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Do
You Have Your Customer’s Time And Attention?
by Ronald E. Karr
Today,
you have very little time in the sales call to capture the time
and attention of your customer. But you do have the power within to do so. It all has to deal
with how you position yourself in the eyes of the customer.
Are you positioning your products-- and you-- as a
commodity offering, in which the overall package appears to be
equal to other offerings? Or,
are your actions propelling the overall package you are offering
to a higher level, one considered to be unique and valuable by
your customer? There
are three methods that most salespeople use (intentionally or
unintentionally) to position themselves.
Two of these methods lead to a commodity position and one
leads to a position of resource. Let’s take a look!
Three
Methods Of Positioning
Method
# 1 - Title
Insurance executives are known to be highly creative when it
comes to their titles. For
example, have you ever used the title of “consultant” or
“advisor”? In
Bill Brooks’s book, “You’re
Working Too Hard to Make The Sale,” a survey of
decision-makers revealed that buyers want, “straightforward,
professional salespeople”. The title of consultant and advisor were considered slick or
manipulative. Let’s
face it, if you are walking into someone’s office regarding a
product or service, you are there to sell.
Your customer knows it, you know it, so why hide behind a
slick title.
The problem
with titles is that they don’t distinguish you from being a
commodity. You
won’t impress a decision-maker with your title.
A sales executive is a sales executive, a consultant is a
consultant and a life insurance agent is a life insurance agent.
Because there are so many sales executives, consultants,
financial planners, etc., out there, you cannot differentiate
yourself by title alone. If
you happen to be the owner of a home based business and-or a
small business, don’t think that leading with the title of
president or CEO will differentiate you from the competition.
The only time this type of title plays a differentiating
factor is if the name before the title is
Lee Iacocca, Jack Welch or Bill Gates, for example. These
corporate leaders stand out in a crowd not because of their
title, but because of the results they have attained in their
journey to celebrity status.
The same holds
true if you’re trying to position yourself by title with your
company’s name. Twenty
years ago, a sales representative from IBM had no trouble
getting an appointment just by saying the magical letters, IBM.
The theory at the time was that if you bought from IBM
(known as Big Blue), your job was safe.
The world’s perception of IBM was that of being a
leader in products and quality.
Today, IBM still has a great deal of value to offer its
customers, but its name will no longer get you an automatic
appointment. In
fact, there are very few, if any, company names that will lead
to an automatic appointment.
Even if you
are famous, or work for a company whose products and services
are in great demand, people will not grant you the time and
attention you are looking for based on title or company name
alone. They will
make that decision based on their perception of what you can do
for them. Which leads us to the second method of positioning.
Method
#2 – Product/Service
You’re probably thinking that if you shouldn’t differentiate
by title, then the only other way to achieve differentiation is
through your products and services. Right?
Wrong! If I
called you up and said that I specialize in sales training, what
would your reaction be? You
probably would be thinking that 50,000 other people also do
sales training, so how am I different?
The only thing you achieve by positioning yourself
through products and services is to limit yourself to a playing
field littered with other people who are selling the same kind
of products and services. Whether you offer full service
financial planning, computers, real estate, insurance, the
ability to fix cavities, or merchandise toothpaste, there is no
differentiation from the other sources playing the same game.
After all, there are thousands of dentists who fill cavities,
hundreds of computer stores that sell computers and countless
number of real estate agents who sell real estate and doesn’t
it seem like everyone is in the financial planning business
these days. The
same holds true for most every product or service category.
In today’s
world, it is almost impossible to differentiate a product
through its inherent features unless it is the cornerstone of a
new technology. Even
in mutual funds. Ten
years ago, it was a novelty for a fund to produce a 20% rate of
return. Today,
dozens of funds offer the same result.
So now the question becomes, if positioning by title and
product results in a commodity selling environment, what method
of differentiation would result in a value-added environment?
Method
#3- Resource
As resource, you don’t put the emphasis on what you call
yourself or the product you are offering.
Instead, you put the emphasis on the results your
customers will realize from using your unique mix of products
and services. The
products and services you offer are the means to your
customer’s desired end. They
represent the vehicles you will use to help your customer
achieve their desired results.
In the beginning of a vendor-customer relationship,
customers are more interested in what your products and services
will provide them vs how you are going to supply those products
and services.
Becoming
A Resource
Resources are the
people who will be picking the money up from the table at the
end of the day. They
are the ones who gain the time and attention of their customers
by focusing on their needs.
Resources do not focus solely on their need to make a
sale. Are you a
resource to your customers? If you start the sale by
concentrating on yourself or your products, you are positioning
yourself as a commodity. If
you start the sale by concentrating on where your customers are
trying to get to, you are acting as a resource.
How you act and position yourself is solely depended on
you. The power is
within. You decide
the type of playing field you want to play on.
Hopefully, you have picked the playing field of being a
resource. This is
the field where the game of value added sales is played on.
© 1999 by
Karr Associates, Inc.
Ron Karr is
a professional speaker, consultant, trainer and author who
specializes in helping organizations to dominate their
marketplace and assisting individuals to get closer to the
people they serve. Ron’s Titan
Principle™ has generated tremendous results for his
clients in the areas of sales, negotiations and customer
service. Call 800-423-5277, fax 201- 461-5621, or visit Ron’s
website, http://www.ronkarr.com,
for information on results-oriented services and learning tools
(including his books, The
Titan Principle™-The Number One Secret to Sales Success
and The
Complete Idiot’s Guide to Great Customer Service).
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