The Value Selling Scorecard™
Aligning Your Organization to Sell and Deliver Value

Value selling incorporates the entire range of organizational roles and processes that go into selling and delivering value to customers. Value selling is an organization competency, not 'just' a Sales or Marketing competency. For a company to succeed in value selling, all parts of the organization that play a role in selling and delivering value to the customer must be aligned in how they work together.

The Value Selling Scorecard™

In order to accomplish this objective, Catalytic management has developed a new tool, The Value Selling Scorecard™. Consider this example, developed for a cement manufacturer.

The Magic of Organization Alignment

Getting the best price is the Sales and Marketing organization's challenge, but overall success in value selling requires that several departments and processes be aligned on the same objectives. A company cannot successfully deploy sophisticated pricing tools if the sales force doesn't understand how to use them. Sophisticated pricing tools are useless if customers don't understand and agree with the value propositions. And if the delivery organization doesn't fulfill the promises made by the salespeople the result will be dissatisfied customers and lost revenue. Every part of the organization has to be aligned.

The Progressive Stages of Alignment

Stage 1 - Situational alignment: In general the organization is poorly aligned and operating at a low level of performance, however some individuals within the organization work well together and achieve successful results.
Stage 2 - Proactive alignment: Sales and Marketing management has started the process of aligning the various departments and processes that must work together. At this early stage of improvement management is looking at such issues as sales force competency, value propositions, and customer education. While many success stories are still 'situational', management is learning from these successes and taking steps to replicate them at a broader level.
Stage 3 - Organized alignment: Sales and Marketing management has started to initiate procedures and programs that will ensure all departments are aware of the value selling objectives and their roles in achieving those objectives.
Stage 4 - Collaborative alignment: Along with Sales and Marketing management, the leaders of the various departments required for successful value selling are starting to take steps to ensure alignment by putting procedures and policies in place that support the value selling objectives.
Stage 5 - Managed alignment: At this stage the organization is starting to implement continuous improvement in all aspects of the value selling process. Success has become predictable, and failure becomes a learning opportunity. It is at this stage that technology integration with customers becomes an important value selling component.

Realizing the Power of Value Selling

The Value Selling Scorecard highlights the fact that value selling is an organization competency and that the key to organization effectiveness is alignment of the key players and processes. The organization and the processes must be aligned, working together to:

Determine what the customer values,
Bundle and price the product offering to capture a fair share of that value, and
Deliver the promised value to the customer.

Every company has a unique Value Selling Scorecard. The Value Selling Scorecard becomes your company's roadmap for determining what parts of the organization are critical to value selling and assessing how well they are aligned with each other and with customers. The objective is to move the organization forward to a level of alignment and performance that will extract prices that reflect the true value customers receive. The Value Selling Scorecard offers the potential to become a powerful and permanent management tool.

Steps to Implementing the Value Selling Improvement Program

In order to succeed in implementing the Value Selling Improvement Program four steps are essential:

Determine if the Value Selling Scorecard will help your company:
1. Contact Catalytic Management for a discussion of the Value Selling Scorecard process. Depending on your location we can either conduct a web-based presentation or visit your offices to talk about your situation and the potential relevance of the Value Selling Scorecard.
2. Conduct a high level assessment with your executives to measure awareness of the key roles and processes for successful value selling.
Develop your organization's Value Selling Scorecard: You must first understand what parts of your organization participate in the value selling process, and you must conduct a careful assessment of where the organization and customers are on the Value Selling Scorecard. Customer and industry fieldwork will drive this part of the process.
Assign Leadership: You will need internal and external leaders to keep the organization moving forward and on track. It is essential to determine who will play the role of "air traffic controller" to minimize the potential for failure? It is just as important to determine who will direct the departments and overcome politics and turf barriers as you move through the stages of the scorecard?
Create a Change Plan: Your change plan must be all-inclusive and it must recognize the reality that change is tangible and transition is psychological.

Want to learn more? Download our free white paper on The Value Selling Scorecard™