I was talking with a friend of mine recently about his sales force. He is the vice president of sales for a $100-million industrial distributor. He was lamenting a common dilemma for most sales executives: "I have some guys who are able to get the last nickel from their customers, and other salespeople that are so intimidated by their customers that they seem afraid to ask for what we're worth."

If I had a nickel for every time I've heard that over the past 24 years...

This is not the most complex sales management problem, but it's certainly one of the most frustrating. Let's start with some basics to clarify some misunderstandings.

First, value-added selling is a philosophy of seeking ways to contribute maximum and appropriate value added as the customer sees it. It is not forcing the customer to buy your resources because you have a burden to cover. Don't expect the customer to pay for your miscalculations.

Second, value-added selling is about persuading customers that your solution is the best alternative available. Your compelling arguments should leave the customer more anxious to buy than you are to sell. How difficult is closing at that point?

Third, value-added selling is about extracting as much value as possible from the account, not just contributing value. This means getting paid for everything you do for the customer. What good is it to give away your value added? It loses its perceived value when you fail to attach a real value to it for the customer.

My friend's problem fits into one of two categories: confidence or competence. It could be that the salespeople who struggle most with price lack confidence in their ability to stick by their price—or conviction that their solution is worth more to the customer than the competitor's solution. A confidence problem is a psychological issue that can be fixed by re-selling salespeople on the full scope of your value added. If you haven't fully sold them, how can they sell your value added to the customer?

If it's a competence problem, that's skill-based—behavioral. Training on the fundamentals of selling value, not price, will fix that. This means teaching salespeople how to ask the right questions to change the sales conversation from price to all the reasons customers want to do business with your company. It also means teaching your salespeople how to present a more compelling argument on the scope of your value-added and its impact on the customer.

Neither problem is fatal unless you fail to do something about it. Inertia will make it get worse. If you're like most people I meet in business, you're tired of providing "free" services. Wouldn't it be nice to announce to the marketplace that you've decided to eliminate "free" from the shelves of your warehouse and have no plans to stock more of it? "Free" is not free. Someone pays for it—either you or the customer.