PPVVC

Any company with a large sales team knows it cannot rely on luck. You cannot guess who your reps are talking to, what their close rates are, how often prospects are followed up, or what your sales pipeline and forecast look like. You need to know exactly what drives success.

One of the biggest challenges many companies face is connecting their marketing plan to the sales process. Too often, the two teams work as completely separate units and never find ways to work together.

There are plenty of proven sales methodologies to build on. But you need to find the one that works for you and then helps you stay on top. If sales were like arithmetic, that would be great: you could derive an exact equation to get the most out of your sales team.

In a highly competitive market, improving sales skills is critical for every salesperson. Sales methodology has a well-known formula for this called PPVVC. It reads as follows:

It is only a conceptual formula, but that does not mean it does not work.

The formula is associated with the Solution Selling methodology and the sales consultancy Sales Performance International. It is often compared to MEDDIC (Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, Champion), another framework for qualifying complex deals. PPVVC is useful because it shows you exactly where you can step in and help.

Let's take a closer look.

What is PPVVC?

The core idea is that the sales process works like an algebraic formula. The acronym PPVVC has five letters, and each letter stands for a key factor. All five elements are essential. If any of them equals zero, the whole product equals zero. If any factor is less than one, it reduces the total value instead of increasing it.

Here are the five elements of the sales formula:

This is the ability to use lead generation to identify the best contact and determine whether they have the authority to make a decision or can direct you to the person who does.

Show the buyer a better tomorrow. Offer a distinctive solution to their problem, one they can picture working in their own business.

Build the relationship you want to have with your customers: decide what kind of partnership you want to develop and how you will support them. As time passes and the relationship grows, buyers move from basic information needs to wanting more detail about how your company is positioned to meet their needs best. This is where Whitepapers, Case Studies, and e-books come in.

Offer the buyer distinctive solutions to their problems, and make sure those solutions can be measured. If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it. If you have not found a problem to solve, if you are trying to sell to someone who cannot buy, if you cannot communicate a better tomorrow, or if you cannot quantify the value of that change, your chances of winning the sale are close to zero.

The ability to keep prospects engaged while you wait for their timing or budget to be ready is powerful. It can have a real impact on sales conversion and on how quickly you get to the final result.

Benefits of the PPVVC method

So you have an established sales strategy. How do you connect it to the marketing process? Start by looking at each step in that process. Sales and marketing goals should always be aligned. Finding a way to connect the marketing plan and the sales process at every level leads to greater success for the entire organization.

PPVVC helps you shape five core strategies for a deal: a customer relationship strategy, a solution strategy, a delivery and service strategy, a competitive strategy, and a business and financing strategy.

Customer relationship strategy

An organization builds and supports customer relationships through five key activities:

• company presentations,
• technical workshops,
• executive meetings,
• site visits,
• trade shows.

Pilots, proofs of concept, trial use, strategic investments, and similar approaches help win recognition from the customer's key decision-makers. The driving force behind the relationship is initiating a purchase or a strategic partnership based on the customer's business requirements and pain points. The relationship strategy should take into account how power is distributed on the customer side and how it shifts, especially the views and motivations of the final decision-maker.

Solution strategy

Technology, the product portfolio, system solutions, and business functions should match the customer's needs. They should not only solve the customer's problems but also be competitive and bring real benefits to the customer. The design and architecture of the solution are important evidence for winning against competitors. The solution itself should have a cost advantage and reflect a deep understanding of operating costs. It should not only address the customer's pain but also deliver value and, more importantly, help achieve the customer's business vision. Presenting the solution as a scenario is the key to meeting the customer's requirements.

Delivery and service strategy

Successful delivery means realizing the customer's business vision so they can see how to make money with the products and solutions they bought. Another goal of delivery is to secure the customer's payment confirmation and invoice upon delivery. So the main question of the delivery strategy is how to deliver on time and with high quality while meeting the value requirements of both sides by aligning delivery terms with payment terms. This is a very important form of control.

Competitive strategy

Give customers differentiated advantages and make them more competitive; help them avoid technical, product, operational, and investment risks; help them set high standards and selection criteria that reflect what they value, so they choose partners with strong overall capabilities. The best competitive strategy is to design a customer experience that outperforms competitors at the critical moment. Different products and solutions, use cases, decision-makers, and deal stages call for different competitive strategies. This, too, is control over the decision.

Business and financing strategy

Good customer relationships and distinctive, reliable solutions and delivery are the foundation of the business strategy. The business strategy is a structured way of developing and presenting product value. Only when customers fully understand the uniqueness and value of your products and solutions will they accept higher prices, including a brand premium and favorable payment terms. The best business strategy lets customers compare options and gives them better selection methods and tools, so that together you arrive at workable financing terms, an overall price advantage, and reasonable payment methods. When customers see how the solution strengthens their own position in the market, they feel in control of the decision and see the value of the products and solutions.

Using PPVVC in sales

Each letter in PPVVC corresponds to a key point in the interaction between the salesperson and the customer, so the quality of a rep's work shows up in the score. This lets the manager see whether the rep has real influence on the customer side. The manager can then focus on one specific skill or behavior that needs improvement and, at the same time, adjust the strategy or actions so the opportunity can be won.

Sales reps can start with these five dimensions to analyze the customer's needs, ideas, and values, sell consultatively, and influence the customer's willingness to buy. In sales management, the same approach can be used in a CRM to estimate win probability across the sales pipeline.

For example, a low score on the first two Ps means some of the early conversations need to happen again. You need to ask more questions to assess where things really stand. Working on a proposal at this stage will not help, because you do not yet have the conditions to win. Once managers are comfortable with PPVVC and know how to read the scores, they can coach reps anywhere, even by the coffee machine, discussing strategic opportunities in the same language and model and focusing on the same development goals.

Conclusion

To sum up, the beauty of adopting PPVVC is that it (a) makes your salespeople more effective and (b) takes the guesswork out of selling.

By implementing PPVVC, companies can document and standardize their sales methodologies and get a common language for discussing sales strategies.

What is more, PPVVC serves as a guide for sales teams, so everyone knows what to do and when. A flexible B2B CRM can help turn this approach into everyday practice.

By applying the PPVVC formula, you increase your chances of:

• Streamlining your sales processes.
• Improving forecast accuracy.
• Closing deals more effectively.

Building PPVVC skills is critical for every salesperson. By understanding their target audience, building good relationships, mastering effective sales techniques, and providing excellent after-sales service, salespeople can become true sales experts and achieve better results.