So what if the economy is bad! The only thing worth focusing on is to beat your competitor By Philippe Lavie, President, KeyRoad Enterprises - CustomerCentric Systems Affiliate	<< Back
Martha Rogers in her keynote at the Call Center Las Vegas 2003 Conference, shared a story that is very relevant in our difficult environment: "Two backpackers encounter a charging bear. Immediately, one backpacker drops his backpack and takes off. The other, flustered, follows behind and screams, "We're never going to outrun the bear!" To which the lead runner shouts back, "I don't need to outrun the bear. I just need to outrun you!" She advises that "to beat competitors you always need to know more about a particular customer than your competitors by regularly asking them for more information about themselves". Attendees responded favorably to Rogers' speech. "We know customer loyalty will thrive if you keep asking them personal information that can change our behavior toward them," stated a participant. We will review in this writing and recommend two specific tactical activities when wanting to beat your competition in enterprise software sales: Engage in intelligent conversation with your prospects around their goals, problems, or needs Have your prospect make a buying decision based on the value they will derive from implementing and using your products, not how much it cost Intelligent conversation around product usage Sales people in large software companies today are trained in product knowledge and competitive technology comparison. They spent days engaged in learning all about your products and services. You spent lots of money training them and directing them towards a product-focused behavior where selling equals leading with a demo, a technical presentation, or a "throw-up and see what sticks" attitude with their prospects. This does nothing to prepare them to engage in intelligent conversation with their prospects around the potential use of your products and services. How do they engage with a senior executive in a meaningful, competent, and professional conversation around business issues, goals, or needs? Unless you are an Eagle salesperson, you most probably don’t. And you end-up with a very low close ratio and most probably not meeting your revenue goals. If there was a way… When training your sales personnel, they could access then and from their desktop when returning to their daily activities, prompters, completed with questions to ask their prospects, facilitating an intelligent conversation and enabling them to diagnose the client’s situation? And on the same prompters, have a description of how your products and services can be used by the prospects to meet his/her business objectives without ever mentioned a product name or its technical features and attributes? Do you think this would help them increase their close ratio and meet or exceed their revenue target? Value justification, cost vs. benefit analysis, return on investment The Industry Standard printed: "Return on Investment is king, and projects with a quick and clear ROI are much more likely to get funding in today’s uncertain business climate". The Gartner Group published: "A project is 60% more likely to get approved with a cost justification and business case". We believe this is even more applicable to large enterprise software sales. Let me ask you these questions: Do you want your prospect to make a critical purchase decision based on what your product cost or on what value they will derive from implementing and using your product and services? Do you trust your prospects to take the time to figure out by themselves or would you prefer your salesperson to participate in that discussion, and help them calculate the value so that you can secure the order? If there was a way … When your sales people engage in a conversation with their prospects, they had the ability to ask questions to diagnose the prospect’s situation and measure the financial impact on the prospect’s business of how they are currently operating, would you find this valuable? And when extracting these financial information they could also present it in a form of a professional ROI/value justification analysis, would that be valuable? If your sales people can't diagnose, calculate and demonstrate value, how many lost sales opportunities are you willing to accept before providing them with the skills that they need to compete effectively? If this resonates with you, contact us at plavie@keyroad.com or call 415-934-1449 to allow us to better understand your situation and determine whether we can help. Philippe Lavie is president of KeyRoad Enterprises. KeyRoad teaches organizations how to sell by delivering organizational sales processes, sales ready messaging, and sales skills development workshops, in addition to consultation in the areas of leadership, marketing, messaging, value justification (ROI), pipeline management, as well as on-going strategic sales planning both domestically and internationally. KeyRoad became a licensed affiliate to CustomerCentric Systems in 2002. He operates out of San Francisco and can be reached at plavie@keyroad.com or by calling 415-934-1449
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So what if the economy is bad!The only thing worth focusing on is to beat your competitor

So what if the economy is bad!
The only thing worth focusing on is to beat your competitor