Last updated on August 3rd, 2023
In this article, we’ll be discussing a very underrated sales tactic: the value ladder. We’ll go over the reasons they’re effective, and how to implement one into your business model.
Wouldn’t it be great to regularly close big deals on the first sales call?
I think I speak for most of us in saying that’s the dream.
But let’s face it:
The reality of sales is that — much of the time — it takes much more than just a discovery call and a single offer to gain a loyal client.
Sales is all about building trust and providing value. While every salesperson should strive to provide value, the trust part can get a little tricky.
But don’t worry, there’s an excellent strategy that any business can implement, at any level. It’s called a value ladder.
- What is a value ladder?
- How a value ladder works
- Why your business needs a value ladder
- How to tailor a value ladder to your business
- A value ladder example
- Streamline your sales process
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What Is A Value Ladder?
A value ladder (or sales ladder) is a tactic you can use to help “ease” a customer into your final offer. Value ladders tend to start with something small and easy to sell — like free offers — to build some initial trust and get the prospect interested in your brand.
But how does it help you transition your initial prospects into loyal customers for your brand?
As they move their way up the ladder, you continue to make offers of increasing value and price until you finally get to the end — your “bullseye” offer.
If you haven’t noticed already, value ladders are pretty similar to the customer journey, and that’s because they follow the same basic idea:
You can’t get a prospect to buy during your initial contact point— especially with high ticket items or services. With that being said, virtually any business can use value ladders, but it’s especially effective in the B2B sales space.
Let’s dive deeper into how (and why) value ladders work in the sales process.
How A Value Ladder Works
Let’s put ourselves into the mind of the customer. Imagine you’ve received this email:
“Hi [name],
As the owner of [company], I’m sure you recognize how important it is to know how to sell.
Which is why I’d love to offer you and your team expert sales training.
All for the price of $2000 per month, my trained coaches and I will take your team to the next level of sales skills. If that sounds interesting to you, let’s schedule a call, and we’ll get down to business!
Hope to hear from you soon!
– Joe the Sales Guy”
Alright, now back to reality.
Are you ready to buy from Joe yet?
If you’re like the vast majority of people, it’s probably a no — and for a good reason. In that example email, there’s no trust.
Not in Joe or his coaching services.
Joe could be the best sales coach there is, but before he ever can think about selling his full-priced coaching services, he has to build a healthy relationship so you know you can trust him and his coaches.
And that’s exactly what a value ladder does.
Rather than sprinting out of the gates trying to get your prospects to buy a full product, why not offer a free sales training video in exchange for them subscribing to your email list?
The email-for-sales-training is a much easier sell for new prospects, and it gives you a chance to show you can provide value too.
And as you continue to make offers, they can increase in value — for both you and the customer — until you’ve finally made it to the final offer.
Why You Need A Value Ladder
It’s quite easy to forget that most customers won’t purchase your products or services instantly after seeing your initial marketing message.
That’s the reason we’re using sales funnels to lead clients through the sales process.
On the other hand, if you’re not leveraging a value ladder, you could be leaving money on the table.
Say you sell your service for $100. You have three potential customers who want what you offer.
- Client one has $100 and purchases your service right away.
- Client two only has $50 in his/her pocket – without a value ladder approach, you’ll most likely lose the sale.
- Client three has $300 in his pocket ready to get the value from what it is you have to offer. If you only have a $100-service, you’re basically leaving $200 on the table.
And a value ladder helps you efficiently market a range of products and services while catering to all three customers mentioned above.
A value ladder lets you meet people where they are in their decision-making process, build trust, and provide more and more customer value at every step of the way.
7 Benefits Of A Value Ladder For Your Business
And with all that out of the way, let’s take a look at exactly why value ladders are so critical for any developed sales process.
Starting with the all-important part of the sales puzzle: Trust
#1: Value Ladders Build Trust
Without trust, you can’t expect to make many sales (especially in a B2B setting.)
As many as 81 percent of consumers say they need to trust a brand to feel comfortable purchasing from them.
And one of the best ways you can build trust with a prospect is by providing them value. That way, they know you’re not all-talk and no-results.
Unfortunately, you’ve got a dilemma here:
How do you show a prospect the value of your product or service if they won’t buy it in the first place?
You can’t get someone to buy until they trust you, but you can’t get them to trust you until they’ve seen the value you bring to the table.
Value ladders give a perfect solution to this.
By starting with a small piece of what you offer, you can still provide value without asking for a high price.
#2: You Can Get Quick Wins For Customers
Another massive benefit of value ladders is that they give you the chance to show your customers quick results.
Sometimes the product or service for your ultimate offer can take a bit of time to show the results your prospects are looking for.
And if your prospects aren’t prepared for that, it won’t look great on your part.
A small initial offer designed to give quick results allows you to show your customers that you mean business early on.
#3: Longer Customer Retention
Quick Tip: Once you close a deal, your job isn’t done.
The most profitable of companies recognize that keeping your customers is vastly better for your bottom line than continually searching for new ones.
And the great thing about the value ladder model is that it promotes a long-term customer relationship that you both continue to benefit from.
#4: Value Ladders Help You Work Up To Closing Bigger Deals
Going from a non-customer to closing the big deal is going to be a challenge — this holds true even if the prospect trusts you.
Think about it from their perspective:
Going from $0 invested by the prospect in your product to the full asking price for your services is a big jump.
But what if you could ease customers into the process at a more comfortable pace?
With a well-designed value ladder, you’re not jumping the gun with your prospects. Instead, you’re working your way up from low-investment (or free) to closing the final offer, and you’re doing it in steps, so the transition isn’t too abrupt for your customers.
#5: Eases Customers Into A Sale — More Options Than “Yes” or “No”
Without a value ladder, pretty much any prospect you attempt to sell to has one of two options:
“Yes, I’d love to work with you!”
Or…
“No thanks.”
If you don’t put any other measures into place, you’ve got to take a “no” at more face value and carry on.
But with a value ladder, you’ve got more options than that.
If a prospect declines your offer or is skeptical, you can always give them easier, lower-value options to go with. This way, they can pick the option they’re most comfortable with (or better yet, you can prescribe to them the first steps they need to take to get the results they want) — and hopefully, choose to buy your main offer after upselling from your initial offer.
#6: Guides Sales And Marketing Efforts
Every sales team should have at least a roughly structured process around their sales and marketing.
If all of your reps are just playing things by ear, you’re going to see far less success than you would if you took some time to define the process.
With a value ladder, you can make sure your marketing campaign is bringing in the right leads, which can go through your sales funnel until they reach a point where they’re ready to start at the bottom of your sales ladder.
#7: Perfect For Service-Based Businesses
While value ladders are great ways to structure any business’ sales process, they’re especially useful for service-based businesses.
Let me explain exactly why that is:
With a service-based business, you’re selling results. Especially with smaller service-based businesses, you need to prove or convince your prospect that you can get them results.
Unless your business has an already well-reputable brand, you have to start from the bottom to build up to your ultimate offer. This is where a value ladder can become extremely advantageous.
There’s a near-limitless number of initial offers that a service-based business can upsell from — but here’s an example to get your creative juices flowing:
Let’s say you run a growing digital marketing agency that hasn’t quite built an established brand yet, offering everything from PPC to SEO. You’ve just acquired a lead through cold email outreach, completed a discovery sales call, and you’re ready to pitch a proposal to your prospect.
Where many agencies go wrong is that they try selling their ultimate offer first. A skeptical prospect who hasn’t seen that you can get results probably won’t trust you to sign a 6-month contract from the jump.
So to build trust with this skeptical prospect, what you could do instead is offer an audit, or maybe a trial PPC campaign. The possibilities are pretty much endless. These two possible initial offers will provide your prospect instant value, which is exactly how you’ll build trust for the upsell.
How To Create A Value Ladder Template For Your Business
So, all that’s great, but how do you actually create a value ladder template for your own business that you can use time and time again — while making sure it’s effective?
Not to worry, creating a value ladder is much easier than you probably think, so let’s get right into it.
Start Here: List Your Offers In Order Of Price & Value
One of the most significant tenets of value ladders is that they ease your prospects into the sales process with the smaller offers first.
So with that in mind, your offers should go in order of price and value.
The least expensive (yet still valuable) offer should be first, with the big ones saved for prospects that understand the value of your product or service.
Creating The No-Brainer Initial (Or Sometimes Free) Offer
Want to know a great way to get the prospect interested in your initial offer?
Make it such a no-brainer that they’d be missing out if they didn’t choose to take it.
Sometimes, that means a free offer, other times, it may come at a low cost or with a stipulation (like a free trial), but either way, the entry barrier shouldn’t be high. This is where the trust-building begins.
Upselling More Value For A Higher Cost — Create The Steps Based On Your Business
After you have your no-brainer offer and have made your new customer happy, it’s time to upsell and provide more value.
These “next steps” are your upsells. The amount of upsells and “steps” on your value ladder depends on your business model.
The purpose of this ladder approach isn’t to trick your prospect into paying you more…
Contrary to popular belief, a good salesperson doesn’t take the “I could sell honey to a bee” approach. Instead, a good salesperson provides value that solves a genuine pain point of a prospect.
Yes, your value ladder is building trust. But the trust is built from you guiding your prospect to their ultimate goal.
It’s a win-win situation:
Your customers get an increasing amount of value from your relationship, and you’re able to continue increasing your revenue.
Leading Up To The Ultimate Value Offer At The Top Of The Ladder
While there’s always more you can offer, you should have a “main goal” that you’re trying to get customers towards.
This primary goal is your final, or “bullseye” offer.
Every step of the ladder up to this point should be priming the customer for this high-value offer so that once they get there, the close is easy.
If you’ve structured your value ladder right and done the legwork to build out your relationship, it likely won’t even take much convincing at this point. (Though, it can certainly depend on a client-to-client basis)
An Example Of A Value Ladder: How to Map Your Value Ladder
Now, with all that out of the way, you might still be wondering what a well-structured value ladder even looks like. This is why I thought it’d be a great idea to show you an example of what a value ladder could look for a business like a digital marketing agency.
The first part of the value ladder should be the “no brainer” offer.
In this case, if we were a marketing agency, we could offer an audit that will tell the prospect every single one of their problems that’s holding them back from their marketing goals.
Once the audit is finished, the prospect will know everything that has to be implemented for them to start getting the leads they want. Now, the next problem is: Who is going to fix all of these problems?
The most obvious choice? You, the marketing agency. And that will be your first upsell. This would be a quick win that would get your new client’s systems in place to get more leads.
Since our bullseye offer is a long-term SEO plan in this example, we’re going to need some time to get our new client organic leads (SEO is known to take time to get results).
We’ll want to provide as much value as possible in the meantime and get our client leads as soon as possible. That’s where a PPC campaign could come into play. Although not a perfect long-term solution to marketing, it will get our clients leads fast.
Once the leads roll in from a PPC campaign, our client will have more trust and be ready for the long-term plan (assuming it went well). That’s where the bullseye offer would come in, and we’d then upsell the client to the long-term SEO plan.
Why Sales Ladders Work So Well
The reason that the latter (no pun intended) example works so well is that it gives prospects time to ease into the process.
In the beginning, there’s no pressure — it’s just an audit with a relatively low cost.
Our example digital marketing agency has the chance to build up trust and reputation with prospects by gradually solving problems and getting our new client results.
If done right, the value ladder will guide the client to their ultimate goal.
Streamlining Sales Processes
Automating your sales funnel and parts of your value ladder is an excellent way to ensure you can keep scaling without reaching your capacity.
And a great tool to aid you in that process is a CRM program.
CRMs help you manage your customer data, consolidate your outreach efforts, and streamline sales processes all in one neat digital space.
And great news:
You can try Vipecloud for free today. Request a free demo today to see how it can help you transform your own business’ sales process.
I’m new to this yet you made it so easy for me to understand