Add Value First, Sell Second

TL;DR

• Prospects often avoid meeting because they don’t want to be sold to. Shift your mindset from selling to adding value with every customer interaction.

• Value-first leverages reciprocation to get you more replies, more second meetings, shorter sales cycles, and fewer ghostings.

• You can do it at any expertise level with market intel, provocative questions, buyers guides, and benchmarks.

---

You probably want more time with prospects than they want with you. Why? Because you’re

trying to get something from them – a sale, a donation, a commitment. But what if they thought of you primarily as someone who has something to give to them?

This won’t happen if you take a typical sales approach and simply tell the client about your

offering. But what if instead you focused on adding value to the customer during every

interaction? They would begin thinking of you as a partner, not a vendor, and look forward to

meeting with you. People run from sellers but seek time with those who make them smarter,

safer, and more effective.

This is a major mindset shift. It may be counterintuitive, but I found that by prioritizing value

creation over selling, I actually sold more.

Of course you get limited time with customers, but keep in mind that it’s not a zero-sum game. The more value you add, the more time your customers will give you. And you’ll harness what psychologist Robert Cialdini calls the strongest principle of ethical persuasion: reciprocity. If you help others – especially with something tailored to their needs – it creates a powerful urge for them to want to help you. This isn’t manipulation; it’s truly serving your customers with no commitment on their part. And this is not about free consulting or dumping multiple articles. Value-first is a relevant insight, question, or tool that customers can use immediately.

How can you implement this? Here are five practical examples.

1. Share market intelligence. In my last company we sold market research on our clients’

customer base. We presented excerpts to add value; clients always were interested in what

our research showed. You can do the same even without proprietary information. Research

a key industry issue, share the information with clients, and ask what they think about it.

You’ll soon understand the general industry zeitgeist on the topic that you can share with

prospects. Discuss only aggregate insights to maintain confidentiality and trust.

2. Ask them the questions they should be asking. Add value by helping clients think more

clearly about their challenges. I once cold-called a high-potential prospect repeatedly. He

finally responded that he already had solved the problem my offering addressed. I

congratulated him and then asked about the issues I had seen stymie most of his

competitors. Turned out he hadn’t thought about them. He agreed to see me and at each

meeting I made sure to pose questions to make him smarter. My advantage was pattern

recognition from seeing many companies dealing with this problem in different ways. The prospect realized that hearing my questions made him think and reduced his risk of failure.

The sale followed.

3. Research their key issues. Ask customers: “What’s your biggest challenge currently?”

Then research it, even if it’s not related to your offering. AI chatbots make this exceedingly

easy to do and combined with your expertise can generate surprisingly useful results.

Provide context and ask the chatbot what it would do if it were your customer. Share a

summary of what you learn. This emphatically demonstrates that you want to help your

customer before they’ve bought from you.

4. Create buyer's guides. We used our product and market knowledge to create buyer’s

guides (“10 Questions to Ask When Buying Market Research”) that our clients passed

around internally. Some would call us for help answering the questions. You can do this for

your product. Write the questions to make customers better buyers even if they ultimately go with a competitor. This applies to fundraisers too: you can create questions funders should ask before making a grant in your issue area.

5. Share best practices and benchmarks. You probably know many ways that customers

use your products and your competitors’ that you can share. We noticed that some of our

customers used our research to underpin their strategic plans, so we suggested that others

try that approach. You also can provide aggregated buyer data, such as average company

size, roles/titles of buyers, or usage patterns. Executives typically are highly interested in

how their behavior compares to competitors, and you can report this in the aggregate

without breaking confidences.

The key here is to think about value creation whenever you think about a customer. This is

a learnable skill, not an innate superpower. It’s a mindset shift with a big payoff: You’ll become known as a valuable resource – and ironically are likely to close more deals.

---

Try This Week:

• Before your next sales call, devise three questions about your prospect’s business that are unrelated to your product. Research them using your network, expertise, or AI. Make the call ready to share insights and ask deeper business questions, not just to sell.

• Create one value asset: Draft a buyer's guide (5-7 questions) for your product category or compile 3-5 best practices from how your current customers use your solution and your competitors’. Bring it to your next prospect meeting.