Executing on Competitive Differentiators

It’s easy for a sales rep to talk until they are blue in the face about how they are “better and different”. Recently, my company launched a new sales initiative that was a bit of a surprise to me: Our CEO would be taking to the phones to personally call some of the sales leads and opportunities in our sales pipeline (or any deal that we would ask him to take a swing at, for that matter). Additionally, he would even be calling a few of our leads to get some first-hand exposure to the customers that were interested in our services.

This initiative got me thinking to back to when I was in the market to buy a new car. I spent a lot of time with many different salespeople and visited  each company’s website. But, despite being a ‘hot lead’, I never got a personal introduction to Takeo Fukui, CEO of Honda, Akio Toyoda, CEO of Toyota, or Takashi Yamanouchi, CEO of Mazda. So, why does this type of sales approach resonate so well with our customers and our sales team?

For us, the answer is that it shows our customers how truly valued they are to us – not just to get their business, but especially after we get it. It shows them a living, breathing, and tangible example of our company’s leadership and it is a reflection of our corporate culture. This initiative is already generating positive feedback and is proving to be a very strong competitive differentiator. In fact, several of the customers who spoke with him were favorably impressed enough to move ahead to not only trial our product, a few even signed up on the spot.

But there’s more to it than just having your CEO make sales calls.

Differentiation is about showing the customer that they’re going to be served with the right solution – the one that makes their job easier, or faster, or less painful. It’s easy for a sales rep to talk until they are blue in the face about how they are “better and different”. It’s another thing when you can show a customer a concrete example of how being better and different applies to their needs and sensibilities.  For example, instead of telling a client that your solution is “quick and simple” to implement, why not show them by quickly and simply building them a custom demo and use for their evaluation?

We should never be afraid of proving our capabilities, or naïve enough to think that our customers are not interested in this proof. The following are a few examples of executing on competitive differentiators:

• Let your customer take a ‘tour’ of your company. If you brag that your organization has excellent support, and this is something that resonates as a point of interest for your prospect, have them call support and ask some questions.
• Show by example – don’t just talk about it. If you claim to offer a personal touch that only a mid-sized company can provide vs. a colossal, impersonal corporation, show them! We introduced our CEO to a few of our customers and it’s working great for us!
• Prove what you can do. If your product is able to offer your client an effective ROI, be sure you have a easily understood ROI calculator on hand and demonstrate this to your prospects.

There are many different ways you can show your customers how you’re better and different. You’re not just trying to get their business – you want them as a customer. While the difference is subtle, never forget that it has a major impact on how you approach the sales process and the effect that your customer feels.

Upon original publishing, Ken Cross was working with Landslide, but is now a part of Sales Performance International’s Business development team. We welcome him aboard.

The Three Things You Can Do RIGHT NOW to Increase Sales in 2009

Here at SPI, we receive many questions about how to improve sales performance from clients, prospects and interested businesspeople - but the one question we hear most often lately is: “What can I do RIGHT NOW to improve sales?”

This anxiety about producing immediate results is no doubt a product of the current unpredictable economic environment. Selling is generally tougher these days, and people in the sales profession are feeling the pinch - in a very personal way. Having run sales organizations at companies such as IBM and GE Capital, I understand all too well the current dilemma of sales executives – ‘Do we make some changes now to improve our sales position or do we just try to work harder and smarter?’

McKinsey published a white paper last month titled Cutting Sales Costs, Not Revenues. The article began as follows:

“There’s a reason companies fear experimenting with the sales force: It is the engine that drives revenue. No matter how patched up or spluttering that engine may be, the thought of overhauling it fills senior executives with dread. To keep sales flowing, companies will make piecemeal ongoing repairs as long as they can.”

Very few companies can afford to initiate a sales transformation initiative mid-year. However, after reviewing the findings of the latest research on sales productivity, and after interviewing many of our own clients, we have found that there are three things that almost any sales executive can do to generate significant and quick improvements in their team’s results. These three things are:

1. Target and prioritize sales efforts on accounts with the highest potential
2. Create new latent sales opportunities
3. Differentiate the value of your offerings, not just the price

What’s most interesting about these recommendations is that a surprising number of companies are not doing these things today. Instead, they are simply “paddling upstream faster” by making more calls or increasing the amount of sales activities, which simply generates a larger number of poor quality opportunities, most of which never close.

For many sales executives, it seems converse to logic to think that when times get tough, the best thing to do is to focus your energies on only those places where you can make the biggest and most immediate difference - the specific accounts where you can deliver real value and thus, create new, highly qualified sales opportunities.

Good selling.