Value - An overused but misunderstood term?

Oscar Wilde once said that a cynic was ‘a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing'.

This is just as relevant now as it was 122 years ago when it was written. In sales the cynic is the buyer and it's the job of the salesperson to get the value across. The price is just a number, an arbitrary concept.

Though the term 'value' has been banded around so much in sales as to render it more or less meaningless.

So what does it actually mean?

Webster's defines it as:

1 'the relative usefulness or importance of something as judged by specific qualities'

2 'a quality that gives something special worth'

The definition of economic value is 'a measure of the benefit provided by a good or service to an economic agent.'

So this is exactly what a salesperson has to convey.

And they can only do that if they make their conversations solely about their prospective client, their challenges and how they can help solve them.