Your biggest competitive advantage is not what you think

We see this happen every time we’re being sold to, yet we fall into the same trap when selling. We’re convinced that having more or better product features is the reason we’ll win deals.

“If only our product had xyz feature I could close this deal!”

“Not having xyz certification is a dealbreaker for this buyer!”

“I bet our team is too small for the buyer to take us seriously!”

But that’s not (necessarily) true. Before you think I’ve lost my mind, imagine this:

You closed the deal and just heard your customer say, “You really understand our needs!”.

Let’s break down 5 things that make it happen without changing your product. And at the end I’ll tell you what all of these have in common that make you truly stand out!

What it takes to win without sounding pushy

Learn their business

The reason I love selling B2B is decisions always come down to revenue. And any project that gets approved is backed by a clear business case.

1. Required investment: How much time (time to value), effort (personnel resources) and money (financial investment) does it require to execute the project?
2. Opportunity cost of pursuing the project: What are they saying no to by saying yes to this project? What impact could they expect if they allocate the same resources to a different initiative?
3. Return on Investment (ROI): How does the opportunity cost compare to the ROI the business can expect?
4. Cost of Inaction (COI): What impact (cost, reputation, risk) are they definitely experiencing unless they pursue the project?
5. How is the impact going to be measured? Revenue growth? Increased market share? Lower overheads? Lower operational risk?

So find out how the business makes money. Then go a step further and find out how your Personas’ work impacts the company’s ability to make money. Both on a personal and a team level.

Now that you know them, make the conversation about them

Even though the business will make a logical decision to invest or not, people don’t. We almost always make decisions emotionally and then justify logically.

So then how can you get someone emotionally invested into choosing your solution? Benefits, right? Wrong!

“There’s no benefit without pain” - Josh Braun

Your features aren’t benefits. No one cares about you, your product, or your company. The only thing on their mind is “I have a job to do. How are you helping me complete it better, faster or easier so I get to leave work on time?”.

Here’s how we reverse engineer that “job to be done” with my clients:

1. What’s the impact [persona] was hired to deliver? (alternatively: what will they get fired for not doing?)
2. What KPIs are being used to measure if they are trailing towards that impact?
3. What day to day tasks are they doing to impact those KPIs in a positive way?
4. What challenges are they facing when trying to complete those tasks?
5. Now which of those challenges could they solve if only they had a solution like yours? And how?

Do your homework upfront

You want to get decision makers involved early in the deal. But leaders get hundreds of emails each day so getting noticed isn’t easy. One way to stand out is by showing you’ve done your research and have something they haven’t considered yet. Do this and you’ll earn their attention.

Good news for you that Charlotte Johnson has a playbook to help you do just that. What she does nicely is work the Company bottom-up:

1. Research the Account to see how your solution could be a good fit. Review 10-K financial reports, PR articles, social media posts by the company and their employees.
2. Create a point of view on how you could help, but don’t get trigger happy and send a cold email to leadership! Validate your hypothesis with front-line employees.
   1. Are they facing [challenge_you_impact]?
   2. Is [topic] being mentioned in internal meetings?
   3. Do they have an alternative solution in place that’s already enabling them?
   4. Is there a code name for the project?
   5. Are they incentivised to impact KPIs and OKRs in connection with [impact]?

Insights like KPIs, code names, specific challenges in the employees’ own words are what you want to use when personalising your outreach to leadership.

Shift your mindset

You’d be surprised how little time buyers spend talking about your product internally.

Try using a Digital Sales Room and you’ll see it being opened for 15-25 minutes once every 2 weeks or so. When there’s an internal meeting to catch up on how the project is progressing.

Digital Sales Rooms are trackable documents you send to buyers. A single place where you store anything important as it relates to the project.

But if you’re like most reps you’ll send a “just following up” email once or twice a week trying to speed up the sales cycle - and that’s one way to seem pushy. To annoy buyers and lose the trust you’ve built with them.

But Kyle Asay has a mindset shift all of us can use: “shift your mindset from the amount of time it takes to make a purchase to number of decisions buyers have to make before pulling the trigger.

So instead of following up blindly, make sure that you cover this on every meeting:

1. “what do you need to discuss internally before deciding to move forward?”
2. “when’s the next time you’re catching up about this project with the others?”
3. “what do you need from me to have that discussion?”, and
4. always pencil in a time to meet after they’ve had the discussion internally.

Detach from outcomes

This one comes from Josh Braun and it’s the hardest thing you’ll have to do as a seller.

Why would anyone want to detach from outcomes when half our salary depends on getting results?

At least that’s how I thought about it 4 years ago before I made the change.

I had a strong quarter and was ahead in attainment. Some deals were stuck but I didn’t need them to close that quarter. I noticed how much calmer I was. Accepting. Not pushy.

Looking back I don’t think I ever enjoyed the process of selling before then. It was always a roller coaster of highs when getting the bonus followed by feeling anxious and stressed out when weeks passed without closing a single deal.

The problem is buyers will smell your commission breath a mile away. The more you want it, the more desperate you’ll seem, and the bigger the discounts your buyers will ask of you. In turn it’ll now take even more deals to get you to reach your targets.

But when you don’t need the deal? All of a sudden you change the way you react.

Your reaction to “we won’t spend anything more than X” suddenly goes from “let me talk to my manager” to “wow, I must have really misunderstood your needs if we’re that far apart! Can you walk me through XYZ?”.

You go back to discovery and end up with a business case buyers won’t want to haggle over.

+1: Disqualify early

One practical way you can detach is by using a technique called unselling on your first discovery calls.

Instead of pitching why they should by from you, you’ll now list all of the reasons people usually don’t buy from you. And unless you’re 100% sure there’s a need for what you’re selling you can go a step further. Say:

based on what we talked about I have a feeling [this isn’t a priority for you] and the last thing I want is to waste your time. Or did I miss something that makes you say it’s worth setting a next step?

You’ll either end up disqualifying them early and get time back for prospecting OR the buyer will show you exactly how you need to sell yourself to them.

Now what do all of these have in common?

They’re all about putting the buyer first. Anticipating friction points in the buyer’s journey and removing them before they cause your deal to stall.

It’s about making it easy for buyers to choose you because doing business with you seems like the safe choice.

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