Do you really know what your customer is trying to do?

In the landscape of B2B technology sales, every offering aims to resolve a distinct client problem. However, the disparity between understanding the solution and genuinely enhancing a client’s business is monumental. 

Whilst it can be argued that some of the best new business sales people innately understand this, it is rarely the case that this is passed on to others. This is critical for SaaS businesses, as the growth of customers is as important as their initial revenue.

In my experience this level of insight is difficult to attain, because it can be hard to get the customer to articulate it themselves, the people you are dealing with often do not know.

There are 3 main reasons why I believe this to be important. Firstly, It is an immediate point of differentiation in the new business engagement. Secondly, customer growth comes from improving the customers business (see my post on Customer Growth). Finally it is an important focus for all elements of the customer journey and helping the different stakeholders understand what the customer is looking to achieve by buying your service.

Over the years I have started to prioritise understanding this aspect of prospects and customers, so I have developed a method which I embed into the sales process. I call it the Value Map.

The post is for CEOs, CROs and VP of Sales and Customer success who are trying to improve the focus of their customer journey to drive increased revenue, it is based on my experiences and what I think really matters.

What is a Value Map?

In essence it is a single page (which needs to remain as a single page) that brings together the requirements of the business, the requirements of the project and ultimately maps your value onto these elements. A basic idea, incredibly difficult to execute, but incredibly effective if done right. 

Intended as a summary for stakeholders inside your organisation and also the customers to ensure that everyone is aiming for the same outcomes.

I have incorporated elements of MEDDIC into it. The Value Map is effectively the Identify Pain or “I” in MEDDIC, and incorporates the M for Metric and the E for Economic Buyer.

How do you use a Value Map?

The objective of the Value Map is to outline how your service will improve the customer. It makes the most sense to build it with the customer at the start of the sale. 

In the past I have made the creation of the Value Map by the sales team an exit criteria for stage 1 of the sales process and the confirmation by key stakeholders of the customer as criteria for stage 2. By having the Value Map at the start of the process and ensuring that the multiple stakeholders have approved it, you are effectively qualifying the deal very early.

I would also withhold pre-sales resources and other sales support until we have a customer approved Value Map. The premise being you cannot have additional cost of sale until we can articulate what the customer is trying to do and how we improve their business, and they agree.

Value Map – Part 1

The first part of the Value Map is focussed on the customers overall business and how you fit into it. See Fig 1 below;

Fig 1

Customer Business Goal : this is the overall goal of their business, it can be referenced in their annual reports or business goals. It is typically a high level statement. It is not the tag line rather it is their current operational goal.

Project Name : If the project has a name it means that it probably has a budget, resourcing and is being discussed somewhere. If it does, then find out who owns it and you have your stakeholders to go after. It’s not a problem if it doesn’t but it’s useful to know.

How does this project support the business goal : This is the first mapping linkage. The project they are about to spend money on has to help them meet their goal in some way. If the customer doesn’t know you may be speaking to the wrong person, or you might be working on a project that doesn’t get funded. 

Economic Buyer : This refers to the person who owns the economic problem, not the buyer as many people initially believe. Iit is this person you are trying to engage and impress, their approval matters the most.

What is the Metric for this improvement and the timeframe : Self explanatory but often very muddled from customers. The Economic Buyer has a clear idea. They are trying to achieve something and will have a clear measurement of the single most important metric, and ultimately the way you are going to show you have improved the customer’s business..

The challenge is making sure you keep this simple and straightforward. It will be messy at first and the more people you speak with the clearer it will become.

Value Map – Part 2

This section is all about following through the business goals into their current issues to understand how they are blocked today, and just as importantly how you will help them.

Pain : I have limited this to 3 pains, often it is only one or two  that are really driving change, in my experience everything else is just a subset of the main issues. Remember this is the pain they feel, not what they have. If they have servers that break down, that’s not the pain, it is likely to be felt by the users, such as losing orders etc. This can be hard to identify so it might take a few attempts.

Current Solution : This is where the customer is most likely to feel comfortable. Keep it high level, we don’t need a super detailed description that can come in the specification / engagement documents you might use later, at this stage it is a high level summary. 

Business Impact : You will need to dig deep to understand, you have identified the pain, but what is the impact of their current solution. What are the implications of the identified pain, this is likely to be a business issues, such as lost revenue or increased costs.

How we meet the goal : This is where you can start to map your value onto the customers’ pains. The temptation will be for you to get very focussed on a series of features, but remember this is something that you want to present to senior people, they won’t care about those features. They care that you can articulate your offering. 

Why us and the benefit : Here is your chance to explain how this benefits the customer, remember and what is special about you. If you have done the work above effectively then you can really nail this section. 

The key to implementing The Value Map lies in simplicity and clarity. It might seem intricate at first, but it evolves through iterative discussions with stakeholders. The focus remains on articulating solutions that resonate with key decision-makers, shifting emphasis from features to value propositions and how this improves the customers business.

Things to consider

As ever when you make a change of this sort, there are some other considerations, in my experience they are about ensuring people have the skills and context for the Why.

Training

As with any new initiative it is vital to train your teams. I like to use real life case studies as it makes it contextual to the team, use deals that have already been won so you can see the end to end. It is a coaching opportunity and a chance for you to see your reps and pre sales teams up close.

Create content, explain the value and what they will get from it. In the past I have built a value map to explain the value map. I know it sounds bonkers but it really works, because it shows you doing it, and they can then see its benefit immediately.

How to engage the customer

Coach your teams on how to engage the customer and not to simply send this as a form for them to complete. This is a summary of your company’s knowledge of the customer, not a hurdle for them to cross.

Make sure that you have a clear explanation of what this is about for the customer. Example “We find that until all of the stakeholders and our team are clearly aligned around what the challenge is and how we address it together,  it is impossible to really appreciate how we can improve your business.” It is all too easy for your team to say it’s just one of our sales process steps. Whilst it is, that has no value to the customer.

Instead treat the first few conversations as you would any discovery, but you now have a narrative and a set of objectives to fulfil. Too often we are lost in technology and the details relating to features rather than how we improve the customers business. The Value Map is the culmination of a number of conversations that you synthesise together.

At the heart of Qualification

You can use this approach to qualify deals effectively. If your own people cannot write a draft of a Value Map as part of discovery, is there even a deal to be had? If the customer cannot agree and buy into the Value Map in stage 2, do you want to be providing any resources to win this customer?

Be firm with your reps and make it clear what this offers, but support them and spend time with them reviewing each deal. This will help you guide them closer to the ICP and the quality you want in your pipeline.

Moving up the chain of command

One of the best outcomes I have discovered is that a completed value map with multiple stakeholders engaged, is the ideal tool to engage the Economic Buyer. As salespeople we are always trying to get higher up the chain. Instead of saying I want to meet you,  how about saying “Hi Jane, I have been working with your team to support you in meeting the goals of Project X.  Do you have a few minutes for me to discuss what I have discovered and ensure that we are all aligned with your goals and expectations.”

The conversion rate on these conversations is huge and shows the EB that you want to help rather than just sell. Couple this with an executive call and you are onto a winning formula.

Summary

Winning deals is hard. Winning the right deals is even harder. Given the pressure that you might feel to book deals, it is hard to know which customers to qualify out. Growing customers is the gold, the only way you are going to do that is to improve their business. 

If you do not understand how you are going to do that, if you do not articulate it to the customer, and they are not completely aligned, how are you going to achieve that?

Unless you are explicit in your approach it won’t happen. By adopting the Value Map or a similar approach you can make it simpler and clearer for you and the customers. 

It makes the customer happy, your rep clear about the opportunity and everyone else in the whole customer journey from implementation, customer success and product clear about why the customer engaged you at all and what you need to focus on.

How do you get everyone on the same page, you own the page.