Make Winning a Habit [с таблицами]

Some differentiators are relative differentiators. You do it, but so does the competition. In this case, you have to show how you do it faster, better, cheaper, at lower risk, or with more experienced, dependable people than the competition. The consulting industry is full of relative differentiators. There is almost nothing a big consulting firm cannot do with enough time and money. Differentiation there comes from other sources, such as limiting risk, sharing risk, industry focus, qualifications of personnel, or actually meeting and bonding with the people who will be handling your project.

Unique differentiators that solve strategic problems for powerful buyers are a salesperson’s nirvana. If you ever get in this position, never discount the deal.

Some differentiators are motivators, and others are only satisfiers. For a capability to be a motivator, it must present significant political gain, recognition, glory, or lower risk.

I remember hearing one salesperson proclaiming the differentiating advantage of her user groups. Oh, wow. This is a compelling value proposition? I don’t think anyone ever chose a vendor because he or she had better user groups. This is an example of a satisfier. If you didn’t have one, it might hurt you, but having one just satisfies an item on a checklist. The higher up the food chain of value toward strategic, financial, political, and cultural benefits that your solution can provide, the better chance you have of motivating that buyer into action.

Products to Solutions — Want My Trust? Solve My Problem — Want Big Bucks? Solve Big Problems

Alignment and listening are the gateways to rapport. Linking solutions to problems and differentiation begins to build preference. To gain trust, however, you must solve your client’s problem. And to move from personal trust to organizational trust, you have to solve bigger, more strategic problems.

“Moving from products to solutions” has been in the sales and marketing vocabulary for over 40 years, but I’m not sure that the average salesperson knows exactly what it means or what his or her contribution is to this process.

It is helpful to start at the origin of the idea. In the early 1980s, Theodore Levitt, in his book, The Marketing Imagination, addressed the subject of differentiation beyond the product. Recapping an earlier Harvard Business Review article, he wrote of “The Differentiation — of Anything.” [5]

His description of the generic product, the expected product, the augmented product, and the potential product defined the conceptual difference between a product and a solution for the next four decades.

5

Theodore Levitt, The Marketing Imagination (New York: Free Press, 1983). p. 79.

Marketing departments seized on the idea early and began expanding offerings and solutions. With the exception of the consulting industry, which has no product to sell, salespeople often have lagged in their ability to sell solutions rather than products (see Figure 8–2).

Selling solutions means building trust by lowering risk for the buyer — especially when you deliver results instead of tools. But salespeople have often struggled with how they can contribute to the value of the solution rather than how they just describe it.

How can salespeople contribute to and be a part of the solution rather than just provide information and entertainment? Salespeople contribute to solution value in the following ways:

• When they do a better job than the competition of linking the benefits of a complex product to the client’s needs. The more they can link into strategic issues and uniquely differentiate their solution, the more value they can command.

• When they can help the client to understand the differences between their product and the competitors’ and what advantage that brings to the client.

• When they can turn relationships into results and lower risk by problem resolution and command of resources within their own company.

• When they can understand the political power structure of the buying committee and what part each person will play in the decision-making process.

• When they can effectively read accounts, devise and communicate a winning strategy, and lead a sales team to victory.

• When they can contribute knowledge to the client beyond their product — industry trends, best practices, innovations, contacts, ideas, benchmarks, and an outside expert’s assessment of their own company.

References — A Treasury of Transferred Trust

Because trust is generally low in the early parts of an evaluation, you will need to provide proof statements of your capabilities. This is where references play an active part in your sales process. If you have a capability and your client doesn’t, you should encourage thorough reference checking in your client’s evaluation process.

References need to be developed and rewarded, and their time needs to be treated respectfully. They deserve notice that they will be called, what the issues may be, and — whereas a reference should not be bought or bribed — they should be rewarded for the time required by extra service, responsiveness, or other acknowledgments.

One caution about giving references before the prospect has “earned” the right to talk to your best customers: Most salespeople don’t understand that when you ask a client to be a reference for a particular prospect, you have used up a reference call whether the prospect calls or not. You also have to be careful that you don’t give references so early that the prospect calls without enough knowledge to ask the right questions, and your reference is put in the position of being the salesperson.

By the way, calling and debriefing your references after they have been contacted by your prospect is an excellent way to get a perspective on where you are in the sale. The prospect will tell them things that he or she won’t tell you. Another way to provide trust in a competitive evaluation is through unsolicited references. If you can get your references to call your prospects and give unsolicited references, that may be even better than simply providing them with a list.

Keep ’Em Honest

Also, never give a list of references to just one person on the buying committee. I’ve seen an excellent list of references given to somebody on a buying committee and the deal lost to bad references. How does that happen? The person calling probably had negative preference for you and biased the questions or the answers. And since he or she was the only one calling, the result went unchallenged until after the sale.

If you think evaluations are conducted fairly and without bias, you can skip this step. But you had better be independently wealthy.