25 Years of Value-Added Selling Techniques

January 11th, 2010

By Tom Reilly, author of “Crush Price Objections”

Even though I've been in sales training since 1981, 2010 marks the 25th anniversary of the first edition of Value-Added Selling Techniques. Can it really be that long? Like most areas of study in life, the more you learn, the more you realize you have to learn. I discovered this as a young psychology student at St. Louis University. After my first semester, I was ready to diagnose and treat the world. After seven years of higher education, two degrees, and decades of professional study in psychology, I realize how much I don't know.

My work in Value-Added Selling has followed a similar path: the more I discover, the more I have to discover. This has been a paradoxical journey of depth and simplicity. We have drilled down strategically and tactically on things salespeople can do to sell their total value. And yet twenty-five years later, I understand the simplicity of this philosophy: do more of that which adds value and less of that which adds little or no value.

I've learned that it can be boiled down to one word–equity. Equity is a sense that what we agree to is fair for both of us. If it's a good deal for one of us and a bad deal for the other then it is a bad deal for both of us. If I win and you lose, you resent it. If you win and I lose, I resent it. Whoever resents the outcome, you or me, will vacate the deal as soon as possible.

Equity is at the heart of Value-Added Selling. If you are guided by your sense of fairness–to give as good as you get and to get as good as you give–you will contribute and extract meaningful value from the relationship.

Back to my study… I have much to learn.

-Tom Reilly

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