This was SUCH a helpful breakdown. Whenever "time" is the leading value prop, I try to get past the phantom pain points and ask a few "why's" to get deeper.
Example:
This sales tool helps me save time.
Why? Cause I wanna spend more time prospecting.
Why? Cause I wanna close more deals.
Why? Because I want to make more money and hit my quota and not get fired.
This sales tool gives you job security (and make more money). That’s the real pain point.
So when we write about how much time it saves you, that falls flat most of the time.
In this example, they don't want to save 2 hours per week. They want to know their job is secure because of XYZ.
I really enjoyed this piece Kyle. Thank you. Time savings is truly only one benefit and more a by-product. If you can go deeper to show real value it means you've understood the buyers business and it can help you truly differentiate. A problem that results from that is also bad implementations, following bad evaluations. Like you mention in the urgency section, many have been burnt in the past and fear that they will mess up again with another tool. Better stick to status quo if it's just about time-savings.
Insightful article. One thing to look out for perhaps: when sharing the article, the headline clashes out with the illustration. « This is NOT your value prop » is counter-meaning to the illustration showing how time savings can be decomposed into concrete outcomes.
This was SUCH a helpful breakdown. Whenever "time" is the leading value prop, I try to get past the phantom pain points and ask a few "why's" to get deeper.
Example:
This sales tool helps me save time.
Why? Cause I wanna spend more time prospecting.
Why? Cause I wanna close more deals.
Why? Because I want to make more money and hit my quota and not get fired.
This sales tool gives you job security (and make more money). That’s the real pain point.
So when we write about how much time it saves you, that falls flat most of the time.
In this example, they don't want to save 2 hours per week. They want to know their job is secure because of XYZ.
“Say goodbye to PIPs forever.”
Selling to a sales exec?
Again, screw the time saver narrative.
“Never put a team member on a PIP ever again.”
I really enjoyed this piece Kyle. Thank you. Time savings is truly only one benefit and more a by-product. If you can go deeper to show real value it means you've understood the buyers business and it can help you truly differentiate. A problem that results from that is also bad implementations, following bad evaluations. Like you mention in the urgency section, many have been burnt in the past and fear that they will mess up again with another tool. Better stick to status quo if it's just about time-savings.
Well said, Kyle.
Time as a value prop is a brittle foundation for a deal since very, very few companies/teams measure how they spend their time as is!
Superb Kyle
It is, and I liked reading the whole article so much that I shared it to my team on Slack. But the preview was misleading.
I can’t add an image to a Substack comment to show you.
Insightful article. One thing to look out for perhaps: when sharing the article, the headline clashes out with the illustration. « This is NOT your value prop » is counter-meaning to the illustration showing how time savings can be decomposed into concrete outcomes.