Value selling in financial services is a powerful differentiator because, when done well, financial services salespeople help customers navigate some of their most important life decisions, such as buying a home or investing for retirement. 

Value-based selling is client-centered. Once you become masterful in this approach, you will know who to help and how your guidance will benefit them. Value-based selling also provides insight into why prospects and clients want and need your products, services, and advice.

Value-Based Selling Is Rooted in Motivation

In your role as a financial services salesperson, your customer often needs to make a change, and change is difficult. Statistics around diet and exercise are proof of that. Unfortunately, many things people are supposed to do simply do not happen.

Value selling in financial services is no different. Change is not easy for those you meet and advise. The equation for change has two forces working against each other: escaping how things are now and resisting change itself. Value-based selling requires motivating your client to change, and in some cases, motivating yourself to change your approach as well.

The Importance of Value-Based Selling

Inevitably, customers will have reservations about a product or service. That is why an effective value-based selling approach first centers on the client and their needs, while secondarily demonstrating your company’s value and guiding them through the sales process.

The measure of value you provide depends entirely on the client. You can offer the same solution to two different people and receive two very different reactions.

For example, imagine discussing an inheritance a prospect has recently received. They may or may not share everything you need to know to advise them properly. Through strong questioning and listening skills, you must uncover what matters most to them. It could be rate of return, safety, or liquidity. You should also understand how this asset fits into their broader financial picture.

Once you identify their needs and goals, you can make a value-based recommendation. Too often, salespeople begin the conversation by discussing their solutions. A value-based seller starts with the prospect, asks thoughtful questions, uncovers priorities, and then makes a recommendation. Helping the client understand the benefits of working with you and your firm comes last.

When you help customers clearly see the best solution for their situation, you earn the business nine times out of ten.

Value-based selling is the proven path to becoming a trusted advisor. Your greatest value is often revealed through the depth and quality of the questions you ask. Strong value-based sellers remain curious and strive to add value in every interaction, whether through insight, resources, stories, or even appropriate humor.

Tips for Practicing Value-Based Selling

Giving Instead of Selling

The most important principle of value-based selling is focusing on giving to clients, not selling to them. The book Go-Givers Sell More reinforces this mindset. Unlike other methodologies, value-based selling focuses on what the client wants and how you can help them achieve their goals.

Value-based selling in financial services is a relationship-building process that is often personal. A key part of your value is the process you guide clients through as you provide advice and solutions.

Giving a Listening Ear

You may have experienced someone asking you a question and interrupting before you finish answering. It does not feel good. Unfortunately, financial services salespeople are often guilty of this behavior.

You might ask a client what they plan to use funds for and then immediately jump to a product recommendation without further exploration. Using a value-based selling approach means diving deeper into discovery, asking better questions, and truly listening.

Skilled salespeople know that trust is built through listening. Challenge yourself to ask as many questions as possible before proposing a solution. This skill improves with practice.

Spend Time Getting to Know Your Client

Every client is different. The early stages of the relationship should be focused on learning as much as possible about them. Understanding how similar clients have been helped and sharing relevant examples builds credibility.

Your products may be available elsewhere, but your experience uncovering issues and solving similar challenges is what highlights your value.

Follow Through with a Consistent Process

Value selling in financial services is not easy. Becoming proficient requires consistent focus, effort, and discipline. Through thousands of evaluations, we know that elite salespeople follow a consistent sales process because it works.

Strong value-based sellers care just as much about the benefits their clients receive as they do about the sale itself.

A value-based selling strategy is essential to improving your sales plan and results. This approach positions you as a trusted business advisor and helps build strong, long-term client relationships.

Below are the value-based selling competencies identified by our partner, Objective Management Group, the number one sales evaluation and assessment tool in the industry.

Find Out if Your Salespeople Can Sell Value with a Free Evaluation!

Football, fantasy or reality, is in season right now, and it is true that all year long I often think and talk like a football player or coach in my role as a sales coach.
• “You’re out of bounds.”
• “That’s a Hail Mary!”
• “That’s a long shot.”
• “What do we have to do to win?”

Understanding the game and coordinating a successful football team requires consistent study, planning and practice. Like a high-performing sales team, a winning football team requires a high level of desire and commitment to:

1. Teammates

2. Skill development

3. Disciplined practice

4. Courage, motivation and respect for one another

Working with the team and coaching staff at Moeller, I saw firsthand how much the “sports” of sales and football have in common. The following sales productivity tools are inspired by the practices and systems that improve players and overall performance. Selling is a competition, and just like in football, the right team, perfect practice and smart planning win the game and increase sales.

9 Sales Productivity Tools

1. Practice Schedule

All professionals need practice. Every team has a detailed practice schedule that breaks the game into units: offensive line, defensive line, running backs, linebackers, special teams, two-minute drill and punt return.

Create a practice schedule for your sales team that focuses on key sales skills such as asking for introductions, qualifying a prospect, the initial call, developing the relationship and delivering a presentation.

2. Sales Prospect Scorecard

A Scorecard is like yard markers on a football field. They tell you how far you need to go to score and how much ground you must defend.

The Sales Prospect Scorecard gives you an accurate read on the likelihood of winning or losing a deal and clarifies exactly where you are in your sales process.

3. Sales Huddles

Just like football huddles, sales huddles create a real-time communication system so leaders can make real-time decisions.

Set a consistent sales huddle schedule and stick to it. Use this time to gather current information and coach to what is happening now.

4. Personal Goal Setting to Business Plan

Football programs evaluate objectives based on past performance, expected competition and the talent available. Do the same with your sales organization. Have each salesperson identify personal goals and translate them into a personal business plan they are committed to executing to increase sales. Then after meeting with them and establishing their ‘extraordinary’ year goals, agree to annual goals based on their personal goals, previous performance and market expectations.

Download our 7-page Personal & Business Work Plan!

5. Sales Success Formula

Every football team knows what metrics they must hit to win: required yards on first down, completion percentage, yards per play and more. Your Sales Success Formula should clarify the critical steps in your sales process, conversion ratios and common choke points, giving you a targeted coaching roadmap. Get specific.

6. Ideal Week

Each team enters a game with a clear plan. They know which plays to run in specific situations and which defenses to call based on field position and tendencies. Flexibility is understood, but the plan guides the game.

Create an Ideal Week for your salespeople. Define what a productive sales week looks like. This is one of the most important sales productivity tools you can implement.

7. Pre-Call Checklist

During practice, offensive coordinators review pre-snap situations so players can adjust quickly depending on the defense.

Use a Pre-Call Checklist to help salespeople prepare for important appointments. Coach them to execute required steps and Q3 (Qualify, Qualify, Qualify) the prospect. Role-play to help them adjust based on the prospect’s responses.

8. Post-Call Debrief

Football coaches review film to measure performance against planned execution. The Post-Call Debrief allows sales managers to evaluate the call, provide corrective action, suggest follow-up steps and coach for skill improvement.

9. Performance Recording

Football teams rely on digital recordings for immediate performance feedback. Reviewing film is more impactful than relying on memory or data alone.

Record sales role-plays during training sessions. Your salespeople will benefit greatly from observing themselves, allowing their performance to be coached, refined and improved.

FAQ: Sales Productivity Tools

How do sales productivity tools help increase sales?
Sales productivity tools give sales teams structure, clarity and consistency. When managers and salespeople follow tools like scorecards, huddles, practice schedules and debriefs, they improve daily behaviors and make more effective sales decisions, which directly helps increase sales.

What is the most important sales productivity tool?
While every tool has value, the Sales Success Formula and the Sales Probability Scorecard are foundational. They help sales teams understand where they are in the sales process, what must improve and what actions drive wins.

Why are football concepts used to explain sales productivity?
Football and selling share core elements: preparation, practice, discipline and execution. Using football analogies makes it easier to understand how structured systems and consistent coaching help salespeople improve skills and increase sales.

How often should sales teams use these tools?
Daily and weekly. Practice schedules, huddles and activity plans should be used every week. Pre-call checklists and post-call debriefs should be used on every meaningful sales opportunity.

Can new salespeople benefit from these tools?
Yes. These sales productivity tools help new salespeople build strong habits early, shorten their learning curve and develop the skills needed to increase sales with confidence.

Here are three examples of highly successful people and a brief summary of their “story of failure” through risk-taking. (The names have been changed to protect privacy.)

Doug had been working on an insurance account in Eastern Pennsylvania. He had a strong relationship with an inside contact and, in a very short period of time, leveraged that relationship to develop strong connections with the decision-makers who provided commercial insurance for their firm.

Doug was attempting to take the account over from one of the “BIG 3” national insurance brokers and definitely faced a fear of failure in sales. While many of his peers scoffed at his effort, he had great support from his sales manager and agency president. I worked with him as he attempted to position himself and the agency to take over the business.

He didn’t get the business. It took a lot of his time, the time of his team, and the underwriters who tried to underwrite the case. When he got the news, he was disappointed but stayed clinically detached. He didn’t get emotional, upset, or walk around feeling sorry for himself. Instead, when he got the call, he said something like, “Throw me a bone. Give me a chance to work on some aspect of your insurance needs. Give me a chance to prove we can work with you and handle your account.”

He told them he had worked hard on this account, had proven his dedication, and wanted something to show for the effort. The account gave him an opportunity to write a small portion of another aspect of their insurance needs. A year later, he wrote the entire account for more than $500,000 in revenue.

Risks taken by Doug:

1. Called on a large account

2. Competed against a much larger player in the market

3. Was not afraid to leverage a relationship

4. Made sure he was in front of decision-makers

5. Asked for business even when denied the initial opportunity

John: Turning Rejection into Opportunity

John had been working with an account on the West Coast. He had an engagement for a year, and at the end of that year, the client told him that his services were no longer needed. The company felt that the work he and his company had done over the last year had little impact on their sales and sales management results. The needle hadn’t moved on sales, and there was no compelling reason to continue the relationship.

As the president put it, “I just don’t see how continuing this relationship is going to help us. Our business is completely different. We’ve talked to our people, and the majority doesn’t believe you really understand our business.”

This was a first for John and his company, but he fought his fear of failure in sales and engaged with the president of his company to work on a strategy to maintain a relationship. He continued to stay in touch with an inside champion and would visit the former client whenever he was on the West Coast doing other work.

Changes began to take place for the company. There were leadership changes—though not at the very top where the previous decision had been made. There were new acquisitions and a feeling that they couldn’t handle it all (new hires, new offices, new leaders) without some help.

John was in the habit of consistently reaching out to his internal champion, and when he heard about the problem, he suggested coming out to talk about it. Maybe there was something they were missing. Maybe there was something he could do that was a bit different from the previous engagement.

Less than 12 months after John had been “fired” from the account because neither he nor his company “understood” the business, he was hired again by the company—and the account generated over $150,000 a year.

Risks taken by John:

1. Invested time and his own money to visit and stay in touch, even though the chance of re-engagement was remote

2. Took the risk that his new approach to one-on-one coaching could be met with the same rejection

3. Accepted the possibility that, if things didn’t work out, his reputation in the marketplace could be tarnished

4. Relied on his inside champion, which was also a risk that person took with their executives

Steve: Building Success Through Consistent Action

Steve was a senior executive and partner in a financial services firm in one of the country’s top 30 metropolitan areas. The story about Steve is short but powerful. As it was told to me, Steve made 20 phone calls a day to prospects, dealt with daily rejection, and faced his fear of failure in sales head-on.

Not just once in a while. Not just when he thought about it. Not just on Wednesdays. Every day that Steve worked—in or out of the office—he made his 20 calls. If the business of running the company kept him busy all day, he would still not go home, leave the office, or quit for the day until those calls were made.

Risks NOT taken by Steve:

1. Failing to reach the goals he set for his company and family

2. Being a poor example to his team

3. Neglecting the responsibility of helping the company meet its revenue goals

Steve was willing to overcome rejection 20 times a day. Assuming he worked 240 days a year, that’s 4,800 opportunities for failure to reach someone. Of those 4,800, he probably spoke to at least 480. In the services business Steve was in, he probably wrote about 10 clients a year—that means facing a lot of people telling you, “no.”

Steve remains today one of the most respected professionals in his market and his industry.

Are You Helping Your Salespeople Overcome Their Fear of Failure in Sales?

Are you encouraging your salespeople to take the risks that may include failure? Are you doing the same in your sales coaching role?

“It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”
— Bill Gates