1: You are stuck.
“If only your prospects knew as much about your company and its solutions as you do, they would buy from you, right?” Erik Peterson and Tim Riesterer write in their powerful book Conversations That Win the Complex Sale.
Not so fast, the authors suggest.
Erik and Tim emphasize the importance of finding your unique story and point of view as a salesperson. This is essential for effectively attracting and engaging prospects.
How do you do that? You identify what they call “The Value Wedge.”
Imagine a circle encompassing everything you could sell to a prospect as a sales rep for your company.
Then imagine a second circle that encompasses everything in your prospect’s world, including their wants, needs, and desires.
Focus your messaging precisely where your solution overlaps with your prospect’s needs.
But you are leaving out another critical component. Your competition. They, too, have a circle.
Erik and Tim ask: “Now ask yourself, how much overlap is there between what you can provide and what your competition can provide to prospects?
“If you’re like most business-to-business salespeople, you probably said that the overlap is 70 percent or higher.”
The authors call this overlap the “Value Parity.”
“It’s our contention,” they write, “that an enormous amount of sales messaging today takes place in the Value Parity area.”
That is wasted effort and wasted expense.
Instead, focus on where your offering stands apart from the competition—the area to the left.
This area is your Value Wedge—your strongest story and unique perspective are here. Center your core message around it.
Messages in the Value Wedge must be unique, important to the customer, and defensible. Filter all messaging through these criteria for impact.
“It needs to be: (1) unique to you; (2) important to the customer; and (3) defensible,” they write.
Erik and Tim call this your “Power Position.”
“This is the battleground on which you want to fight,” they recommend. “This is what you have to get your prospect to care about.
2: Now, let’s move from the concept to practical steps: How do you find your Power Position?
Select a current sales opportunity. “The first thing you’re going to do is look at your customer. You need to put together a prospect profile for this specific opportunity that focuses on the key business objectives the prospect is trying to achieve.
“This is your first step in making your message about your customer,” they note. “The more specific you can make these business objectives, the better.”
The authors share an example of a client they were working with that sold customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. “We were first told that one prospect, a vice president of sales, had only one business objective: reaching the revenue target,” they explain.
“While that seems obvious, it’s not really true. Vice presidents of sales have more detailed business objectives than just hitting their number.”
Identify three key business objectives to address for your prospect.
Why three objectives? Because “a lot of memory science shows that remembering one to three things is much easier than remembering four or more.
“It’s the reason that parts of phone numbers and social security numbers are in chunks of three numbers. It’s also why most advertising slogans are in threes—think ‘Snap, Crackle, Pop’ or ‘Absolutely, Positively Overnight.'”
3: You’re not done yet. Erik and Tim note: Focusing only on a prospect’s business objectives leads to intellectual arguments—not compelling customer stories.
“That’s not a power message,” they say.
You must also find what they call “the emotional juice”—the specific feeling your product or service evokes. People often buy on emotion and then justify it with facts.
“It’s true in your personal life, and it’s true in your business decisions,” the authors state. “Scientists say that it’s impossible to make a decision without some emotion to guide you.”
To pinpoint this emotional driver, pay attention to customer reactions in sales meetings—watch for enthusiasm, concern, or excitement. The ideal scenario is getting this emotional insight directly from a conversation with the customer.
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Am I competing in the crowded “value parity” zone—or clearly communicating what makes my approach uniquely valuable?
Action: Define my Value Wedge by identifying one unique, important, and defensible advantage I can emphasize in my next conversation.
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