Customer value management has risen within the last decade to become the backbone of many business strategies. What is it, and, more importantly, how can B2B sales teams benefit from it? That’s what we’ll be taking a look at today. Read on to learn about the basics of CVM, or customer value management, and why you should be incorporating it into your regular routine.
The Basics: Customer Value Management
In a nutshell, CVM is the collection of techniques you’ll use to manage the customer’s “value journey” and take them from that first meeting to an eventual sale. In essence, the “customer value” portion of this equation is defined as the perceived worth of your product/service versus that of competitor options. By-and-large, CVM has three distinct phases:
- Value Discovery—This is the catalyst for beginning the relationship between buyer and seller. From the buyer’s perspective, this is going to be a hook that signals that the seller may be able to provide the value they are looking for. The seller, on the other hand, must be able to provide this perception of value, and thus they require insights on their target customers and a way to uniquely position products/services ahead of potential competitor offerings.
- Value Delivery—Here, buyer and seller cooperate to determine what seller solution would be most relevant to the buyer and to get said solution in place so it can start delivering that all-essential value.
- Value Realization—In this stage, post-implementation of the value solution, it’s important to measure the actual value achieved to determine next steps.
Combined, these phases help augment the middle-of-the-road CRM practices you might have in place, and enhance it by making value the focus of customer/sales interactions. In the immediate-term, your team will notice some of the following benefits from a CVM approach:
- CVM provides top-level research and info about customers that salespeople can then use to boost acquisition and retention efforts.
- It can help you hone in on detailed data and analytics that can further drive your value-delivery strategies.
- It allows you to make clearer connections between your KPIs and clientele outcomes, and you’ll be able to see what factors are driving purchasing behaviors.
- It links accountability back to marketing and education of your targeted customer base about the value that your product/services provide.
- It also helps bring key benefits of your products and services into focus, so that you can highlight these throughout other elements of your business and sales strategy.
Rest assured, though, that the benefits of CVM extend even beyond what they’ll be providing to your sales team in the short term.
The Far-Reaching Value Of CVM
In addition to the value that CVM brings to your sales team directly, it can also enhance their efforts by making other elements within your business work better with sales. Your marketing team, for instance, will be able to better deliver on sales-oriented material, enhanced by value-based insights. Meanwhile, other support staff, like customer service, will have a clear view on the promises made to clients during sales negotiations, and will be better able to fulfill these to aid retention and continue bringing in revenue on a long-term basis.