The Art of Value Selling: How to Excel and Win More Deals

Technology is advancing quickly and there's more data than ever, changing the way companies approach sales. The old methods of doing business, centered purely on pushing products, no longer suffice. Instead, there's a growing need for sales organizations to adapt and focus on offering genuine value to their customers.

In a segment of our Decoders series, Frank Perkins, Datadog's CRO, explores how sales strategies can be optimized to deliver genuine customer value and highlights the pitfalls of outdated methods. 

Watch the full interview here.

Customers are now better informed and have higher expectations. They seek solutions that meet their specific needs and add meaningful value to their lives or businesses. Therefore, merely selling a product without understanding and addressing the customer's unique problems will not lead to lasting success.

Organizations that embrace this change and align their strategies accordingly can expect to thrive in this new environment. By becoming value sellers, businesses can build deeper relationships with their clients, foster trust, and create loyal customer bases that are more resistant to competitors.

The Challenge: Relying on Outdated Strategies in a Fast-Evolving Market

Frank discusses that the challenges that we are facing are not with the talent but with organizations not walking the extra mile to provide their reps with an analysis, a good, clean database, a solid history of previous sales efforts, intelligence on their current tech stack, analysis of earnings calls, and other industry-specific things. 

“The biggest challenge for organizations is how much we can pull in to value sell based on the customer needs.”

According to Frank, here are 3 outdated approaches still crippling sales organizations:

1. The "Wild West" Quota Assignment: Many sales reps are still sent into the field armed with little more than a quota and a basic spreadsheet to guide them. This reckless approach lacks the sophistication of modern, intelligence-driven operations that today’s competitive landscape demands. Modern sales operations should leverage intelligence-driven methods, providing reps with comprehensive data and insights to engage effectively with prospects and close deals more efficiently.

2. The "Personal Territory" Myth: Companies often allow representatives to treat long-standing customer relationships as personal assets. This mindset can be detrimental to the organization, as it turns valuable customer connections into personal assets of the sales reps rather than the company. Instead, these relationships should be documented and incorporated into a shared corporate knowledge base. This ensures that the company retains critical customer insights and relationships, fostering business continuity and sustainability even when individual sales reps move on.

3. The "Product-First" Mindset: Persisting in pitching features instead of addressing customer strategies is a surefire way to stall deals. The modern customer is driven by solutions aligned with their strategic initiatives, not mere product specifications. Successful sales strategies should pivot towards understanding and addressing customer needs and challenges, presenting the product as a solution that fits within their broader business objectives rather than just a collection of features.

Redefining Sales Success: Frank Perkins’ Blueprint for Value-Centric Selling

Frank provides a comprehensive blueprint that transforms traditional sales tactics into strategies focused on delivering genuine customer value. This transition from product-focused to value-centric selling requires more than cursory changes; it demands a fundamental overhaul of sales methodologies. Sales teams need to be retrained to prioritize understanding the customer's business challenges over just highlighting product features. This involves honing skills in listening, empathy, and creative problem-solving.  Every customer interaction should contribute to building company intelligence. This involves equipping sales teams with clean data, historical insights, and strategic intelligence. 

Companies should invest in technology and data analytics to better understand customer needs and tailor their solutions accordingly. This means using data to identify trends, predict needs, and customize offerings in a way that resonates with clients. Ultimately, the pressing challenges of modern markets can be turned into opportunities for those who are willing to rethink and revamp their sales models. By focusing on delivering value rather than just products, sales organizations not only keep up with the times but also position themselves as indispensable partners in their customers' success stories.

Key aspects of Frank’s framework for modern sales organizations:

• Intelligence-First Operations: Armed with clean data, historical context, and strategic insights. Every customer interaction builds company intelligence.

• Institutional Relationship Building: Customer relationships outlast individual reps. That's not luck. That's strategy.

• Customer Initiative Alignment: Stop selling products and start solving strategic priorities. The market rewards problem solvers, not feature pushers.

Empowering Value-Based Selling with Aviso's Comprehensive AI Solutions

Aviso integrates the power of Generative AI technology, combining the advanced capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) with Aviso’s proprietary AI/ML models, finely tuned for revenue intelligence. By integrating Generative AI, Aviso's AI Brain automates and augments a wide range of revenue and GTM workflows, enabling predictive insights, intelligent task completion, and real-time revenue guidance.

While CRM systems have often fallen short in delivering actionable insights and seamless user experiences, Aviso's AI Brain bridges this gap, ensuring that GTM teams have the data-driven intelligence they need to make impactful, efficient decisions. 

Here's a deep dive into how Aviso's products collectively facilitate a value-based selling approach, equipping sales teams to exceed modern sales expectations.

1. Becoming Data-Driven

One of the first steps in moving away from outdated quota assignments involves leveraging predictive analytics to set more accurate and achievable targets. Aviso's WinScore uses advanced AI algorithms to predict the win probability of each deal in the pipeline, allowing sales teams to focus their efforts where they are most likely to succeed. This precision helps in reallocating resources effectively, ensuring that teams are not just busy, but productive.

Complementing WinScore, Aviso's Nudges act as intelligent reminders for sales reps, guiding them through the optimal steps to advance a deal. Whether it's a prompt to follow up with a client or advice on negotiating terms, these AI-driven nudges ensure that opportunities are never missed due to oversight or poor timing.

2. Institutional Relationship Building

Aviso’s Org Chart visualizes the decision-making hierarchy within client organizations, making it easier for sales teams to understand who the key influencers and decision-makers are. This understanding is crucial for strategic engagement and prevents the siloing of client relationships as personal assets.

Aviso's AI Brain synthesizes data from various sources, identifying high-risk accounts and providing actionable strategies for customer retention. Moreover, historical insights provide a comprehensive view of past interactions, outcomes, and strategies employed with each client. This data is invaluable as it ensures that the collective knowledge about a client remains within the company, empowering every team member with the context needed to engage effectively and maintain continuity even when individual sales representatives leave the company. 

3. Overcoming the "Product-First" Mindset 

To pivot from a product-first approach to a strategy that centers on addressing customer needs, Aviso's Conversation Intelligence analyzes customer interactions and sentiment to glean insights about customer pain points and preferences. This tool uses natural language processing to evaluate sales calls and meetings, identifying what resonates with customers and which aspects of the conversation drive the most engagement.

Aviso’s MIKI, serves as an AI Chief of Staff that offers guidance and support throughout the sales journey, from drafting emails to preparing for meetings, ensuring all customer engagements are optimized for success.

By understanding these dynamics, sales teams can tailor their pitches to highlight how their products align with the customer's strategic goals rather than focusing solely on product features. This not only increases the relevance of the pitch but also enhances the likelihood of closing deals by demonstrating a deep understanding of the customer’s business challenges.

Thriving in a Value-Driven Market

As technology continues to advance and data becomes ever more crucial, the old ways of selling based on quotas and cold calls are becoming relics of the past. In their place, a more strategic, informed, and empathetic approach is taking root—one that centers on adding genuine value to each customer interaction.

For organizations ready to lead in their industries, adopting value-based selling involves a commitment to understanding and solving the unique challenges of their customers. It requires equipping sales teams with the right tools and insights, such as Aviso’s comprehensive AI solutions, to foster deeper connections, predict customer needs, and craft tailored solutions that go beyond mere product features. Aviso's suite of solutions is designed to interoperate seamlessly, creating a cohesive ecosystem that supports every phase of the sales process, from lead generation to post-sale service. By integrating these tools, sales teams can adopt a holistic approach to sales management, ensuring every customer interaction is informed by data and aligned with the overarching goal of delivering value.

By leveraging Aviso's predictive analytics, relationship mapping, and conversation intelligence, your team can transcend traditional sales tactics to become true partners to your clients. Embrace this new sales paradigm, and let Aviso help you lead the way into a prosperous future where your clients' successes are your own. Book a demo with Aviso today!