Ryan Dohrn explains that selling value means showing customers the concrete benefit they get, not just the price. He teaches how to build a Unique Value Statement by picking three customer-focused benefits and using bridge statements to connect features to business impact. Generic claims like "fast delivery" only work when you show what that actually means for the client.
Hey friends, Ryan Dohrn here, your friendly neighborhood sales coach, answering your listener questions that everybody's sending in to ryan@ryandohrn.com. I love these listener questions, and we try to answer them all if we can over on the podcast, which you can also find over at ryandohrn.com. All right, next question comes from Tracy in Charlotte. She says, actually Rock Hill, South Carolina, if you know where that is. Tracy, I'm from South Carolina. I do know where Rock Hill— I live in South Carolina. I do know where Rock Hill is at. So Tracy's question: Ryan, I'm always being told to sell value, sell value, sell value, but honestly, I really don't know exactly what that means. Can you help me out and please explain? Tracy. So Tracy, it's really not uncommon for you to hear sales leaders, sales managers, sales speakers talk about selling value. Okay, so value is what someone's gonna get, price is what they're going to pay. So one of the things that you have to do in the sales process is get very specific and differentiate your value proposition. Like, what is your unique value proposition? Or you might have heard of a UVS, your unique value statement. And it's not just stats and facts and figures. It probably should be, especially now during times of economic uncertainty, it should be a little more emotional by nature. A lot of times people just try to say, we're number one. Okay, that— what does that mean? That doesn't— it's not real meaningful to the customer. So when I'm building a UVS, a unique value statement, or a UVP, unique value proposition, I'm looking for 3 items max. Remember that everything happens in threes. Now you've heard me talk about that. I'm looking for 3 items that aren't meaningful to me as much as they're meaningful to the customer. So when I think about being number one, okay, if I'm number one in the market, what does that mean to the customer? When we talk about offering amazing customer service, okay, what does that mean to the customer? When we talk about fast time to life, or maybe you can get their project running fast, or you can get their marketing program done really fast, okay, what does that mean to them? So what you might want to do is list out 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 things that you think are important, whittle that down to a list of about 3, and then make sure you always translate that into what is the value they're gonna receive? What's it mean to their business? See, a lot of times when I'm training folks, I'll teach them to use bridge statements. And bridge statements are all about getting somebody from your information over to the value that they're gonna receive. You know, let me give you an example. We have 50,000 people a month that come by my website. What that means to you is engaged and connected salespeople that are looking for your type of product. Just something along those lines. So Tracy, I hope that's helpful to you. Coming up with your UVS can sometimes be a little tricky. I don't know how long you've been in the business. Reach out to a colleague and they can usually set you in the right direction. Just don't remember— don't forget rather, you need to make sure you translate what it's about you over to what it's going to mean to them. Price is what they pay. Value is what they get. And then just never forget, Tracy, if price becomes the deciding factor, you haven't differentiated yourself. Price becomes the deciding factor when 2 products seem similar. Hey friends, never forget, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. We're not crazy. Well, some of us are, but this is a career that has fed my family and will feed yours for a lifetime. Also got a lot of great advice in my new book, Selling Forward. You can find that, friends, over at Amazon in the Kindle format, Audible if you want to listen to it. But I'd love for you to check this out. The net proceeds, all the net proceeds go to the Feeding America Network. All right, friends, more information about me and what I do, head over to ryandohrn.com. Otherwise, we'll see you next week.
