Customer value and sales capability

Your team can't explain why you're worth more

Your products and service are better, but your reps lead with price because nobody has shown them how to put a dollar value on the difference.

Read on ↓

1
What is changing
Professional procurement is replacing relationship buying. Buyers are trained to compare invoice prices and treat suppliers as interchangeable.
Sales teams are expected to show more value with less time per customer, and most have had little pricing training.
2
Common signs
- Reps describe the product as a commodity even where you are clearly different.
- Service, technical support and reliable supply are given away free.
- Procurement compares invoice prices and your team has no answer.
- Staff work out margin as a mark-up on cost and under-price without knowing it.
- Nobody tracks competitor prices, so every price match is a guess.
3
Where it leads if left alone
Without a value case, every conversation ends on price. Service, technical support and reliable supply are given away, and the business competes with low-cost suppliers on their terms.
4
The decision that is hard to reverse
Once a team accepts that its products are commodities, it prices them that way. The belief spreads through quoting, training and hiring until it becomes the culture.
5
What recovery costs
Changing a commodity mindset can take two to three years, as staff learn new methods and customers adjust to a new conversation. Margin continues to leak while it happens.
6
What good looks like
- Reps can name the value drivers for each segment and put a dollar figure on them.
- Key accounts have a value case built from the customer's own costs.
- The team discusses all four prices a customer pays: invoice, operating, repair and replacement, and risk.
- Staff work out the margin cost of a concession before they offer it.
7
What it is worth
Teams that can show the value behind a price hold more of it. RBM Plastics used a value case to hold higher selling prices with a key account and win increased volume commitments (realised).
8
How it is treated
1. Measure the skills baseline. A pricing skills test and value canvases for key accounts show where the gaps are. Pricing Masterclass (12-Week Program) →
2. Teach value and pricing maths. Twelve lessons across the three 9PE pillars, each ending with a task on your own customers and a margin idea. Pricing Masterclass (12-Week Program) →
3. Practise on live deals. Workshops built on your accounts: value cases, procurement tactics and one-page negotiation plans. Negotiation Training & Value-Based Selling →
9
How Pricing Insight works
Relevant work: Stryker Medical's sales force was trained to sell value to hospitals (capability built).
Experience
Ron Wood has worked in pricing for 30 years: first as a pricing and commercial manager in FMCG, building materials and capital equipment, and since 2007 as adviser to more than 160 businesses.
Method
Each engagement follows the same sequence: diagnose, optimise, embed. Recommendations rest on the client's own transaction data, and every figure can be traced to it.
Measurement
Results are measured against a margin baseline agreed with the client's finance team, and reported as realised, modelled or identified.
Continuity
Ron Wood leads each engagement from the first meeting to handover.
10
Can your sales team state, in dollars, why a customer pays more for your product?
A first conversation establishes how this applies in your business and whether a diagnostic is warranted.
Make an enquiry