To sell more than your competition, are you thinking about what the competition is doing or are you concentrating on unleashing your creativity?

In his book The Science of Getting Rich, Wallace Wattles claims that if you want to get rich, you must operate out of creativity and not be in competition with others. This phrase struck me between the eyes because this is exactly what I have been coaching my clients all along.

On Page 41 of my new book Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way, I give a case study of a client who hired me to help them win a bid. There were three competitors involved. After getting them to visualize the result they wanted, which was a negotiated agreement vs. a bid, we embarked on an 18 month journey of repositioning them with their customer. The result was a 10 year agreement worth over $200 Million.

Several times during strategy sessions, they always asked the question how our competitors will respond. I kept reminding them not to worry about their competitors. They will take care of themselves. What they need to worry about are the goals, gaps and issues their customer is dealing with and being creative in helping solve those problems.

In other words, concentrate more on raising the bar vs. competing with others. When you raise the bar, you force the competition to chase you. You never want to stare into someone else’s tail lights.

When people and companies constantly compete against others, all they accomplish is developing a similar offering which will lead to a commoditization of their products and services. In this situation, price becomes more important than it should be.

Instead of worrying about the competition, raise the bar. Unleash your creativity to generate new and better results for those you are trying to influence. When you do that, there will be no competition.

This is what we mean when we say Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way!

If you are ready to Lead, Sell and push the competition out of the way, then click here!

The key to selling in this tough economy is the ability to create the appropriate ROI (return on investment) that will motivate a customer to say yes to your proposal. When times are tough, a higher ROI is expected and demanded by your customers. With tighter budgets, customers are demanding more in return for their investments. Many sales people fall short by providing an ROI that is not strong enough to convert a customer’s “no” into a “yes”.

What No Really Means
When a customer says “no”, they are not saying there is no way they are going to buy from you. What they are communicating is the fact that they are not ready to give you the answer of risk – “yes”. When people feel it is too risky to move forward and/or that the ROI is not sufficient to warrant the requested action, they are going to go with the answer of no risk – “no”. Buyers measure return on investment in three ways:

1. Quantitative – This is the method we are all accustomed to. Black and white facts on how someone is going to benefit from your product or service. It is dollars saved at time of purchase, dollars saved over lifetime use of your service, increased market share, increased revenues, etc. Anything that can be quantified as a benefit arising from the use of your product.
2. Qualitative- This is more of a subjective measurement. It is more experiential. Customer experiences, level of aggravation, impact on image, etc. Items that are not easily quantified, but are areas that do affect the bottom line.
3. Emotional- Some people can be persuaded on issues such as personal pride, legacy, need to be the best, etc. Some buyers will do anything to win at all costs. They are emotionally tied to the end result.

The Magic is in The Mix
All sales start with the heart. The buyer is emotionally impelled to look for a solution to some issue; the need to avoid pain, gain pleasure, etc. Most often the conversation then moves to the brain where the logical process takes over to arrive at the “right” decision. Not every customer buys for the same reason. Each customer relies on a mix of the above three areas of measurement to determine whether or not they will get an appropriate return on their investment. Your job is to inquire through questions the areas valued by your customers and the impact they have on the final decision making process. When there is one decision maker, you need to identify that person’s mix. When there is a group of decision makers, you have to play to each of the player’s personal mix as well as to the group mix.

Creating the Proper ROI
The perceived value proposition you need to provide is addressed in this formula:

CNC-CC = PV
PV = Perceived Value
CC = Cost of Change
CNC = Cost of No Change

CNC is defined as not accepting your proposal. The customer is not motivated to say yes and they will continue with their current issues or lack of results by not accepting your proposal. CC is defined as the cost of change. Every buy decision has a degree of pain associated with the purchase. Switching long time vendors to a new player is painful. Paying a higher price than expected means the customer has to change their perceived value of the purchase. Buying a new process or product never used before entails people changing the way they operate and going through the pain of learning something new. People are only going to say yes to you if they feel your value proposition justifies the request. That means, for PV to be a positive return, CC must be lower than CNC. Where most sales people make their mistake is they feel that any positive measurement is good enough to justify the purchase. In a down economy, that is not the case. People demand multiple returns on their investment.

To illustrate, let’s take the purchase of my new book Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way. For a retail price of $24.95, you can get a great tool guaranteed to double, triple or quadruple your sales. Now, let’s say you average sale is $30. My promise is if you buy my book, you will increase your sales by at least $30. Is that extra deal enough to justify your investment? Let’s see.

CNC (loss of $30 sale) minus cost of change (purchase price $24.95) = perceived value of $5.05. By the formula this is a positive return. But is it really enough to justify your time in making the purchase by logging on to Amazon.com or driving in a car to a Barnes and Noble or Borders? Not when you add the effort required to make the purchase.

Now, let’s say you want to increase your sales by $30,000 in 2010. At $30 a sale, you need to close an extra thousand deals. Let’s say I tell you that my book will help you generate at least 10% of that goal. Your new value proposition is:

CNC ($3000) – CC ($24.95) = PV $2975.05. Is this enough to warrant this investment? Maybe! If you add the qualitative measure of how achieving this goal will make your manager happy and possibly lead to a promotion, I have definitely increased my chances of having you go through the effort of purchasing the book. And if I can relate to you emotionally how the book will help you rise to the top and become a member of the exclusive President’s Club, I have now elevated the value proposition even further.

The good news is the book Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way will enable you to accomplish all of this and a lot more. The question you need to ask yourself is how well do you qualify your customers in the three areas of measurement they are going to use to justify their purchase decision. A bigger question is have you uncovered enough reasons to create a value proposition that produces multiple returns on investment and is strong enough to push your customers over the fence and say yes to you.

Your ability to do this is critical to your success in an economy where there are less deals and less money to spend on purchases

Fifteen years ago I was sitting on a plane next to my client, Bud Howard, who was then the Vice President of Sales for Hertz Equipment Rental Corp (division of Hertz). We were in the middle of a three city tour which he hired me to keynote his national sales meetings. It was one of those moments where we were just exhausted, sitting quietly and getting our second wind when Bud leaned over to me and asked a question that rocked my world.

He asked “Ron, what do you think is most important, the will to win or the will to prepare”? It was one of those philosophical questions that caught me by surprise and got me thinking. The first thought was how we are always consumed with the concept of winning. Yet when I got through that initial and automatic reaction, it dawned on me that no matter how much you want to win, if you are not prepared to do what it takes to win the game, you will not succeed no matter how much you want to win. Yes, passion and determination are crucial to winning. But if you only feel the passion and determination during the game and not before, you will often come up short. You need to be driven by your passion and determination to do whatever it takes to get yourself ready for the game and positioned properly for victory. (more…)