A surefire approach to increasing sales!

Prospective customers all want the answer to the same exact question; what do you do and how do you do it better than your competitors?  Every sales representative or distribution channel for your business needs to clearly articulate the value proposition to each target market.

Marketers spend hours, days and weeks in workshops and meetings to carefully develop the perfect elevator pitch.  Then, the company prepares messaging, presentations, campaigns and more to test their theories.  This process is not only time consuming but typically yields at best “hit or miss” results.

Isn’t there a simpler, surefire way to get it right?  Yes, with these 3 simple steps:

1. Create a competitive matrix for each target market.

• Company profiles, i.e. revenue, locations, # employees, # customers, target markets, sales distribution channels, partner strategies, service and support.
• Company offerings, i.e. key features, functionality, ease of use, ease of deployment, delivery mechanism, security, pricing.

2. Develop a customer satisfaction survey with open-end and closed questions.

OPEN:  What problem do you solve for them?  How do they use your offering?  Why did they select you versus your competitors?   What do they like about your offering, what don’t they like?  What improvements would they like to see?   What do they like or not like about your company, support, and service?

CLOSED: Can you stack rank certain features/ functionality of the offering?  Do you see certain features or functionality as unique?  Can you rank your overall customer experience?  Can you grade specific service or support calls?

3. Interview your existing customer base

Your best source of feedback, validation or refinement of your competitive advantage/value proposition is right at your feet: your existing customers.  They have already been through the sales process with your company and your competitors, and they selected you!  They are typically friendly, knowledgeable and willing to share the information you need most.  Ask for just 15 minutes and mention that you will be using the feedback to make improvements for them.  Evaluate your results carefully, because existing customers will teach you exactly how to market and sell to new customers, and we all seek the best approach to acquire new customers.

The good news here is that the existing customer base is the lowest cost and most effective way for marketing leaders to corroborate or better articulate competitive differentiators and value propositions.  In fact, listening to existing customers, prospects and targets, keeping your ear to the ground continuously, is the very best way to achieve your goals.

So, what if you don’t have an existing customer base?  Obviously there is the focus group approach, on-line or in person.  Choose a group that is currently using a competitor and ask why.  Ask them the same feature/functionality questions, pricing questions that you would ask an existing customer.  The more narrow and focused your approach, the better the results.

Good luck and good selling!