Ryan Dohrn teaches a 3-step method to sell value instead of price: state the feature, bridge it to what it means for the buyer, then name the concrete benefit. Most salespeople stop after the feature and let prospects guess the value, which loses deals to competitors who spell it out.
What's going on, friends and fans? Ryan Dohrn here, your friendly neighborhood sales coach. And in this video, this podcast, this month, we're really focused in on value and value-based selling. Now, where's this come from? Well, a lot of times in my coaching practice, as I'm working with salespeople just like you, the one thing I hear often, especially right now, is, Ryan, it's always coming down to price. So maybe you lose a contract, because one of your clients chose a cheaper provider. Maybe you lost a contract because they started comparing you to others and they didn't know who to pick, so it came down to price. Price becomes the deciding factor, friends, when 2 products seem similar. So if it's always coming down to price, it could be something perhaps that you are doing on the sales call or in the emails that you're sending. Okay, there's a 3-step process. It's very easy to explain when you're trying to sell value and get the advertiser's brain not fixated on price. All right, the first thing you need to do is identify the feature or product that you're selling. That's pretty easy for most people. The second thing you need to do in value-based selling is, is initiate or put in place some type of bridge statement. And then the third thing that you do is you need to make sure you're vividly clear on the value or the benefit that somebody is paying for. All right, so it's first give the feature, then give the bridge to value, then explain the benefit or value they're going to receive. The easiest way to teach this is the feature of the spin cycle on a washing machine. All right, so you've gone to Best Buy or whatever and you're trying to buy a washing machine for your clothes. The salesperson says to you, this washing machine has the spin cycle, want to buy? Well, it's not that you maybe don't know what the spin cycle is, it's not that you don't figure it's probably a part of the washing machine, but what really is the benefit? Like, what am I paying for? I'm paying for the spin cycle. What does that mean to me as a consumer? See, that's the trap that a lot of us get caught in. We stop because we've sold the feature and we just expect the customer is going to paint the picture of value. Friends, never give the paintbrush to a customer to paint the picture of value because typically they're not going to find the value that's correct or a value that will justify the price. It's up to us as salespeople to explain it. All right, back to the washing machine. Hi, Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so. This dishwasher, or this clothes washer rather, has a spin cycle. Second step now, bridge. What this means to you and to your household is— it's my bridge statement. Now I want to get on to the value. All right, this washing machine has a spin cycle. What this means to your family is less water in the clothes when you move them over to the dryer. Which means less drying time. You'll get your clothes out of the dryer faster. They won't be as wrinkled and you'll use less electricity. So what I've done is I've taken a feature, I've bridged it— what this means to you, your business, your family— then I've explained the benefit or the value that comes from it. Here's what I find. Most salespeople are pretty good at selling features. Most salespeople are not great at bridging to value. Instead, what you do is you feature sell and you just wait for the customer, advertiser, whatever, to paint their own picture of value. Unfortunately, when you do that, you're going to get outsold by somebody that's good at value-based selling, or you're going to get outsold by somebody that might have a better relationship, or you're just doing yourself a disservice, friends, because you're not taking advantage of value-based selling. Price is what somebody pays, value is what they get. All right, so here's the exercise. On a piece of paper, I'd love for you to write out the 4 or 5 main features of things that you sell. Now, a lot of you know I spend time in the advertising business, sell a lot of digital media sponsorships and things like that. All right, so the value, the features, I want to put them on the left side of my piece of paper. Then what I want to do in the middle is write my bridge statement— what this means to you, what this means to your business, what you might find valuable from this feature is. And on the right side, you want to list out the value or the benefit that they're actually paying for. Now, I don't want to confuse people. Sure, they're paying for a feature, but what they really need— the true end of the story is, I'm paying for a feature, but what am I going to get for it? And a lot of salespeople just don't explain it well. All right, let me give you an advertising example. So a feature would be search retargeting, meaning that somebody searched for something online and then you or your business advertising follows them around wherever it is that they go. What this means to your business is being able to target the right people at the right time, reducing waste. We're not just serving up a bunch of ads out there. We're serving ads to the right people at the right time. So because we don't have as much waste, we have more advertising impressions to give to you to drive your return on investment higher. So what I've done is I've explained the feature, I've bridged what this means to you or how this might impact you is, and then I've explained the real benefit that comes from buying that marketing solution. Friends, value-based selling is actually moderately easy to complete and to accomplish. You just have to practice it. Most of the time we get so good at selling features, we forget to bridge, we forget to get really clear on the benefit that somebody receives. Never forget, friends, people will pay more for something if they understand the value that they're going to receive. Let me give you another example before we wrap up with this sales tip this particular time. You might say, these are bedroom sheets for your king-size bed. Well, that's a pretty flat feature. But if I said to you, these are 5,000 thread count sheets for your bed, that's a little bit better, right? But even better to that would be, this bed comes with 5,000 thread count Egyptian Sheets. What that means to you is when you crawl into this bed after a nice hot shower and are going to sleep for the night, whatever the circumstance is, it's going to be smooth, it's going to be soft, it's going to be cool. It's not like you're laying on sandpaper like those sheets you might buy at a big box store or something along those lines, friends. I always try to give you some kind of fun examples as well. Get great features. Bridge though, friends, is important. Bridge to the value and never let your customers dictate what the value is to them. Make sure you walk them through the value proposition clearly and effectively, because when people know what they're buying, when they know the value they're going to get from you, almost always they will find money for things that they find valuable. Everything we do, friends, whether it's a prospecting email, Prospecting voicemail, on meetings with folks, we always need to be selling value. And when you sell value, now friends, you differentiate yourself from your nearest competitor. Never forget, if sales was easy, friends, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. We're not crazy. This is a great job. It'll feed your family for a lifetime. Hey, if you like the videos, give us a like, give us a thumbs up, give us a subscribe. Let YouTube and everybody else know that we're giving you some great content that's helpful out there. And of course, go down below and exchange some information in the comments. I'll be sure to write you back as well. Love to train your sales team. Love to motivate them as well. Reach out to me. Happy to do that over at ryandohrn.com. All right, friends, we'll see you next time.
