1: The prospective customer looks up and says, “We are also interviewing ABC company. They are a good company, and their prices are better than yours.”
What exactly is happening here?
“Tell me why I should buy from you,” is what the prospect is really saying, writes Jeffrey Fox in How to Become a Rainmaker.
Jeffrey explains: “The customer already knows ABC is a good company. The customer already knows ABC’s prices are better than yours. . .
“So, why did the customer agree to see you?”
Because there is something about ABC that makes the customer uncomfortable.
Because we have pre-planned the call, we are ready to outline why we are different than ABC.
We say: “Yes, ABC is a good company. Would you like to know our points of difference?”
That, Jeffrey writes, is a killer sales question.
Do we disparage our competitor? No. “To do so would be to impugn the intelligence of the customer,” he notes. “In fact, we do not even repeat the competitor’s name.”
The customer has asked this question because they want to know the difference between us and ABC so he or she can decide to go with us.
“Our answer, our point of difference, will be forever what the customer thinks about you vis-à-vis the competitor,” Jeffrey suggests. “We will own that position.”
2: The key lesson?
“Our point of difference . . . need not be better or worse than what the competitor does—just different.”
This difference should be something the customer doesn’t know. Because “with new and different information, the customer can change his mind without a loss of face or criticism,” Jeffrey notes.
3: The parents and prospective student are sitting in the headmaster’s office. They ask a question about another private school in the next town.
“Yes, I know that school,” the headmaster says. “Would you be interested in out points of difference?”
The three heads nod.
The headmaster says: “As you know, this school is boys only. Our point of difference is that our boys are not distracted from their studies, because there are no girls in the classrooms or locker rooms.
“Wouldn’t you agree that more concentration on studies will make it easier to get into, and to succeed at, a good college?”
Rainmakers always invite customers to evaluate a point of difference.
“And the point of difference is just that—a difference,” Jeffrey writes. “It need not be better.”
The customer needs to see a difference—new information, so he can change his mind or change the minds of his colleagues.
What do Rainmakers do? They always find a difference. They always sell the difference.
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: How am I different than my competitor?
Action: Discuss with a colleague or with my team.
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