, willingness to pay; what we've got to try and do is get the customer in the position where they're willing to pay for outcomes in a fair way, so we get what we want in return for what we’re going to do for them    06:50 - How Andrew communicates the value selling element of a product to win big deals and prices - what I do is backtrack and cover off some of the fundamentals. And so go back to something around the product and what it's delivering    08:19 - Most companies don’t know about their products’ value, hence the lack of value perception. Andrew relates further to what it’s like working with clients who have this challenge    09:26 - How can I get my value across to them? Andrew’s idea of a value conversation explained    12:28 - One of the things they developed in the business is what is called a sweet spot type approach, learn how a company can apply this to get better at negotiation    13:56 - When it comes to negotiation, who do the salespeople talk to? Is it the decision-makers alone?    16:04 - Getting all the stakeholders on the customers’ side together for a value conversation is his idea of how a negotiation happens. Because to Andrew, that is easier in order to win a sale at a high price.     22:30 - Andrew believes the only way we really find out what people are interested in is when we ask questions and listen to them.     24:08 - His thoughts on Mark’s negotiation rule number one: Patience wins.    25:03 - Adhering to rule number two: Never let the CEO negotiate.    26:07 - You don't give anything unless you get something in return. To Andrew, it is important that what you give is valuable to the other person, but that it still preserves your own position.    Key Takeaways:    “Value selling is taking the customer through a journey or a process, just understanding the value of what they do, and the results and the outcomes they can deliver for their customers.” - Andrew Bailey    “Value conversation is a collaborative process that you go through that can uncover more of the value you can deliver, and the value there is for customers to capture, which is ultimately what they want.” - Andrew Bailey    “Negotiating is there to help you secure and protect the value you're delivering to customers that you're going to get through your price.” - Andrew Bailey       “In negotiation, people need to just be more open, ask straightforward questions to sit down the first time, and just say, which do you prefer?”  - Andrew Bailey        Resources Mentioned:    "The 7 biggest mistakes people unwittingly make when negotiating and how to avoid them" by Andrew Bailey      Connect With Andrew Bailey:    LinkedIn  commercialstrategy4.co.uk    Connect with Mark Stiving:       Email: [email protected]      LinkedIn      Twitter