1 in 45,000…

A colleague of mine was giving a 3-minute, presentation about his company and his services recently.  He said he is one of 45,000 registered realtors in Colorado.  He went on to acknowledge: 

If you don’t have a friend who is already in the real estate business you must not have many friends. 

                   Justin Phillips 

After his presentation, we got to chatting. His business is not only in a competitive field (Aren’t all small businesses?) but its also hard to differentiate himself from 45,000 others.  As the title of Jack Trout’s book suggests: 

Differentiate or Die ©

Competition and differentiation are challenges any business, large or small, don’t you think?  It can be hard to look in the mirror and see those specific things that make you and your company different from the myriad of others in your industry.  You may not have 45,000 direct competitors, but I bet you have competition nonetheless. 

After all, there are thousands (millions maybe) of product companies; even more service providers.  Only a few of the most creative; perhaps the most clever: have figured out what their differentiation is in the eye of their customers. 

Charles Revlon, the founder of Revlon and an extraordinarily successful entrepreneur, once said about his company: “In the factory Revlon manufactures cosmetics, but in the store Revlon sells hope.” 

Charles Revlon 

We talked through my colleague’s main points of differentiation; those attributes he likes to emphasize with prospective, new clients.  One really stood out to me but not in the way he said it.  One of his credentials is he’s a former, licensed architect.  Well OK, but if you’re like me, that credentialing statement probably stimulated this thought in your mind: 

So what? 

We dwelled on this architect thing for a while.  I wouldn’t let him move on; employing one of my favorite sales coaching approaches I bet my former sales teams remember well (maybe not fondly, but well): 

Let’s go slow here. 

Or, as one architect put it: 

God is in the details. 

                   Mies van der Rohel 

Architectural training (and a license) is what my colleague “has”.  Even better, his area of concentration was in space planning.  But leaving this credential like that probably causes his prospective clients to think: 

So what? 

What do his clients “get”?  How can he better align his differentiation with what prospective clients need?  It reminds me of Patrick Renvoise who said: 

If you're selling drills, your prospects really couldn't care less about the drills.  What they actually want are the holes. 

Our discussion about real estate was coincidentally near and dear to me because my wife and I are in the process of shopping for a new house.  One of the biggest mistakes people make when buying a new house, or buying new furniture for their current house, is discovering after-the-fact that it doesn’t fit!  “It didn’t look that big in the showroom”, is a commonly heard phrase, true?  (And I’m speaking from experience here HaHa!) 

To be clear, we aren’t hiring Justin to be our realtor… we have a lot of friends and one of them is in the business.  But if we were in need of a realtor, we’d lean towards Justin.  Not because of his real estate license (1 of 45,000 in Colorado) but because of his architect license and more specifically his space planning experience. 

That differentiation can help his clients bridge the gap between the furniture showroom and their new house.                       

                                                            GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.

The Grid…

Recently, I was pontificating about selling to goals (Link).  I summarized it this way: 

Goals are the dog; Pain is the tail.  Sell to the dog, the tail comes with. 

Of course, I broke one of my cardinal rules by emphasizing “what” to do vs. elaborating on “how” to do it.  OK, today permit me to elaborate on the “how”. 

First… and here it comes again… let me establish a little context.  (Because in today’s modern marketplace context is… well … you already know that from my previous post LOL!) 

The marketplace is disproportionately weighted towards small and medium sized businesses.  The vast majority of companies in North America are privately owned vs. publicly traded.  Therefore, at the top of every organization is one individual, or a group of partners, or perhaps a family that are personally vested in the success (or failure) of their company.  Frequently the value of the company is the owner’s single, largest, personal asset.  So when we’re selling to goals it’s not just business – it’s personal.  It’s the “dog”. 

Let’s move on to how business owners prioritize their time.  After all, they can’t be involved in every single decision that goes on at their company.  That is the road to burnout, or worse! 

Make sure you don’t wind up the richest person in the cemetery.  You can’t do business from there. 

Colonel Harlan Sanders 

Successful business owners and executive teams are delegators.  But how do they decide what to delegate?  Well, I believe in sales situations prospective clients are a lot like horses.  I know … I know … WHAT???  Tell you what; I’ll blog about that in a few. 

Suffice it to say for today that we can observe the behavior of business executives, in this case what they delegate, and anticipate their behaviors.  I’ve done just that over the course of my sales career and created the Executive Attention Grid.  When interacting with a prospect the way to sell to their goals is shown on the Grid:

The bottom-left box is the tactical side of our deals.  Now, we need to win this tactical side, too.  It’s just that the Owner/Executives don’t play much of an active role here – they delegate these meetings/presentations to their managers and end users.  That’s why CEOs rarely sit through product demos.  Do you see any of your selling phrases in this box?

Worse - this bottom-left box is problematic because we get delegated to people who have the ability to say, “NO” but don’t have the authority to say, “Yes”.  This box is where our single, biggest competitor lurks.  We know it as NO DECISION! 

The top-right box is the strategic side of our deals.  We need to win this side; otherwise: 

Not to decide is to decide. 

Harvey Cox 

Strategic meetings are when the Owner/Executives not only attend, but actively participate in dissecting the validity of the business case behind our deals.  It’s been my observation (and personal experience) that the sales rep who “connects” their sales proposal to the top-right box wins their deals more times than not. 

Finally, the topics within the top-right box are not all equal.  If we can possibly connect the value of our offering to “Shareholder Value” or “Business Threats” (to shareholder value) we are selling to the shareholder, aka the Owner, on a very personal level.  We are selling directly to the value of their single, largest, personal asset. 

And THAT’s the dog! 

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.