In an AI-first world, the role of the sales professional is simple: value-add conversations.

Buyers have unmitigated access to information, insights, and industry trends. That means sales professionals have never been more scrutinized.  You’re either adding value or you’re not. 

Prospects and customers expect you to show up with a point of view. One that is informed by research and experience augmented with the point of view of the firm you represent. 

You also need to show you understand their role, their company, and the challenges they are facing right now.

What is a Value-Added Conversation?

Value-Added Conversation is a buzzword, so let’s define it from your customer’s point of view. They don’t need another sales pitch. What they do need is a partner—someone who brings new perspectives, uncovers blind spots and helps them anticipate challenges they might not have even identified yet.

The sales professional’s job is to bring insights the buyer isn’t already aware of paired with a few recommendations.

• Industry Expertise = CredibilityYou must know your customer’s world. The best sales teams embed industry trends, benchmarking data, and competitive insights into their conversations.
• Client Intimacy = Trust & Influence Multi-threading into an account helps sales teams understand stakeholder priorities beyond just the initial buyer. Good relationships across functions are your moat against competitors and elevate your brand within their organization.
• Actionable Insights = Business Impact A diagnosis isn’t worth much if we don’t have a remedy or two in mind. Come prepared with ideas on how the customer can capitalize on opportunities or mitigate risks. 
• Discovery, Storytelling, and Sense-Making Use discovery to guide the conversation, use stories to engage and share what a better future can look like for them, and help them make sense of the mountain of data and signals coming at them, much of which is conflicting (watch CNBC for daily examples.)

What Leading Teams Are Doing

1️⃣ Enabling with Content: Sales teams need dynamic resources that go beyond product knowledge—curated market insights, competitive intelligence, and customer success stories that are easily accessible and organized by segment, use case, and buyer personas.

2️⃣ Practicing: What do most people like to talk about most? Themselves right? For salespeople, that shows up as an instinct to product pitch. Unwiring that instinct, and shifting to Discovery, Storytelling, and Sense-Making, requires practice. It’s a skill that can be taught. Role-playing exercises and peer coaching can reinforce this skill, turning it into a habit

3️⃣ Learning From The Customers: Every prospect and client conversation is an opportunity to learn. We have no shortage of tools at our disposal to do this at scale, connecting buyer and customer conversations across all the go-to-market teams. Leverage these insights to inform marketing content and sales conversations.

Information is everywhere.

Product differentiation is hard to come by and is often fleeting. How your go-to-market teams show up every day can be a moat. Equipping and enabling teams to continuously get better at understanding your customer’s business and demonstrate this understanding through guided discovery, storytelling, and sense-making will stand out in a noisy and crowded world.