High-Velocity Value Selling Part 2: How AI Can Help Build High-Quality Content

The most impactful way B2B organizations can improve the overall effectiveness of B2B value selling efforts is by improving the quality of value content used by sales. Well-designed content that is both easy for sales to use (and reuse) and easy for customers to digest, interact with, and become inspired by is the ultimate goal. In order to get there, it’s essential to understand which key elements of value content support impactful sales conversations. If memorable, impactful sales conversations are the key to unlocking value selling success; then great value content must be central to that conversation, underpinning the relationship between buyer and seller from the first customer touchpoint.

Strong value conversations embed quantified financial outcomes in a vivid narrative that is both specific to the customer and able to be tailored on the fly to capture live feedback. Value content that supports these high-value interactions must possess the following characteristics:

• • Narrative-Based: Humans are more likely to retain information when presented as a memorable story. A value selling tool must enable the salesperson to paint a persuasive narrative that captures the attention of the buyer and motivates change.

   

  • Quantitative: A value selling conversation centers on quantified customer impact by conveying financial outcomes compared to the alternative. Value selling tools need to present this data in a structured, organized manner that clearly conveys the superior value delivered by the product or solution.

   

  • Customizable: Buyers inherently trust and are more likely to buy from salespeople who demonstrate an understanding of their business. Customized content supports a conversation that is fluent in the customer’s language. Therefore, great value content must be specific to the buyer or customer’s business, industry, and use case.

   

  • Interactive: A dynamic structure that supports live data capture during two-way conversations generates consensus and buy-in. It also supports the capture of nuggets of intel that help tailor the value proposition further, supporting the creation of a strong business case to buy.

Next, map these characteristics to content mediums that comprise the typical B2B salespersons toolkit. However, a typical B2B sales meeting will more commonly center on the following content types – each of which falls short of at least two of the four critical capabilities:

• • Slide Decks/PowerPoints: Slide decks have long been central to B2B sales presentations – predating the advent of online selling. When built right, they can be highly effective at communicating product and company messaging and can be quickly customized by individual salespeople. However, the shortfalls of slide decks are also widely known. While they can be easily tailored, this customization is too often limited, leading to generic decks with customer logos and data sprinkled in rather than structuring the presentation around the customer.
     
    In addition, slide decks are highly ineffective at capturing information – the user experience is a poor fit for live updates, and the presentation is typically the endpoint of each version, causing data captured to end up in a cul-de-sac. Additionally, there is little ability to incorporate any form of quantitative outcomes – outside of static charts and screenshots. A complex B2B business case is a poor fit for a slide deck format.
    • Shortcomings: Not Interactive, Not Quantitative
  • Spreadsheet Calculators: Excel-based ROI calculators are another standard vehicle for B2B teams seeking to sell value. These can be highly effective for internal teams doing one-off value calculations. Still, the limitations become clear once utilized for customer-facing conversations (or even internal collaboration). Excel calculators are bespoke, visually unappealing, and hard to use. They exist outside a straightforward sales narrative – typically presented in slide form. Any choice to make it more customizable will generally come at the expense of precision, so they are often locked down if widely distributed.
     
    This leads to a predictable result – they are rarely deployed in sales conversations. Even in teams with established value offices and business excellence functions, these tend to be used strategically rather than at the center of each customer conversation.
    • Shortcomings: Not Narrative-Based, Not Customizable
  • Case Studies: Case studies are widely considered a B2B salesperson’s best friend – for good reason. Buyers want to see that a vendor has delivered the promised outcomes for similar customers. Public validation by industry peers is critical for generating buyer credibility and supporting an internal business case.
     
    Despite these obvious strengths, they are, by design, a supporting piece of collateral rather than central to a customer interaction. This is because they are both static – a customer story living in a PDF is inherently un-interactive and un-customizable. They are also specific to the universe of customers willing to go public, with limited applicability to targeted customer segments outside the represented industries. The only way to bridge this gap is to enable a custom case study for the buyer. Case studies can be valuable in building these but are insufficient as standalone collateral to support a valuable conversation.
    • Shortcomings: Not Narrative-Based, Not Customizable
  • ROI Report Tools: In response to these shortcomings, a number of solutions have been introduced to the market to help sales convey financial value delivered in a compelling, scalable manner. The outcomes associated with value selling, described above, are widely known, and purveyors of value selling technology claim to help deliver these outcomes.
     
    Enterprise selling platforms enable sales conversations that improve sales velocity. Other vendors take a more streamlined approach, automating the creation of ROI value content at scale. While directionally important in conveying customer-specific value, these remain static pieces of content that exist as leave-behinds rather than as a central pillar of the sales conversation. As a result, they are more likely to get stuck in a buyer’s inbox than make a memorable impression.
    • Shortcomings: Not Narrative-Based, Not Customizable

Enterprise value selling tools with a strong B2B focus, like LeveragePoint, satisfy all four criteria for supporting strong value conversations, and it is no surprise that B2B organizations are increasingly turning to solutions like LeveragePoint Value Stories to better communicate value delivered and improve sales velocity.

Unsurprisingly, the teams behind the development of leading value tools are exploring ways to embed AI into user workflows, from enabling sales to generate value messages, personalized insights and recommendations, and integrations with other tools in the sales and marketing stack.

But do these innovations have the potential to dramatically transform the sales velocity of the organizations that invest in them? For the reasons outlined above, this question could easily be reframed in the following ways:

Does AI ultimately help improve the value conversation at speed and scale?

Does AI help make sales content that is more quantified, more interactive, more narrative-based, and more customizable?

If it doesn’t do all the above, there is reason for caution. An AI vision constrained to improving workflows at the margin risks becoming the value selling equivalent of changing button colors on a website, or making small changes to email copy. The impacts may be measurable, but unless the embedded AI improves execution across most, if not all, of the elements of quality value conversation, the magnitude of impact on sales velocity will likely be blunted.

When selecting an AI-enabled value selling tool, buyers should consider some key questions when evaluating the completeness of their AI vision as it relates to supporting their ultimate goal – boosting sales outcomes and corporate profitability.

• • Quantitative Model: Does the AI value selling tool generate an accurate mathematical model that reflects the prospect’s business on its own?

   

  • Narrative Focus: Does the AI value selling tool help users quickly create an engaging value presentation, including images, branding, and charts, from scratch?

   

  • Customizability: Does the AI value selling tool support iterative feedback from internal users in the content creation process? Is it easy to modify based on the unique specifics of each customer or prospect?

   

  • Interactivity: Does the AI value selling tool help support interactive value conversations incorporating live feedback from customers or prospects during sales calls?

LeveragePoint’s AI-enabled value selling platform will soon be the first solution to enable the development of high-quality value content, from the mathematical model to a sales presentation. But the impact doesn’t end there. Integrating AI into the ideation, creation, and execution of creating value content accelerates the time horizon in which the effect of value selling can be realized.

Our next blog will explore how AI-enabled value selling can support quality at speed and scale. In the meantime, sign up to be the first to access our upcoming AI value selling platform at Leveragepoint.ai.