What’s limiting your deal size? Identifying and solving the AOV challenge

Average Order Value, or AOV, is an important KPI for boosting sales velocity and revenue generation. It also provides vital insight into sales team performance.

Three reasons AOV is important to sales leaders

1. Predictable revenue growth: High AOV means more revenue per sale. By increasing AOV, sellers can generate more revenue without needing to increase the number sales i.e. working smarter, not harder.
2. Customer Lifetime value: Increasing AOV inevitably boosts the value of each customer. Higher purchasing volumes are typically aligned to customer relationship success.
3. New opportunities – cross selling/upselling: AOV offers a deep insight into customer behaviour. Armed with this understanding, sellers can look through the buyer lens and identify opportunities for additional sales or up-sells.

There are plenty of other reasons why AOV is important, but that gives you a taster of what’s at stake.

AOV and sales velocity

AOV is one of the four sales velocity levers you can pull to drive sales team performance and achieve accelerated revenue growth.   

It’s a behaviour change – moving sales reps from transactional sellers to high-value consultants through effective account planning, storytelling, negotiation and value creation.

The first step is to understand the root causes that prevent larger purchases, and create a repeatable framework for success.

How can sellers drive higher AOV? 

We’ve identified 7 ways leaders can solve the AOV challenge:

1. A strategic approach: Planned approaches can increase deal sizes by 40%. Leave it to chance and run the risk that sellers will fail to identify high-value opportunities, limiting revenue growth and lifetime customer value.
2. Strategic questioning: Arm sellers with advanced questioning skills and they can increase upsell opportunities by 42%. The cost of inaction – i.e. letting superficial questioning slip into the sales playbook – is significant. The result will be smaller, transactional deals.
3. Perfect positioning: Buyer alignment is essential. Effective positioning increases AOV by 28%, whilst the risk of misalignment is that buyers fail to see the value of a larger purchase and automatically default to smaller, less risky transactions.
4. Value creation: The most successful sellers avoid constantly pitching. Rather, they’re investing in understanding buyers and acting in ways that continuously create clear, tailored value.  Those that don’t are transactional by design, relying on generic approaches that fail to resonate – resulting in lower order values.
5. Compelling connections: Great sellers are great storytellers. Sellers using a well-crafted narrative, that builds an emotional connection and engages with buyers on a deeper level, can increase decision making speed and deal size by as much as 20%. Those that don’t, or can’t, will inevitably limit deal value.
6. Clear ROI: A compelling business case can increase deal size by 30%. Conversely, without a clear ROI, justification buyers will hesitate to make larger commitments.
7. Price confidence: The ability to confidently position value and defend pricing can increase deal size by 25%. Sellers that lack price confidence and concede too easily during negotiations will erode deal value and overall AOV.

As mentioned, increasing AOV requires a shift in mindset, skills, and strategy – from transactional selling to high-value strategic consultation. By addressing the root causes of declining AOV, sales leaders can help their teams unlock bigger deal sizes, increase sales velocity and drive predictable revenue growth.

Here’s a real-world example that puts all this into context:

Make-A-Wish had a strong team, but were using a variety of traditional sales methods. As a result, they were failing to achieve deal value goals. The team needed to feel more comfortable and confident with the value proposition, and harness the skills needed to produce compelling proposals and meaningful engagements.

By fundamentally shifting perspective to the buyer-lens and modernising sales behaviours, proposals became more engaging, and sellers more confident. Every engagement the sales team at Make-A-Wish make is now value-driven, focussed, and aligned with customer needs.

Read the full case study here.  

Build a framework for boosted AOV

Flume’s sales velocity training includes an AOV programme.  This course identifies the root causes of low AOV and builds a tailored framework for solving them, including how to:

• Equip sales teams with strategic approaches 
• Use deep discovery to uncover needs 
• Align with buyer goals and maximise value
• Shift sellers from transactional to advisory selling
• Use compelling narratives to justify larger purchases
• Craft business cases that secure buy-in and value
• Build price confidence and defend value

One of our clients recently witnessed a 28% increase in AOV after implementing our programme. We can do the same for your business.  

Book a call with our team to explore how targeted training can accelerate your revenue growth.