The entire, expansive, complex art of selling can be boiled down into one simple concept: solving a business problem for your prospect.
You need to understand and then clearly articulate what business problem your solution is solving for your prospect. Companies make investments to solve a business problem and to achieve a specific desired business outcome.
In properly (re)defining your value proposition, you need to articulate:
Your Prospect’s Desired Business Outcome
What specific business problem are you solving for your prospect?
Why should it be a priority for them?
Your prospects typically have only three desired business outcomes: increase revenue, reduce cost/expenses, and reduce risk.
Your Capability
How will your solution help them solve this business problem?
Technologists, speak in simple language (not jargon).
Competitive Differentiation
Why is your solution the BEST of the many alternatives out there to solve this particular problem?
This should be fact-based (not your opinion).
These points of differential must be relevant to your prospect.
The last item on our list refers to understanding your competitive advantage versus the market for what you do. How do you articulate what really differentiates you from the competition?
Through our experience working with firms, competitive advantage is one of the least understood concepts in their sales toolkits.
It appears as though we are not the only ones who feel this way. In her book Competitive Advantage (Doubleday 2006), Jaynie L. Smith conducted research that proved over 90% of businesses “had no clue how to articulate their competitive advantage”. Smith goes on to argue that a “differentiator that is not valued by the prospect is not a competitive advantage”.
Your competitive advantage must be:
Fact-based: Your opinion that you have the best solution in the industry may not be persuasive.
Meaningful or relevant to your target market: The only way to know what is meaningful to your prospect base is to have them tell you.
Unique to your solution: All companies say that they have great prices/quality/service. By definition these things cannot be competitive differentiators if every company states it has them.
Key Takeaways
Selling is about solving a business problem for a customer. If you want to be successful, you need to clearly understand what business problem your solution solves for a customer, why you are unique in the market, and how you’re able to better solve their problem given their other options.
Understanding and articulating the value proposition of your firm is the responsibility of Executive Management, NOT the sales team. Once you understand it, it is the sales team’s responsibility to execute it.