The Four Conversations Book Club continued this week, with yesterday’s discussion on Chapter Three, The Value Conversation. 

Once again, there were more questions asked than I could answer (and we went almost 25 minutes long) so I’ve answered some of them below. 

If you’ve read my latest book, The Four Conversations: A New Model for Selling Expertise, and would like to participate in the last Book Club discussion on Chapter Four: The Closing Conversation, you can sign up here. It’s Tuesday, June 10th at 11:00 am Eastern.

The Value Conversation Q&A

The Value Conversation is the third conversation in our four-conversation arc. 

Your objective in The Value Conversation is to determine the value you might create for your client and the share of that value you might command, via your fees.

In addition to the framework for navigating The Value Conversation, we also tackle pricing and proposal development (which happen in the gap between the Value and Closing Conversations) making this a big topic. 

Let’s get into the questions. 

Any advice for assisting a prospective client when they genuinely do not have any idea what kind of value will be created by our services?

Mike, it’s not about the value that will be created by your services, it’s about the value the client is seeking, period. There is something the client wants to be true in the future—that’s why they’re having this conversation with you—and that desired future state (DFS) is valuable to them in some way. Your job is to get the client to articulate their DFS and the value that will accrue to them when they achieve it.

Don’t talk or even think deeply about your services in a Value Conversation. Trust the framework, which is all about the client and has nothing to do with you and your services. 

What’s the most counterintuitive technique we can utilize during the value conversation?

Deep interest. This client is qualified in, so you’ve replaced the tone of discernment that you embodied in The Qualifying Conversation with the deep interest in someone you’ve determined is a good fit for you. 

You’re deeply interested in the client, their challenge, the future they aspire to and the value that you might create for them. 

What you’re not deeply interested in at this point is the specific solution they are seeking, or your own solutions. 

I’d prefer you trust the framework, Joe, and not look to layer in techniques or tricks. Having said that, one counterintuitive technique that I wrote about in my earlier book Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond The Billable Hour is what I call “anchoring against guaranteed value.” 

You might consider using this technique in step four of The Value Conversation framework (set pricing guidance) when getting resistance to your high anchor. Let’s say you’ve anchored at $100k, which you think is reasonable, but the client rejects it, saying they would never pay that much. You might ask, “Would you pay that price if I guaranteed the outcome?”

Many people reading this are bristling at the question, thinking “there’s no way we would guarantee anything!” This is just a hypothetical conversation designed to uncover the maximum the client would pay. Asking the question does not compel you to offer a guaranteed solution. There’s more nuance on this explained in Pricing Creativity.

I’ve never seen a satisfying answer to how to lead the value conversation when the service you provide is far less tangible, like life coaching. Any thoughts?

George, you are sitting on a gold mine. Forget you are a life coach for a minute. Forget about how you package and price your services. Imagine your mind has been wiped blank by one of those Men In Black magic pens. Now, take the four-step framework and use it, with nothing to sell. 

Similar to Mike’s question at the top, you seem to be getting tripped up by your services (and their intangibility) when your focus should be on the profound personal transformation the client seeks. 

In my own life I may want to double my earnings while working less, sleeping better and feeling a greater sense of calm and control.  

If you could pull that out of me, get me to identify the KPIs, get me to articulate the value of getting what I want and then you asked me if I would pay $100k for that, I would say Yes! …with some concerns you’re still going to have to address before you get me to commit. But, you will have begun to mark out the high end of the range. To determine the low end of the range you might ask, “Was there a specific number that you were thinking of spending on this?” I might reply that I had mentally budgeted $1,500 a month. 

Now you have a range to work with. Now you can think about the services you might offer at different pricepoints. 

I plan to sell a Discovery first — and do the Value conversation as a paid-for part of the Discovery.  Is this a good idea?

It absolutely can be a good idea, Yaakov. The nature of many businesses almost requires them to proceed with a paid diagnostic in order to properly scope and price the engagement. 

Typically, you would try to have The Value Conversation and in steps two (metrics) and three (value) you would find that there are questions that cannot be answered without some level of research. The paid diagnostic is the mechanism you use to get the missing information. 

In high-stakes B2B engagements where multiple stakeholders have conflicting definitions of ‘value,’ how do you navigate a Value Conversation that aligns economic, emotional, and strategic outcomes, without slipping into a generic or lowest-common-denominator solution?

I’ve placed your question, Kevin, after Yaakov’s, hoping you might spot a solution in my answer to him. 🙂 

It sounds like you commonly need to get multiple decision makers on the same page. You can do that through a paid diagnostic or an unpaid needs assessment (typically a version of the diagnostic scaled back to 8 to 12 questions). 

Also remember that value resides in the observer not the object, therefore every observer (stakeholder) will place a different value on the outcomes. It’s easy for everyone to coalesce around economic value, but each individual will have their own rationale for why you should (or should not) be the one entrusted to deliver that value and be paid the price you ask. So don’t try to reconcile all the differences in value. Instead, seek to uncover and understand. And bear in mind that not everyone’s decision carries the same weight. You may want to overweight some of the values expressed and underweight others. Yes, it’s messy.

-Blair