When All Else is Equal, How do you Differentiate Yourself?
Btb Guest Author
Dave Brock
This morning, I had an interesting discussion with a client. He was talking about a specific sales situation. Basically, he said that customers were saying there was no differentiation between the products and services his company offered, versus the competitors. He went on to say, they are seeing this response in more and more sales situations. He was at a loss to deal with it — or at least wanted to avoid the ultimate differentiator — at least in this situation — pricing.
I thought I’d throw this issue out there for your ideas and thoughts. I’ll provide a few of mine as a starting point (but by no means complete):
1. I fundamentally don’t believe, “everything is equal,” this is the ultimate point of commoditization. Even in commodity areas, there are differentiators, but they may not be based on product differentiators. I think the problem here is sales people tend to focus too much on the product, and not the total offering or capabilities of a company. When one considers the total offering, the product, the capabilities of the company, the services, etc, things are seldom equal.
2. Often, this view is the result of an inward-out orientation. That is, we present the product features, functions, feeds, speeds to the customer. The “sophisticated” sales person may add some company capabilities. But we dump these facts in the customer’s lap, and let them make the assessment. First, that’s not their job and if we force them into that, then we aren’t doing our job. We need to start with the customer, understanding their business needs, drivers, goals, priorities and challenges. We need to drill deeply into their business issues and prioritize each one — for each person involved in the decision making process. Only when we understand it is it possible to position our offerings in a context that has real meaning and impact to the customer. Done properly–customer by customer, in my experience, it is virtually impossible for everything to be equal.
3. The previous point addresses the customer business drivers. We cannot forget the personal drivers — things that concern each person involved in the decision process, but which we often overlook. People make don’t make rationale business decisions. Often they rationalize deeply personal decisions with a business argument. We need to understand their personal drivers. It may be getting a boss off their back, getting home on time, getting a promotion or bonus, keeping their job. Like the previous point, only when we have understood the personal drivers of each person involved in the decision process and position our offering in the context of “What’s in it for them — personally,” can we differentiate ourselves. Again, from this point of view, it is virtually impossible for everything to be equal.
4. Finally, at least for my comments, I think we under estimate the value we bring to customers in facilitating the customer’s buying process. A strong, consultative sales professional adds tremendous value to the customer as they execute their buying process. My personal experience is this is often the strongest differentiator. Many people have bought from me, simply because I cared about them and their companies. They wanted to invest in a partner who was committed to their success. Maybe it’s my ego, but I am never equal to anyone else!
Enough of my ramblings, what are your thoughts? Can everything else be equal — is our world becoming increasingly commoditized, where the only means of differentiation is price?
Dave Brock works with organizations to help them achieve the highest levels of performance excellence. He helps them identify and execute new business, sales, marketing and customer service strategies. His goal is to have a profound difference on the lives and results produced by his clients. Dave is the founder and CEO of Partners in EXCELLENCE, a leading business consulting company. He has held executive roles in IBM, Tektronix, and other large technology companies. He is an investor, advisor, and director of several high technology start-up companies.
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Tags: competitive selling, Competitors, Dave Brock, professional selling, Top Sales Experts, TSE webinars, value proposition
April 21st, 2009 at 9:45 am
This is such a great topic, particularly when times are tough.
The first thing I have to comment is that I agree with all that Dave has written. These are the classic points so often overlooked by sales people under pressure to make up the numbers.
The main point I want to make, is that the comment by the buyer is a classic: Sales people tend to focus on the product too much and not on the customer as mentioned by Dave, but as a former purchaser I used to pass off sales people by either saying they had nothing new to offer, or to ask them to price some products so I could tell them they were too expensive. When sales people hear either of these two from a buyer they should back off and recognise that their pitch is wrong and not working. At this point you need to scramble to make sure the door is not closed in your face for good.
I believe one of the key areas to avoiding a commoditized world is to add as many dimensions as possible to the sales negotiations and this can only be achieved by understanding what dimensions matter to the customer. The commoditized world is one where selling is only on one dimension - price. There are so many other dimensions to consider - terms, transport, packaging, rebates, discounts, stocks, JIT,MRP, PPV, standard cost timing, labeling, bar coding, tracking, customization, blending, combining of services, pooling of resources, technical support, after sales service, the list goes on…
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April 21st, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Julian, Thanks for the heads up, I will fix it now. I apologise but I will respond to your great comments later in the week (I am involved in a pretty intensive sales programme till next Thursday)
April 24th, 2009 at 8:43 am
Hi Julian, I’m back, you make some truly top points. I particularly like the example you give of how you previously handled salespeople. I think it’s fair to say that many salespeople have such a narrow starting point to their conversations with prospects, they leave themselves very little room to actually start a conversation.
The skill, as you point out is in having a much broader conversation so that you have an opportunity as a seller to go through everything that it is important to the buyer. How you sell is every bit if not more important than what you sell, but many salespeople fail to come to this realisation. Thanks so much for a such great insight, Niall