Understanding the difference between COMMUNICATING value and CO-CREATING value

Hello Sales Reset Leader

In this week’s companion Weekly Sales Reset email for front-line salespeople, we focus on the crucial differences between communicating and co-creating value.

All sales team leaders know that communication skills are hugely important for salespeople.

By contrast, relatively few sales team leaders are focused on value co-creation skills.

Historically, selling has been all about learning how to COMMUNICATE value. By contrast, at Sales Reset, we’re convinced that the future of selling will be about learning how to CO-CREATE value.

This is a HUGE opportunity for the members of your sales team to outperform their competitors.

Help your team members become more skilled in value co-creation. They will earn greater respect and the opportunity to spend more time with their customers.

The rest of this email newsletter assumes you have read this week’s Weekly Sales Reset“:

• Title: How to sell better by co-creating with your customer to deliver better outcomes

• Subtitle: Making the change from selling conversations that COMMUNICATE to conversations that CO-CREATE

How to improve your team's results this week

• Evidence of co-creation

  • Evidence of co-creation from conversations

  • Evidence of co-creation from proposals and emails

  • Evidence of co-creation from sales outcomes

• Recommended coaching session agenda for co-creatio …

• Expected pushback about co-creating

• Co-Creation Role-Play Recommendations

• Leadership Reflective Practice

Evidence of co-creation

It’s always best to build your coaching with team members on a foundation of solid evidence. 

If you have conversations with team members without reference to evidence, they might make all sorts of claims and observations! 

Before you meet with your team members for your 1:1 coaching sessions this week, here’s where to find the evidence you need. 

Evidence of co-creation from conversations

• As you listen to conversations your team members have with customers in real-time or in recordings, how much of the conversation is about co-creation? 

• Is all their time with customers spent talking about what your team member is selling? Or is there evidence of genuine co-creation?

• Are all team members’ conversations with customers the same? Or is there evidence of your team member’s ability to lead different conversations in every meeting that co-create different priorities and conclusions depending on each customer's unique circumstances, needs, and priorities?

Evidence of co-creation from proposals and emails

• Are most of your team member’s proposals and emails nearly identical?

• Or do their proposals and emails refer to unique insights, needs, and outcomes that have clearly been co-created?

Evidence of co-creation from sales outcomes

• When you complete your win/loss reviews, what is the correlation between generic conversations, proposals, and losses?

• What evidence do you see that wins correlate to genuinely co-created outcomes, recommendations and business cases?

Recommended coaching session agenda for co-creation skills

Before leading your coaching sessions on co-creating, ask your team members to review the current edition of Weekly Sales Reset.

Give yourself time to reflect on WIIFM, “What’s in for me,” and empathise with your team members about how they might be sufficiently motivated to engage more effectively in co-creation.

Here’s this week’s recommended coaching session agenda:

1. Start with a brief review of their experience and results from their previous coaching session.

2. Ask this team member for their observations about the challenges and opportunities of collaborating with their customers to co-create better proposals.

3. Together, review the evidence you found in your preparation with each team member.

4. Identify and prioritise a small range of specific practical things that this team member can do differently and better.

5. Spend some time role-playing (working with these guidelines).

6. Finish the coaching session with agreed and specific action conclusions.

Expected pushback about co-creating

So you know what to expect and can be prepared, here are three areas of possible pushback from your team members on the theme of co-creation.

1. I don’t understand what you mean by co-creating: The idea of salespeople co-creating better awareness, insights, plans and proposals is an advanced topic!

2. Too many of the people I meet are in relatively junior roles. How can you help your team members to enable these people in more junior roles to involve their more senior colleagues in discussions to achieve better co-creation?

3. I don’t have the skills and sufficient commercial awareness: This can be seen as a valuable acknowledgement of their need to learn and practice!

Now that you know these potential pushback areas, what are your best responses?

Co-Creation Role-Play Recommendations

1. Current Biggest Opportunity: Identify this team member’s best current opportunity. Role-play the conversations with key stakeholders that might co-create the most significant value.

2. Recent Biggest Win: Now that you know you’ve won the business, and with all that you’ve learned subsequently, role-play some conversations that would have been available to co-create an even better proposal.

3. Recent Biggest Loss: Review a significant recent loss. Role-play the conversations with important stakeholders that might have led to a substantially more compelling proposal.

(You may find these recommendations about using role-play helpful.)

Join Our FREE Sales Reset Together Community

If you like our approach to selling and want to learn more, join our free Sales Reset Together community. 

It’s mid-September 2024, and we’ve been developing and testing all the major parts of our community with our Founder Members in recent months. We’ve just opened the doors! 

Here’s what you’ll get as a member: 

• Community: You'll get immediate access to our private online community. 

• Practice: Join our LIVE! Practice sessions to practice coaching customers and co-creating proposals.

• Online Training: Access to online lessons, including our Customer Success 3CSelling Quick Start course. 

• LIVE! Events: Join us in our LIVE! Events online and access recordings. 

• Proposal Reviews: You can request confidential proposal reviews with video feedback and recommendations for improvement. 

• Learning & Earning Plan: We'll help and support you in developing your learning and earning plan using your Sales Reset Mastery self-assessment results. 

• Support: You can ask questions and get support in our discussion forums. 

Leadership Reflective Practice

At the end of this week, ask yourself these key questions:

We hope you’ve found this edition of Sales Reset Leaders valuable.

Have a great week!

The Sales Reset Team

Here’s a link to a page explaining how these weekly Sales Reset Leaders newsletters are designed to help you improve your sales team's results every week with structured coaching and practice.

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Community of Practice

Ask Questions, Share Your Experience

If you have any questions or experience to share:

• LinkedIn Group - Join our World-Class Customer Success Selling Group on LinkedIn to ask questions or comment.

• Sales Reset Together Community - Click here to learn more about our private community of members committed to achieving and maintaining their Sales Reset.

Do your team members subscribe to our companion weekly newsletter, Weekly Sales Reset?