"All customers care about today is price. It doesn't matter if your product or service is better, lasts longer or enables them to do more things. If you don't have the lowest price, you lose."
Sound familiar? No one likes to feel like they might as well be selling wastebaskets or rubber bands. You hate to think your customers could care less about the quality of your products or services.
Virtually every sales book on the market discusses the importance of relating the features, advantages and benefits of your offering. But, in today's market it's not enough.
To be successful selling these days, it's imperative for you to go deeper—to understand the difference your product or service makes to your customers. And you must understand it from their perspective.
Finding the Difference
Use these strategies to better understand the difference your product or service makes to your customers.
1. Situational analysis. Use your critical thinking skills to analyze your customer's world. Ask yourself or brainstorm with colleagues:
• To the best of your knowledge, how are customers doing things without your product/service?
• What problems are customers likely to be experiencing because of what they're doing or using today? How might their current methods make it difficult for them to achieve their goals and objectives?
• How do these problems affect their business? Think in terms of critical business measures such as productivity, operational efficiency, profitability, costs and time-to-market.
2. Fostering discussion. This is one of the most important things you can do—and it's much more effective if you do it after you've completed the situation analysis. Ask your customer:
• About how they did things before they purchased your product or used your service.
• To share the problems your offering helped them fix and the goals it helped them achieve.
Quantifying the Difference
If at all possible, quantify the value of your offering. This is what catches the interest of today's business decision maker.
How much was turnover reduced? How much faster did the product come to market? What specific cost savings were achieved? How long did it take to get these results? What percent increase or decrease was attained? Does this sound like a lot of work? It is ... but it's worth the effort.
• When you know the difference you make, developing a strong value proposition is easy.
• When you know the difference you make, it's much easier to get your foot in the door.
• When you know the difference you make, you can develop great questions that explore customers' needs, issues and concerns in areas where you have a solution.
If you haven't taken time from your busy schedule to find out the difference you can make—do it right away. Not only will you feel better about yourself and the work you do, but you'll also sell more.
By Jill Konrath
Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies and founder of Sales Shebang, is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and industry events. For more information, visit www.sellingtobigcompanies.com. Sign up for the newsletter and get a bonus Sales Call Planning Guide. Buy Konrath's book, Selling to Big Companies, at Amazon. Visit the community for Women Who Sell at www.salesshebang.com.