Selling Value Beyond Price: What Sales Data Reveals About Revenue Growth
This analysis is based on Objective Management Group’s sales force evaluation data collected across thousands of salespeople between 2023 and 2025.
AI Summary
Across the past three years, proficiency in Selling Value did not remain flat. It rose in 2024 and then fell sharply in 2025. Average scores followed the same pattern. Yet revenue growth reveals a clearer lesson: improvement and where it occurs matter more than the starting point.
Salespeople who began with lower Selling Value scores often produced the largest percentage revenue gains. Salespeople who improved their Comfort Discussing Money also showed stronger revenue movement than those whose scores remained unchanged.
The implication is practical. Outcomes related to value selling depend less on static capability and more on targeted improvement, particularly in the money conversation.
Key Findings
Three insights emerge from the data.
Selling value proficiency remains limited.
Across the past three years, roughly one third of salespeople demonstrate proficiency in selling value beyond price. Average scores have remained in the mid-50s, indicating that the capability has not materially improved across the broader sales population.
Improvement matters more than starting position.
Salespeople who began with lower Selling Value scores often produced the largest percentage revenue gains. The data suggests meaningful development headroom when sellers improve this competency.
Financial confidence strengthens value conversations.
Salespeople who improved their Comfort Discussing Money showed stronger revenue movement than those whose scores remained unchanged. The financial discussion appears to be a key enabling factor in communicating value effectively.
Selling Value Remains an Underdeveloped Competency
Selling value is frequently described as a strategic imperative.
In the OMG dataset behind this analysis, proficiency rates move marginally year to year:
- 2023: 34% proficient
- 2024: 32% proficient
- 2025: 34% proficient1
Average Selling Value scores reflect the same pattern:
- 2023: 58
- 2024: 56
- 2025: 552
These numbers suggest that the overall capability has remained relatively steady over time. With roughly one third of salespeople demonstrating proficiency, a large portion of the sales population still struggles to consistently sell value beyond price.
This has practical implications for sales performance. When value is not clearly established, sales conversations often shift toward price comparisons rather than business outcomes.
Stability Does Not Mean Strength
Stable trend lines can sometimes create a misleading sense of progress. In this case, the data shows that the underlying capability has not meaningfully improved over time.
The risk remains consistent. When sellers cannot clearly articulate value and reinforce it throughout the sales process, they are more likely to encounter price pressure late in the cycle and experience stalled or extended deals.
Strengthening value conversations requires deliberate development and reinforcement, particularly in the areas that influence how confidently salespeople discuss financial impact and pricing.
External research points to the same pressure. McKinsey’s B2B Pulse research shows that buyers expect value to be clearly demonstrated throughout omnichannel buying journeys. When that clarity is missing, buyers revert to price comparisons.3
Gartner’s recent guidance aligns with this finding. Sales enablement must help organizations communicate value clearly across buying groups that increasingly engage through interactions that involve fewer sales representatives and more AI-mediated engagement. When sellers fail to anchor the financial reason behind a purchase decision, uncertainty grows. Uncertainty frequently results in stalled or lost deals.4
When competencies are mapped to Change in Revenue between initial evaluation and checkpoint, the pattern becomes informative.
Baseline strength still matters.
Salespeople in the top half of baseline Selling Value show a slightly higher median increase in revenue compared with those in the bottom half. This suggests that stronger value-selling capability may provide a more stable foundation for revenue performance.
Improvement alone does not guarantee stronger results.
When examining changes in Selling Value, the relationship with revenue growth is not linear. Some sellers who showed relatively small changes in the competency still produced strong revenue gains, while larger increases in Selling Value did not consistently correspond with higher revenue outcomes.
This pattern suggests that selling value capability is only one part of the broader performance equation. Movement in the competency can matter, but it does not operate in isolation from other sales behaviors and skills.
The Money Conversation Variable
An even clearer signal appears around the financial conversation.
Within this dataset:
The largest improvements in Comfort Discussing Money correspond to the strongest median revenue gains. The next tier of improvement produces similar results.5
Baseline headroom appears here as well. Salespeople who began in the bottom half showed the highest median lift.
This pattern aligns with what many sales leaders observe in practice. Value conversations weaken when financial discussions become hesitant or indirect.
Gartner’s recommendation that enablement should help sales teams deliver quantified and contextual value conversations supports the same conclusion.
What This Means for Sales Leaders
- Selling Value represents a development opportunity. The decline seen in 2025 highlights how quickly capability can weaken without structured reinforcement. Skill development requires focused practice, coaching, and inspection.
- Measure skill movement rather than static scores. The strongest revenue gains appear among salespeople who improved key competencies, not simply among those who started with strong scores. Tracking movement in capability can reveal where coaching should focus.
- Strengthen the financial conversation. Comfort discussing money plays a central role in value selling. Salespeople who confidently address pricing, budgets, and financial impact are better positioned to communicate value clearly.
The Larger Insight
Selling value is a competency that must be developed and reinforced over time.
Many organizations understand the importance of value conversations, yet consistent execution remains a challenge. The data shows that proficiency levels have remained relatively steady across the past three years. At roughly one third of the sales population, true proficiency in selling value beyond price remains limited.
This stability should not be mistaken for progress. Without deliberate enablement, reinforcement, and coaching, the capability does not naturally improve.
The encouraging signal in the data is that targeted improvement can produce meaningful results. Sellers who strengthened their ability to sell value and those who improved their comfort level discussing money showed stronger revenue movement than those whose skills remained unchanged.
The lesson for sales leaders is straightforward. Capability development should focus on the competencies that directly influence value conversations, particularly the financial discussion that anchors value in business terms.
Value selling can be strengthened.
Financial confidence can be developed.
Revenue performance often improves when these capabilities move.
Progress begins with clear diagnosis and focused coaching that helps sellers translate value into measurable business outcomes.
Methodology Note
Findings are based on Objective Management Group’s sales force evaluation data from 2023–2025, including cases where salespeople were evaluated more than once over time. The analysis compares competency scores with changes in reported revenue to identify patterns between capability development and sales performance.
Sources
- Objective Management Group. Finding Statistics Tool: Sales Evaluations Conducted January 1, 2023–December 31, 2023; January 1, 2024–December 31, 2024; January 1, 2025–December 31, 2025. Results percentage of proficient competency score. Internal dataset.
- Objective Management Group. Finding Statistics Tool: Sales Evaluations Conducted January 1, 2023–December 31, 2023; January 1, 2024–December 31, 2024; January 1, 2025–December 31, 2025. Results percentage of average competency score Internal dataset.
- McKinsey & Company. The new B2B growth equation.
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-new-b2b-growth-equation. - Gartner. The Future of Sales: Engaging Buyers in the Age of Information.
https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/insights. - Objective Management Group. Analysis of 1540 Sales Evaluations and Checkpoints conducted January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2025. Internal dataset. Selling Value scores against revenue growth between initial evaluation and checkpoint.