VSR Council Value Selling Maturity Model (for Solution Providers)
Assess and improve your organization's Value Management (value selling, value marketing, and customer value realization) maturity levels to grow sales, improve marketplace perception, and increase customer satisfaction.
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Assess your organization’s current and target adoption of Value Management capabilities and best practices
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Understand where and how to improve
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Estimate your benefits of advancing maturity levels
VSR (Value Selling and Realization) Council Value Selling Maturity Model for Solution Providers 
Developed by the Value Selling and Realization Council
Primary Creators:
- Andrew Hall, AnalysisPlace (Coordinator)
- John Thorp, ThorpNet
- Dinesh Kumar, Mitovia
- Paula Butte, CLG
- Peter Brooks, International Institute of IT Economics
- Shimon Abouzaglo, VSR Council
- John Morton, BMC Software
- Jack Keen, VSR Council
The maturity model is based on input from value selling and realization experts from various organizations, including SAP, SalesForce.com, HP, IDC, NetSuite, Oracle, Microsoft, BMC Software, and IBM.
Model Background
The Value Selling Maturity Model from VSR Council is a capability and best practice model for solution providers for assessing and improving their organizational capabilities in value selling, enablement and realization. AnalysisPlace leads the VSR Council workgroup responsible for development of the model. AnalysisPlace is also a primary developer of the content of the model and the assessment tool.
The model is a set of organizational capabilities and practices that maximize and realize outcomes from investments in people, process and technology by embedding the value fabric across the organization, customers and partners.
The VSR Council has developed a Value Management Maturity Model for Technology Vendors and Solution (Service) Providers. Using this model, service providers can start and manage the journey of transforming the organization from a Product/Feature/Price-centric selling organization to a Partnership/Customer/Outcome-centric value delivery organization.
The models help organizations to:
- Understand current and target adoption of best practices
- Benchmark maturity levels
- Understand and quantify estimated benefits of adopting additional best practices (advancing maturity levels)
- Estimate KPI value improvements associated with maturity improvements. KPIs include: marketing conversion rates, sales close rates, and sales cycle times.
- Estimate benefits of improving maturity (business case), including revenue growth and customer satisfaction
- Leverage VSR Council guidance, tools, and member services to make improvements happen faster:
- Identify and prioritize gaps that are constraining customer loyalty and business growth
- Develop clear roadmaps for improvement, execution and tracking value mindset
- Incorporate continuous improvement into the organization
- Identify and address skill gaps through training and accountability
- Embed value selling, enablement and realization in performance management
Value Selling Maturity Versus Sales Performance
Sales performance is correlated with value management maturity: adoption of value marketing, value selling, and value realization best practices can lead to improved sales (and organizational) performance. The model and assessment tool help to understand the relationship between the two.
Maturity Model Components
The Value Management Maturity Model is comprised of 4 categories: Value Governance, Value Marketing and Positioning, Value Selling, and Customer Value Engagement.
| Category |
Description |
Key Benefits |
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Value Governance
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Leadership and governance required to develop and manage optimal value management capabilities across the marketing-selling-supporting cycle
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- Value management program implementation success
- Continuous improvement
- Manage organization-wide ROI of value management
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Value Marketing Positioning
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Value-focused solution design, product management, and marketing strategy; Targeted solution value messaging and tools
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- Improve awareness and reputation in the marketplace
- Improve prospect engagement
- Increase lead generation
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Value Selling
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Evaluation of sales methodology, practices, and assets required to: offer solutions that solve customer-specific issues, quantify and communicate value propositions, and close sales.
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- Improve selling efficiency
- Enhance solution ROI credibility
- Improve customer buy-in
- Improve win rates
- Shorten sales cycle times
- Reduce discounting
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Customer Value Lifecycle Engagement
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Capabilities to help customers prepare for, successfully deploy, effectively manage, and actually realize full value from solutions sold
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- Improve customer satisfaction
- Improve repeat business
- Improve industry reputation
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Model Categories and Sub Categories
Value Governance
Includes assessment of leadership and governance required to develop and manage optimal value selling capabilities across the marketing-selling-supporting cycle
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Leadership
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How well does your organization and its leaders provide and execute change leadership that establishes a Value mindset and behaviors?
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Setting vision and direction, driving change and accountability, & ensuring adoption and use.
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Value Culture
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What is the scope and degree of adoption of Value demonstrated by the beliefs and behaviors in your organization?
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Beliefs, behavior, attitude and adoption of value-centric mindset.
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Cross-Functional Integration
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What is the extent of Value principle & integration within your organization's strategic planning and execution processes?
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Integration of value principles and activities across the organization’s processes.
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Organization and Management
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To what degree does an organizational structure exist for Value, and how effectively are Value skills managed?
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Roles, responsibilities, and skills for driving, performing and enabling value-centric activities.
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Methodology, Tools and Assets
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What is the scope and degree of adoption of value-focused methods, tools and assets in the organization?
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Value-focused practices and artefacts in discovering, positioning, selling, enabling, measuring and realizing customer value.
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Performance Management
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To what extent does the organization identify areas of impact and measure them?
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Defining, measuring and communicating the impact of value practices on the business.
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Value Marketing Positioning
Does our target market understand and believe our value proposition?
Includes assessment of value-focused solution design, product management, and marketing strategy, as well as, targeted solution value messaging and tools. Value positioning and marketing capabilities help improve awareness and reputation in the marketplace, improve prospect engagement, and increase lead generation.
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Planning for Value
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How does the organization identify, design, validate and integrate value during planning, road mapping and positioning of product and services?
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Identifying, designing, validating and integrating value in solution planning and positioning.
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Messaging Value
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How does the organization articulate value of its products and services to prospective customers in various marketing and positioning communications?
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Structure and substance of the value message in solution positioning artefacts and activities.
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Channels of Value Communication
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Where does the organization communicate value to prospective customers?
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Places where vendor communicates value, and prospective customer discovers value.
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Value Selling
To what extent and how effectively do we leverage our value selling assets? To what extent would prospects indicate that the value content in our sales interactions and documents is truly useful and highly credible?
Evaluation of sales methodology, practices, and assets required to: offer solutions that solve customer-specific issues, quantify and communicate value propositions, and close sales.
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Discovering and Identifying Value
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What is the extent and in what ways does the organization understand customer needs and identify customer value?
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Scope, methods and tools for understanding customers.
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Proposing with Value
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What is the extent and in what ways does the organization align and incorporate customer value in account strategy and proposed solutions with the customer?
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Articulating appropriate solution for desired customer value.
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Influencing Customers
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How does the organization influence decision-making and perceived value by the customer, including the use of value selling tools?
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Influencing and helping customers recognize value of the solution
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Communicating Value
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Who and how does the organization communicate perceived value to people in the customer organization?
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Communicating value to relevant stakeholders in customer and vendor organizations.
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Closing on Value
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How does the organization incorporate value enablement and realization in pricing, customer agreements and contracts?
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Including and managing value in contracts and other agreements.
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Customer Value Life Cycle Engagement
To what extent would customers indicate that they are realizing substantial actual value from our solutions?
Capabilities to help customers prepare for, successfully deploy, effectively manage, and actually realize full value from solutions sold.
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Value Enablement
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To what extent does your organization partner with your customers to enable the realization of customer value?
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Helping customers understand and manage business changes to realize the value.
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Value Realization
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To what extent does your organization partner with your customers to ensure sustained realization of value?
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Ensuring and assuring expected value is being realized, and taking required actions.
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Value Measurement
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Are you educating and arming your customers with metrics, tools and templates to track and maximize value? Are you using customer value realization metrics to improve your solutions and service?
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Helping customers measure, track and maximize value, as well as collecting customer metrics and leveraging them in improving products, services, and positioning.
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Maturity Level Definitions
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5
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Leading
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Value Partnership and Customer Value By-design.
Co-creating value with joint responsibility and accountability in enabling, measuring and realizing customer value.
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4
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Advanced
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Customer and Outcome orientation.
Decisions and performance incentives driven by customer value. Active collaboration with customers and partners, ensuring value.
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3
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Competitive
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Performance, Value and Service orientation.
Customer-specific value metrics and communication. Cross-functional integration and consistency in value positioning.
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2
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Basic
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Price/Performance and Solution orientation.
Using business case and RIO tools to influence decisions. Industry and customer research data in defining/positioning solutions.
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1
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Initial
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Product/Feature and Cost/Price orientation.
General benefit statements. Value conversations and positioning are typically driven by the customer or the competition.
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