The Impact of Value Alignment on Sales Revenue.

"When values, thoughts, feelings, and actions are in alignment, a person becomes focused and character is strengthened."

John C. Maxwell

When everything internally aligns harmoniously, your values, thoughts, feelings, and actions; this soon creates powerful synergy. 

This alignment cultivates clarity, purpose, and integrity, leading to strengthened character. 

It's likened to the gears in a well-oiled machine working seamlessly together, enabling you to navigate life with resilience and authenticity.

As we start thinking about value alignment... 

How much value are you creating for your clients and future clients to help grow their business and your sales?

All too often, I hear salespeople, sales leaders and those in executive management sing praise to the importance of creating value for their clients and future clients. 

This just begs the question, what's the value you're creating? 

Think about your clients, can they describe and with conviction share the value that you've been bringing to them?

I got you thinking, don't I?

You see, inside this wonderful profession called sales, creating meaningful and well-define value irrefutably has a direct impact to your sales revenue.

However, in order to build meaningful value, how many of you know the true meaning of value? Why is this so important?

Know thy value, know thy worth.

Merriam-Webster defines value as:

• The monetary worth of something
• A fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged
• Relative worth, utility, or importance
• Something (such as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable

Therefore, how many of you know what you're worth and how you're valued?

AVOID SWIMMING IN THE SAME OCEAN

Bruce Lee once said,

"People try to hold onto sameness. This holding onto prevents growth."

There are way too many salespeople acting like walking, talking brochures, as they're simply spewing out nothing but product information. 

Let's get real for a moment, how many of your clients and future clients are buying into your facts and features?

I guarantee, most aren't even product oriented in their thinking; what they're laser focused in on is finding solutions to their most pressing issues and challenges.

When you pound your chest and rattle off great wizardry about your products, you fail to position you and your knowledge as the answer to their issues, frustrations or aspirations.

Quite frankly, all you've done is position yourself as a commodity, swimming in the deep blue sales ocean known as the sea of sameness.

This might be the mirror moment...

You've trained buyers to base more of their decisions on price, thereby pressuring your profit margins as they crush you with the sales sameness hammer.

The consummate sales professional creates value through the eyes of their clients. With laser focused vision, they clearly gain the opportunity to be viewed like none other in the marketplace, as if they've almost created a new market segment of one; themselves.

They've effectively repositioned themselves far away from their competition. 

Price now becomes a less dominating factor within the decision-making process. I get it, at some point price may become an issue, but if they perceive unique and meaningful value, price will never be THE issue.

Creating value not only transforms sales effectiveness, but it also provides insulation from the price hammer.

THE IMPACT OF VAUE ALIGNMENT ON SALES REVENUE

Building strong, genuine and sustainable relationships requires a holistic understanding of what value means, as this lays the foundation for becoming valuable.

Sales professionals create value alignment.

Your values provide you a sense of direction.

Your values help you stay true to yourself.

Your values help you to make decisions.

The first step towards value alignment is gaining an understanding of what values are. Brené Brown, defines a value as “a way of being or believing what we hold most important.”

When you understand what your core values are, everything you do reflects that understanding. This helps shape your actions, what you pursue (future clients) and how you interact with others; this being your clients.

I believe if you can create synergistic alignment in three areas, then watch what starts to happen to your sales revenue and profits.

1. INTERNAL VALUE 

Sales professionals understand their value. They know value is deeply cemented within the foundation of their business house.

What makes you valuable?

People won’t ever engage in a business conversation nor buy from you if they don’t understand why they should pay attention to you.

Sales professionals understand their value statement is their promise. It's the value they deliver, communicate and hold themselves accountable for fulfilling. 

Given client expectations and the competitive business landscape, a sales professional consistently reviews their value statement as part of their personal business strategy. 

They spend time with their clients to see if they're actually meeting and fulfilling the aspects within their value statement with them.

Some of you might be saying, "Why is this so important?"

By spending time with your clients to assess whether you're effectively delivering on the promises outlined in your value statements, you soon start to gain valuable insights into areas where you excel and where you may need improvement. 

Daily, a sales professional will ask themselves...

• What do I represent?
• What is my ideal self?
• How would I describe myself?
• What are my values?
• What is my vision and mission?

How well do you know your value statement?

2. CLIENTS VALUE

Sales professionals are always looking at things through the eyes of their clients. 

They develop a deep understanding of what they value. They realize all clients value different things as there's no cookie cutter model and how to create it for them.

The same can be said for different people within the same organization. A sales professional gains an understanding and strategically builds authentic relationships with all key decision makers and influencers. 

This ensures that all their communication is appropriate to each one of them.

Sales professionals do not cut corners and assume they know their client's value.

By strengthening the relationship, a sales professional gains a better sense of the current business situation and where their clients would like to be; as this information is used to position their value to address their clients' initiatives, goals, desires, and challenges.

By understanding where their clients want to be allows sales professionals to proactively anticipate future needs and provide solutions to help address potential challenges before they arise. 

This proactive approach not only adds value to the relationship but also demonstrates their commitment to their clients' long-term success.

A sales professional will spend as much time as is it takes to gain an understanding of their client's value. They know taking shortcuts and skimming over key details will result in a failure to create and communicate value. 

3. COMPANY VALUE

Company values are the guiding principles that are most important to a sales professional about the way their company works.

They align their values to the company's to create a value-based go to market strategy. 

Words they align to...

• Being accountable
• Making a difference
• Serving others
• Doing what is right

When alignment of values happen, people understand one another, everyone does the right things for the right reasons. Value alignment helps the company to achieve its core mission, taking care of their clients and employees.

When values are out of whack, with people working towards different goals, with different intentions, and with different outcomes; this ultimately damages work relationships, productivity, job satisfaction, and creative potential.

All this has a direct impact to revenues and profits.

How well do you know your company's mission, vision and value statement?

A sales professional marries both values together in harmony and uses this to take care of their clients as well as to grow new opportunities.

ALIGNING VALUE REQUIRES PAYING CLOSE ATTENTION

Done with precision, building meaningful value positions salespeople with a greater chance to grow sales and long-term business relationships.

I encourage you to go back and analyze some of your best client relationships.

Grab a sheet of paper and a pen, start asking yourself some of the following questions:

• Do I know what my client's value?
• Do they know what I value?
• Do they know what my company values?

If you struggle at any level to answer, then I believe uncovering these could be the path to strengthening and insulating your relationships from hostile take-overs.

To grow your sales, I encourage you to pay close attention to the strength of your relationships, tolerance for change, your client's current situation and always ask questions.

It's imperative that in today's competitive business landscape, you must marry your value, your client's value and your company's value together in complete harmony; one that is uniquely suited to promote growth and better business.

What soon starts to happen is you create deeper conversations, more meaningful relationships and more meaningful outcomes.