When a New Brand Needs More Than a Sales Target

A new business often comes with a familiar set of targets. Revenue. Distribution. Market penetration. Customer acquisition. But there is another target that is harder to put on a dashboard: Belief. We recently worked with a young agriscience organisation backed by a strong legacy. The business had products. It had people. It had market ambition. But the brand was still establishing itself. That means the sales team is not merely selling a product.

They are helping build the brand. Every customer conversation becomes a brand interaction. Every negotiation. Every objection. Every field visit. Every time the salesperson chooses value over discount. That was one of the central ideas behind our Value Selling intervention. We wanted the participants to examine how they could move the conversation from: “What is your price?” to: “What value are we creating for you?” The distinction may sound obvious.

It isn’t. Because selling value requires confidence. It requires understanding the customer’s world. It requires asking better questions. It requires resisting the temptation to immediately negotiate. And it requires the salesperson to genuinely believe that the value being offered is worth paying for. The workshop therefore wasn’t built around generic selling skills. It was built around their market, their customers and their business reality. And that is perhaps one of the biggest lessons we continue to learn.

When a company is building a new brand, don’t just train the salespeople to sell. Help them understand what they are building.