1: The competition isn’t always the competition.
The real competition is often the status quo. Or, doing nothing.
“When you’re facing any kind of decision that’s a bit complex, you’ll put off making that decision until you’re sure which choice is the best,” Erik Peterson and Tim Riesterer write in their powerful book Conversations That Win the Complex Sale.
“Unsure about where they should invest their money, time, and energy,” they note, “your prospects make the safest choice—no decision.”
Otherwise known as “paralysis by analysis.”
“It’s a natural human reaction—one that’s backed up by good scientific research,” Erik and Tim state.
When the sales process starts, you assume it will be linear and have an endpoint. “The prospect,” they observe, “will choose either you or them (your competitor), right?”
Wrong .
“The truth is that those are not the only two end points,” they point out. “There’s another option, no decision, which is chosen all too often.”
Erik and Tim had a banking technology client who analyzed the number of stalled deals in their customer relationship management (CRM) system.
“It was able to determine that nearly 40 percent of deals were ending up with no decision,” the authors note. “The company told us that out of 100 deals, it wins about 35, the competition wins about 25, and approximately 40 go to no decision.”
To increase revenue, the company had two opportunities. Either take away some of the competitor’s deals or win over some of the “no decision” group.
The greatest opportunity is in moving prospects out of the no-decision bucket, not in battling competitors head-to-head.
“That’s why for most salespeople,” they write, “the biggest competitor is actually the status quo.”
2: What do Erik and Tim believe is the answer?
A distinct point of view.
You start by understanding that many of your prospects are not actually in a sales cycle.
“They are still determining whether they need to buy anything at all,” the authors note. “Instead of having a conversation that uses a competitive matrix to compare you with your competitors, you need to start having conversations that provide your prospect with a fresh insight into how they can do business better.”
The era of asking “20 questions” is over. Many executives simply won’t make time for a prolonged assessment.
“You need to earn the right to ask questions by sharing insights,” they explain. “So, you’d better be prepared with insights, big ideas, or a unique perspective—whatever you call it, you’d better get some.”
One Chief Marketing Officer at a major technology company said, “You’d better be able to tell me something I don’t already know, about a problem I didn’t even know I had, if you want to get a meeting with me.”
This is why having a distinct point of view is critical: it’s how you disrupt the status quo, grab your prospect’s attention, and motivate change.
The five elements that define a distinct point of view are:
Element #1: Grabber. “Share a key industry fact or finding that is relevant to a core business objective, but that is new and fresh to the prospect,” Erik and Tim suggest. “Use it to create engagement and dialogue about what the prospect is seeing in their business.”
Element #2: Pain—Highlight an underappreciated problem that threatens the prospect’s main objectives or exposes missed opportunities.
Element #3: Impact—Show the urgency by quantifying the personal, business, or financial effects of the problem or potential benefits of change.
Element #4: Contrast—Introduce a new approach linked to your solution and highlight how it differs from the prospect’s current method, making the change necessary.
Element #5: Proof—Share a brief success story that demonstrates your solution working for a similar company, illustrating credibility and real-world results.
What is the benefit of these five elements and a distinct point of view?
By using them, you shift the prospect’s default status quo in your favor, which is the core challenge in many deals.
“And you are separating yourself significantly from your traditional competitors because you’ve taken the prospect conversation to an entirely different level.”
3: Here’s a case study of these ideas in action at ADP, another of Erik and Tim’s clients.
“After going through our process for changing customer conversations,” they write, “ADP decided to test its new point of view and conversation skills in one of the toughest possible environments—stalled deals.”
The company had a substantial number of stalled deals inside its CRM system. “These were deals in which a sales rep had already met with the prospect and pitched their solution,” Erik and Tim explain, “and had seen enough interest to lead him to put the opportunity into his sales pipeline.”
In other words, nothing was happening.
“The sales reps were following up, but prospects weren’t acting. The deals were stalled,” they write.
So what happened when ADP articulated a distinct point of view?
“Using the new approach (both a new message and new messaging techniques), the sales reps were able to close 145 new customers, of these 115 were previously stalled deals, in just 90 days,” they write. “This generated a return of up to 10 times the project investment and resulted in millions of dollars in revenue that had pretty much been considered lost.”
So, how did ADP achieve these powerful results?
The company was transitioning “from providing point services for payroll, benefits, and other back-office support to becoming more of a business process outsourcing company,” they note.
The problem? ADP had not updated its messaging, which was still focused on its products and services.
“Instead of promoting the features of the services that ADP provides, we worked with the company to create and deliver messages that spoke about the pains associated with companies trying to do this for themselves, and the risks involved with doing it on their own.”
Here’s a high-level summary of how the sales conversations changed:
First, regulatory compliance. The question the team began asking was: “How can individual companies keep up with the pace of changes in government rules and policies and ensure that their staff members have the knowledge and expertise to implement these changes and enforce the rules and policies according to the law?”
Solution: “ADP was able to position itself as an expert that can eliminate the risk of noncompliance,” Erik and Tim explain, “which convinced companies that they couldn’t maintain the in-house resources to provide the same level of assurance.
Second, technology obsolescence and operating costs. “The tools and systems used to manage these critical back-office applications are changing rapidly,” the authors share, “leaving many companies in a position where they can’t keep up.
Solution: “ADP didn’t introduce new products or services; it simply changed the conversation away from itself and its offerings to one that focused on the customers and their critical business needs,” they write.
Erik and Tim conclude: “If changing your conversations can have this much impact on the status quo or no decision deals, imagine how much impact it could have on an active customer buying cycle.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Where am I assuming I’m competing against others when the real obstacle is inaction or the status quo?
Action: Identify one stalled opportunity and introduce a new insight that challenges the status quo and creates urgency to act.
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