Who's your Biggest Competition?
When I ask business owners and sales leaders the question … “Who’s your biggest competition?” … a vast majority of the time they respond with the name of a company they directly compete against for business, like Acme Manufacturing or Widget, Inc. In reality sales research shows that a seller’s most formidable competitor is the "status quo", in other words do nothing.
According to the latest findings from Corporate Visions, Sirius Decisions, Sales Benchmark Index and many other respected researchers the number of opportunities in the sales pipeline that a seller losses to do nothing is as high as 60%.
The primary reason buyers decide to forgo a change is that they don’t see value in buying something new. There are only two ways to overcome the inertia created around maintaining the status quo: (1) by building both emotional and logical pain around a problem that currently exists … perceived or unperceived … so that change is the prerequisite for making the pain go away and (2) by developing a case, again both emotional and logical, recognizing that although things look good today, if change does not take place, pain is just over the horizon … in other words, ‘complacency kills” and “what got you here, will not get you there”.
What to do?
Sellers need to work with their buyers in building a case for change. Sellers do this by assisting their buyers in answering the following three “Why” questions in sequential order:
Why Change? Buyers need to emotionally and logically understand why buying something new is better for them and less risky than maintaining the state quo.
Why Change Now? Buyers need to understand the risk they are facing by waiting to make a change.
Why You? Now that the buyer has decided to make an immediate change (buying decision), they need to understand why the seller’s company offer the best solution, with the lowest risk.
As a seller, you can greatly improve your chance of defeating the status quo and winning new business if you assist your buyer in identifying a minimum of three reasons for each of these three questions.
Sell On!
