What is the command of the message sales methodology?

Sales methodologies are crucial for sales teams and sales enablers alike, as they offer much-needed structure and guidance to the sales process – without being overbearing.

But with so many methodologies available, it can be difficult to select the right one for your organization.

This article covers the command of the message framework including:

What is the command of the message?

The command of the message sales methodology is an outcome-focused method of connecting with your customers and closing deals created by Force Management.

Command of the message provides a framework of consistent messaging for your sales team while allowing for the flexibility to react to customer needs.

Instead of a generic pitch discussing your product’s features, command of the message focuses on how your product can solve the specific problems your customer is facing.

In this approach, the seller positions themself as a trusted expert and offers product advice based on their customers' responses.

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The methodology aims to build trust between your customers and sales reps through active listening and situational awareness, which can be a mindset shift for some sellers. Another aim of command of the message is to set your product or service apart from competitors by providing tailored advice and backing up claims with testimonials.

We asked Katie Van Hoomissen, GTM Enablement Manager at Contentful, why her organization chose to implement the command of the message sales method:

“We wanted to give our teams a framework to collect customers' requirements and articulate why we meet the customers' needs better than our competitors.”

Key components of the methodology

With definitions out of the way, let’s break down some of the key components of this sales methodology in more detail.

Target-specific buyer personas

The first aspect of the command of the message methodology is understanding your customers. By creating detailed buyer personas, your sales reps can start to understand your customer’s pain points and needs before they dive into calls.

Having quick and easy access to common job titles, challenges they face, decision-making criteria, and where customers go for information can improve the relevancy of sellers’ messaging.

Plus, 56% of companies have generated higher-quality leads by utilizing buyer personas in their outreach.

Simple value proposition

The next component of the command of the message methodology is a clear and simple value proposition. This is the core of your organization’s messaging and is likely already used by your marketing team.

Essentially, this statement answers the question: “Why should a prospect choose your offering over everyone else’s?”

The key here is to break your value proposition into mini-elevator pitches of a few sentences that sales reps can use to advocate for your brand quickly and clearly.

3 messaging pillars

The command of the message method emphasizes the importance of aligning your messaging across the entire organization.

This consists of utilizing the three messaging pillars:

Value comprehension – Identifying and responding to trends in the market to refine your messaging to reach the wider target market. This is your marketing team’s role.
Value offering – Translating market knowledge into steller product and service offerings, that target customer pain points. Your product team works on this.
Value engagement – Articulating the value and differentiation of your offering to customers – this is where sales reps come in.

Part of value engagement is value messaging, and this is the element command of the method seeks to make simpler.

Essentially, this framework allows sellers to have strategic and consistent conversations with prospects that persuasively conveys the value and differentiation of your product.

Getting this cross-functional alignment right, means your buyers always receive a consistent message (preventing confusion and misunderstandings down the sales pipeline).

Differentiate from competitors

The command of the message framework also allows reps to confidently differentiate your offerings from competitors, without bad-mouthing their offerings.

It does this by asking: “What sets your offering apart from the rest?”

This allows your sellers to critically assess the benefit to a customer of buying from your organization. Does your product solve their pain point better? Is your offering easier to implement? Do you offer more comprehensive customer support?

Highlight why your offering beats competitors in aspects your prospects have said are important to them, and back it up with relevant case studies.

Outcomes over features

When using the command of the message method, your sales team should focus on prospect outcomes, rather than product features.

This means actively listening to your customers, to uncover the underlying pain points and challenges they’re facing. Your reps can then show empathy and communicate how your offering can provide them with their desired outcome.

If you have multiple offerings, this might involve recommending the product that’s most suited to your client’s needs (rather than trying to push the most expensive option).

This approach positions your sales reps as trusted experts, as they’ve moved the conversation away from tactical features toward a strategic outlook on the buying journey.

Build trust

Finally, a staple of this methodology is building trust with your customers. The last component touched on this, but this approach to selling is about supporting your customers to make the right decision while persuading them your solution will provide the outcome they’re looking for.

Being open, honest, and empathetic with your customers will help to build a long-term relationship of trust and respect that’ll allow them to consider your input more seriously.

Only 3% of people trust sales reps, so it’s important to break past that barrier and build a trusting relationship, so your messaging can land on its feet, rather than being tossed aside.

But don’t just rely on your own messaging, present clients with compelling and relevant evidence through case studies, testimonials, and reviews.

Benefits of the command of the message method

There are many benefits of using the command of the message sales methodology in your organization, but here are a few common perks companies see from this approach:

Increased close rates. By zeroing in on your prospect’s problems and how your solution solves them you can have more effective conversions that convert.
Larger average deal sizes. Focusing on the value you provide helps to justify the cost of your service, meaning customers will pay a premium to receive a better result.
Boosted profit margins. Continuing in this vein, value-focused selling prevents the need for discounts, keeping your profit margins intact.
Stronger customer relationships. Through building trust with your clients, and recognizing their leads your team will form strong relationships with their customers.
Bolstered sales team confidence. This methodology will provide reps with messaging and frameworks to have focused conversations with customers with ease.
More efficient sales cycle. Narrowing in on your target persona allows your reps to quickly identify unqualified leads and focus their time on deals most likely to close.

We also asked Katie what benefits she saw at her organization:

“The approach helped us build out sales decks in a way that provided a structured framework for capturing key information and articulating our value in partnership with the PMM team.

“It also equipped my teams to communicate the distinct advantages of our solution compared to our competitors.

“And drove consistency in the way our teams approached conversations, giving us a common language to align on throughout the sales process.”

How to implement the command of the message methodology

Want to get started with the command of the message sales approach? Here are the six steps to smoothly implement this methodology in your organization.

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Executive buy-in

The first step in implementing a new methodology is gaining buy-in from the sales leadership team. This will provide you with additional support when rolling this change out across the sales organization.

When seeking buy-in from leaders, it’s important to focus on what matters most to them. In most organizations, this means emphasizing the impact implementing the command of the message methodology would have on revenue growth.

It’s also useful to back up your claims with data, this can be done by sharing examples from other similar organizations or utilizing internal data on your sales team’s weak points (and expanding on how this method resolves them).

Having a solid plan in place for how you’ll roll out the change, manage resistance, and train sales reps will further bolster confidence in your executive team.

Training and alignment

Once you have the go-ahead it’s time to start training your sales team and aligning them around this new sales methodology.

Creating a structured training program to take your team through this change is key to ensuring they are well-informed during the transition. For best results, make these sessions interactive and practical, to allow reps to gain experience using this method.

Your enablement team should also create internal sales content for easy reference during conversations. This may contain a reminder of the structure, and a few examples of messaging tailored to your organization.

The command of the message methodology has some terminology your reps might not know right away, so it’s important to create a shared understanding of these terms to minimize confusion.

Katie shares more about this:

“The framework uses a lot of vocabulary that the teams have to learn and get comfortable with. The storytelling process can be a bit complex and not straightforward, which can frustrate teams.

“Start implementation by ensuring the teams are comfortable with the terminology (required capabilities, positive business outcomes, negative consequence, etc.)”

Implement the value messaging framework

As we mentioned previously, the value messaging framework is a key component of the command of the message approach. That’s why defining your messaging strategy and conveying it to sellers is important.

This involves:

Defining your buyer personas and ICPs.
Mapping key problems and pain points faced by your target audience.
Crafting your value proposition and messaging pillars.
Compiling evidence to back up your messaging.

Adapt sales processes

Ensure you update previous sales playbooks and guides to focus on the new methodology. Your sellers should have all the information they need to hand quickly, otherwise, they’ll be wasting time looking for updated resources.

It’s also crucial to update your CRM fields to match the command of the message methodology. Consider working with your revenue operations team to determine the best ways to implement these changes.

Don’t forget to train your sales reps on this new sales process too!

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Monitor success

To measure the success of your new methodology it’s important to set goals and track your sales organization’s progress towards achieving these targets.

Here are some metrics to track:

Adoption rate — How many sellers are using the command of the message approach?
Win rate — Has the number of closed/won deals increased?
Average deal size — Has the average value of deals won increased?
Time to conversion — Have deals been closing faster than previous periods?
Sales rep confidence — Do your sellers feel more confident in their abilities to close deals?

You can also monitor qualitative insights such as analyzing sales conversations with a conversation intelligence tool or by asking your sales team for feedback on the methodology.

Reinforce adoption

At most organizations, you won’t immediately get 100% adoption from your reps. It may take a few reinforcement sessions for the information to sink in.

That’s okay! It’s important to be patient and accept that everyone learns at their own pace.

Here are a few ways you can reinforce adoption to your sales team:

Celebrate wins and highlight success stories.
Gamify the experience or provide a non-monetary incentive.
Provide personalized coaching.
Run follow-up sessions covering common challenges.
Create additional sales collateral to fill gaps.

Skills sales reps need to know

If you’re weighing up implementing the command of the message sales method into your organization, you might want to consider any pre-requisite skills your sellers need to make the most of this approach.

While you can use this method anyway, it might be useful to run some training sessions on these skills before trialing a new methodology to see best results.

These skills are:

Product knowledge. Your sellers need to know the ins and outs of your product to convincingly articulate its value and make accurate recommendations.
Customer-centric approach. Reps need to understand your customers and be able to tailor their messaging to specific prospect needs.
Active listening. This is essential for identifying customer needs, empathizing with them, and providing solutions.
Flexibility. Your customers aren’t robots, sellers need to be able to go ‘off-script’ and adapt to prospective customers’ responses.

Command of the message vs other sales methodologies

Many sales methodologies are available to organizations, which can be a tad confusing. Here’s how the command of the message approach differs from a few common methodologies.

Command of the message vs MEDDIC

MEDDIC is a qualification framework that assists your sales team in deciding which prospects to spend more time with. This approach runs through a range of characteristics to identify which leads are sales-qualified and a decision-maker at their org.

On the other hand, command of the message focuses on creating effective messaging used to convince those qualified leads to buy.

Command of the message vs BANT

BANT is similar to MEDDIC, as it’s another methodology focused on qualifying leads before continuing to the next stages of the sales process. Again, this differs from command of the message, which zooms in on seller messaging.

Command of the message vs SPICED

The SPICED methodology is designed to help salespeople identify customer needs, and position their product or service as the solution to those needs.

It does this by investigating these five areas: situation, pain, impact, critical event, and decision.

The main difference between SPICED and command of the message is SPICED focuses on customer problems and creating urgency, whereas command of the message emphasizes showcasing product value and differentiating your offering from competitors.

In short: these are both effective ways to structure sales conversations, so it’s up to your organization to choose the right one for your sales cycle.

Learn more about sales methodologies in our helpful guide: