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Other Added - Sell More, Make More by Knowing Your Competition
Women make or influence 85% of the purchasing decisions in today's marketplace. Consumer goods companies are finally waking up to that fact. Unfortunately, just taking the man off the box and replacing it with a woman is not the answer. Nor is it to use pink or other traditionally feminine colors for the packaging.So what product packaging appeals to women? What will entice her to pick your product off the shelf? What siren screams, "Buy me" as she walks down the aisle? The answers are different than you might think.First, you need to connect with her on an intrinsic level. Do you understand why she is making the purchase? Alternatively, you need to know where she will be shopping. One thing is for sure, she will be in a hurry. Today's women are over worked, time crunched, and busy multi-tasking. How are you going to help her make an inform
“What do you do?”
Most salespeople, unfortunately, come up with this:
“I am in sales for XYZ company.”
Zzzzzzzzzzzz... Do you hear me dozing off? Do you see me getting a case of MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over)?
You must have a way of articulating what you do that is more interesting and compelling!
There are three areas that should be considered and a statement prepared for when they happen:
1.How you explain what you do to someone you meet by chance (they could be a prospect). This is what we call the unexpected speech – but by gosh, it happens all the time. So you should expect it! 2.The phone explanation
California small business employers are creating a hurricane of lawsuits for themselves. With the elimination of vocational rehabilitation under California workers' compensation and after the Raine v. City of Burbank decision in January 2006, Employers' are misinterpreting the law and are refusing to accommodate employees, which is causing a massive flood of claims. Raine is an instructive opinion in that it gives the employer a step by step approach in finding whether an employee's request is reasonable in order to accommodate after a work related injury. Raine teaches employers' how to avoid the eye of the Hurricane.Recently, I mediated and litigated claims where the employee, permanently disabled from a work related injury, was terminated following the finality of the workers' compensation claim. The problem stemmed from the misint
I have talked with sales professionals who couldn’t even make a list of their competitors. There is no doubt that you should be a stone cold, flat out expert on the competition in several aspects:
1.Their strengths
2.Their liabilities (all competitors have them)
3.How they are structured
4.Their product lines, service offerings, packages, track record, pricing, etc.
All that being said we need to talk about my definition of competition:
Any person, place, condition or circumstance that competes with the possibility of you making the sale.
Under this definition, the competition has a much broader scope. It could be any (or all) of the following:
You. What? How can you be your own competition? Well easy… you can be the person who competes with the possibility of making the sale in any number of ways. It may be an unclear message, poor communication skills, lack of preparation, lack of differentiation etc. But rest easy there, partner. The whole point of Sales Science™ is to help eliminate anything that you are doing to compete with yourself for the sale – to help you stop shooting yourself in the foot. (Now you know why your foot was always hurting).
Do It Themselves. Have you noticed how many prospects think they can “do it themselves”? Sure they can. And it’s a lot more appealing than working with you. At first glance, it’s FREE. It’s worked fine in the past. There’s no risk. And it could be a real money-saver – heck, maybe they can start doing it themselves all the time!
Do Nothing. Ah, this is VERY popular. Stephen Covey, in discussing time management, breaks out one of those fancy 4-quadrant diagrams that all highly-paid consultants and authors use in their books. He talks about the Urgent vs. the Important. His first quadrant is Urgent AND Important. These are things a restaurant owner will need to buy before the Health Inspector visits next week. This is also a relatively easy sale. Covey’s second quadrant is Important but NOT Urgent. This is how many of your prospects will initially view your product or service. And unless you prove otherwise, they’re right
The Actual Competition. These are other providers of the same or similar products and services. Although it is important to understand a lot about how you stack up, it is more likely you’ll be up against one of the previous three forms of competition.
So how can you beat all this competition? There are several things I would like you to think about to help you move to the top of the food chain – to move away from being the grazing antelope and become more like the strong lion.
First – what makes you unique? Or do you have the same old blah-blah stuff? For example, how do you answer the following question?
“What do you do?”
Most salespeople, unfortunately, come up with this:
“I am in sales for XYZ company.”
Zzzzzzzzzzzz... Do you hear me dozing off? Do you see me getting a case of MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over)?
You must have a way of articulating what you do that is more interesting and compelling!
There are three areas that should be considered and a statement prepared for when they happen:
1.How you explain what you do to someone you meet by chance (they could be a prospect). This is what we call the unexpected speech – but by gosh, it happens all the time. So you should expect it! 2.The phone explanation.
There’s a good chance that you’ve come across the term “marketing communications”, if you work in a reasonably large organization. In our present day and age, most organizations have a division that deals with marketing communications. It is often referred to as corporate communications and product marketing.Marketing communications is the art and science of communicating information that enables a company to market its products or services better. I know that this definition sounds really simple, but it rarely simple in reality. This is because it conceals more than it reveals. It also makes the role appear to be simple and straightforward. However, in today’s world marketing communications is one of the most complex fields of business.It is not difficult to fathom the reason for this term’s complexity because it only works in an evolved mar
You. What? How can you be your own competition? Well easy… you can be the person who competes with the possibility of making the sale in any number of ways. It may be an unclear message, poor communication skills, lack of preparation, lack of differentiation etc. But rest easy there, partner. The whole point of Sales Science™ is to help eliminate anything that you are doing to compete with yourself for the sale – to help you stop shooting yourself in the foot. (Now you know why your foot was always hurting).
Do It Themselves. Have you noticed how many prospects think they can “do it themselves”? Sure they can. And it’s a lot more appealing than working with you. At first glance, it’s FREE. It’s worked fine in the past. There’s no risk. And it could be a real money-saver – heck, maybe they can start doing it themselves all the time!
Do Nothing. Ah, this is VERY popular. Stephen Covey, in discussing time management, breaks out one of those fancy 4-quadrant diagrams that all highly-paid consultants and authors use in their books. He talks about the Urgent vs. the Important. His first quadrant is Urgent AND Important. These are things a restaurant owner will need to buy before the Health Inspector visits next week. This is also a relatively easy sale. Covey’s second quadrant is Important but NOT Urgent. This is how many of your prospects will initially view your product or service. And unless you prove otherwise, they’re right
The Actual Competition. These are other providers of the same or similar products and services. Although it is important to understand a lot about how you stack up, it is more likely you’ll be up against one of the previous three forms of competition.
So how can you beat all this competition? There are several things I would like you to think about to help you move to the top of the food chain – to move away from being the grazing antelope and become more like the strong lion.
First – what makes you unique? Or do you have the same old blah-blah stuff? For example, how do you answer the following question?
“What do you do?”
Most salespeople, unfortunately, come up with this:
“I am in sales for XYZ company.”
Zzzzzzzzzzzz... Do you hear me dozing off? Do you see me getting a case of MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over)?
You must have a way of articulating what you do that is more interesting and compelling!
There are three areas that should be considered and a statement prepared for when they happen:
1.How you explain what you do to someone you meet by chance (they could be a prospect). This is what we call the unexpected speech – but by gosh, it happens all the time. So you should expect it! 2.The phone explanation
In the office furniture world, an Inventory Management System and an Asset Management System are basically the same thing. If you are responsible for maintaining excess office furniture, an effective method of managing this inventory can be beneficial for your company. It can be cost effective when you reuse furniture instead of purchasing new furniture. Furniture can be readily available for new employees. If you have need to rent furniture on occasion, you may have what you need in your inventory. Inventory management software saves both money and time when tracking your inventory. Excess furniture can be bar-coded and inventoried before put into storage. The condition of each piece of furniture can be noted. Or this furniture can be cleaned, repainted, touched up, or reupholstered first so it's readily availa
Do Nothing. Ah, this is VERY popular. Stephen Covey, in discussing time management, breaks out one of those fancy 4-quadrant diagrams that all highly-paid consultants and authors use in their books. He talks about the Urgent vs. the Important. His first quadrant is Urgent AND Important. These are things a restaurant owner will need to buy before the Health Inspector visits next week. This is also a relatively easy sale. Covey’s second quadrant is Important but NOT Urgent. This is how many of your prospects will initially view your product or service. And unless you prove otherwise, they’re right
The Actual Competition. These are other providers of the same or similar products and services. Although it is important to understand a lot about how you stack up, it is more likely you’ll be up against one of the previous three forms of competition.
So how can you beat all this competition? There are several things I would like you to think about to help you move to the top of the food chain – to move away from being the grazing antelope and become more like the strong lion.
First – what makes you unique? Or do you have the same old blah-blah stuff? For example, how do you answer the following question?
“What do you do?”
Most salespeople, unfortunately, come up with this:
“I am in sales for XYZ company.”
Zzzzzzzzzzzz... Do you hear me dozing off? Do you see me getting a case of MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over)?
You must have a way of articulating what you do that is more interesting and compelling!
There are three areas that should be considered and a statement prepared for when they happen:
1.How you explain what you do to someone you meet by chance (they could be a prospect). This is what we call the unexpected speech – but by gosh, it happens all the time. So you should expect it! 2.The phone explanation
Architects often do not do very much public relations and many of them do quite well over time simply living off the wonderful referral jobs coming in. But breaking into the business is not easy at all and it takes a little bit of hard work and thought. It makes sense for architects to develop community goodwill and be cognizant of the need for positive publicity and public relations from the start of their businesses. What can architects do to promote good public relations?Well there are many things and they can be quite simple. For instance they might go ahead and contact a homeowners associate and volunteer to design the recreation room or a community park. Little things like this will generate much word of mouth advertising for an architect or architectural firm and also simultaneously generate interest, word-of-mouth advertising and perhaps som
The Actual Competition. These are other providers of the same or similar products and services. Although it is important to understand a lot about how you stack up, it is more likely you’ll be up against one of the previous three forms of competition.
So how can you beat all this competition? There are several things I would like you to think about to help you move to the top of the food chain – to move away from being the grazing antelope and become more like the strong lion.
First – what makes you unique? Or do you have the same old blah-blah stuff? For example, how do you answer the following question?
“What do you do?”
Most salespeople, unfortunately, come up with this:
“I am in sales for XYZ company.”
Zzzzzzzzzzzz... Do you hear me dozing off? Do you see me getting a case of MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over)?
You must have a way of articulating what you do that is more interesting and compelling!
There are three areas that should be considered and a statement prepared for when they happen:
1.How you explain what you do to someone you meet by chance (they could be a prospect). This is what we call the unexpected speech – but by gosh, it happens all the time. So you should expect it! 2.The phone explanation
Data entry outsourcing is contracting with outside consultants, software houses or service bureaus to perform systems analysis, programming, and data center operations. In the U.S. in 2003, the term took on extra meaning, often referring to jobs being given to people in companies located in India and other countries. The main reason behind outsourcing is the availability of qualified and experienced computer operators at low cost.Data entry outsourcing is limited to all types of data entry operations e.g. data conversion, document and image processing, catalog processing services, image enhancement, image editing and photo manipulation services, etc.The need for data entry is constant for some organizations for making day to day decisions. In such cases data entry is a regular and continuous requirement. The types of companies for which this
“What do you do?”
Most salespeople, unfortunately, come up with this:
“I am in sales for XYZ company.”
Zzzzzzzzzzzz... Do you hear me dozing off? Do you see me getting a case of MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over)?
You must have a way of articulating what you do that is more interesting and compelling!
There are three areas that should be considered and a statement prepared for when they happen:
1.How you explain what you do to someone you meet by chance (they could be a prospect). This is what we call the unexpected speech – but by gosh, it happens all the time. So you should expect it! 2.The phone explanation. How do you explain what you do over the phone? 3.The in-person sales appointment.
So how would you explain what you do to someone you have just met? “I am in sales for XYZ .” NO! The goal is not to bore them; it’s to intrigue them and catch their attention.
I sell copiers
Let’s say you sell copiers. You could say “I sell copiers.” Yawn!
Here is another approach. “I am an expert on reproduction in the office.” That will get you a look which can be described as “What the heck did you just say????”
You as the sales professional then say, “I consult with clients and show them how to get the very most bang-for-the-buck from their office copiers.” STOP.
Hopefully they will then say, “How do you do that?” See, now a conversation has started.
Have you mentioned that you sell Ricoh or Minolta or Brand X? Nope. (Remember, nobody cares about YOU). You have done something more important. You have gotten their attention. Now we’re not saying you should follow a script. (Frankly, we’d shoot ourselves first.) What we are saying is that you need to develop a short, catchy message that you can deliver at the “drop of a hat” that gets response.
There are a ton of you... or not
I met a man at a function and I asked him what he did and he said “I own a delivery service and we deliver packages across town.” I said, “Oh that’s interesting. There are a ton of those. How are you different?” He looked like a deer caught in my headlights and said “What do you mean?” I said “What makes you unique?” He could not answer the question and fumbled and stammered and hemmed and hawed.
A sales professional must be able to articulate uniqueness and what they do in a special way.
If your product or service is not unique on the surface, you need to dig deeper and find a way to articulate how your VALUE to your clients is unique, and then specifically show how. We’ll get to that.
Go head to head with 2 predators at once
Let’s look at competition source numbers two and three: Do It Themselves and Do Nothing.
Since these are the two elephants in the room when you go out on appointments, it’s again silly (and costly) not to prepare to go head-to-head with these two very real forms of competition.
When I do sales seminars, one of the exercises revolves around these two specific options.
I have people take a sheet of paper and divide it into three columns.
The first column is labeled “Use us.” The second column is labeled “DIY.” The third column is labeled “Do nothing.”
And I then ask salespeople to specify between 7 and 10 items under each column.
Even if you never show your version of this document to a client, it’s a great cheat sheet for YOU to understand and prepare wher
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