We're All Just

Selling Money

Getting your head round communicating ROI

It’s common knowledge that many salespeople struggle to communicate the ROI of their solution. Some of these salespeople are great at understanding the prospect’s needs, developing a proposal, and explaining all the features and benefits, even relating those to the prospect’s previously-stated needs.

But try to get many salespeople to talk about the actual return on investment their product or service will bring to a customer, and they hit a mental block. This could be for various reasons – perhaps they’re not convinced they’ll bring a strong ROI; perhaps they’re not comfortable turning a good sales pitch into something so black-and-white; perhaps they have no idea of the numbers at all. Whatever the reason, many salespeople avoid this topic and focus on more “visible” aspects of their solution.

Unfortunately, this is a problem, because for most purchasers, ROI is all they’re thinking about. Salespeople need to develop the same passion for justifying a purchasing decision. Understanding the following concept will help you big-time…

It’s all about money

In B2B sales, we sell 1 thing: Money. Nothing else. I sell you something, you give me money and the thing I sell you enables you to get more money. It really is that simple. Here are some examples:

• I sell training programmes. I charge money for them. As a result of buying them, your salespeople bring you increased revenue more than the amount you paid me. I've sold you money.
• Imagine you sell plastic packaging to me and I'm a furniture manufacturer. You charge me money for your superior films, I use them and I get a lower number of damaged product returns, therefore saving me money. You've sold me money.
• Maybe I’m a marketing manager for pretty much any company, and you want to sell me a tool to manage pay-per-click campaigns. I give you money for the tool, it helps me to advertise more effectively and therefore sell more – more than I paid for the tool. You’ve sold me money.
• Or perhaps you're a recruitment consultant, trying to get your candidate in front of me. I give you my time (and time is money, as we know) to see a candidate, then I give you money for your fee. I want the new employee to be more efficient, more accurate, to sell more, to lead more effectively (etc.) in order to make or save my company more money than I paid you. You've sold me money.

The key, of course, is that you need to demonstrate to me that the money you're selling me is worth more than the price I have to pay you for it - otherwise there's no reason for me to buy.

Such a simple concept yet so powerful when you sell. This is one of the most important principles for any salesperson to adopt into their thinking whenever they’re communicating their value to a prospect. Why? Because, as your prospect, if you can’t show me how you can actually sell me money, there’s really no reason for me to buy your product.

If this has resonated with you and you’d like to learn more about how we can help your sales teams to sell money, get in touch today for a consultation… we might just sell you some money of your own!