Sales Intelligence - Competitive Positioning

Especially in B2B sales, most companies that sell products, services or solutions have to compete against other vendors to gain a new client. Everyone in the deal works to differentiate themselves. Not only do you need to know how to position your product in the prospect’s company. You should also know how to anticipate the messages provided by competitive vendors in order to give your efforts the best chance. In your sales opportunities, how well are you able to identify what the competition says to position itself specifically against you?

Benefits
Differentiation: the first step in avoiding the curse of commoditization. Your company seeks to demonstrate value propositions that help move price further down the decision chain, but that’s not all. Proper positioning of your company and offering provide an advantage over the competition. Just remember that each of your competitors has the same goal. Knowing how each competitor positions itself against you reveals strategic direction, differentiation, and their perception of the current “hot buttons.”

Marketing
Gauge the effectiveness of your message versus the competition’s. Watch for changes in their positioning over time while monitoring the effectiveness of your value proposition. Understanding how your prospects react to your message and that of the competition provides an immediate tactical advantage.

Sales
What is the word on the street about you and the competition? With intelligence geared toward revealing the positioning of your competition, you gain the upper hand. Use this knowledge to beat the competition to the punch and steal their thunder. Know how to weaken their position before they arrive to the opportunity.

Recommendations

1. Use primary research methods to communicate with prospects
2. Prospects may not think like marketers or business intelligence specialists. Make sure to ask specific questions
3. “When [competitor] demonstrated its [feature], what did it say to justify the ROI?”
4. “What kind of emphasis did [competitor] put on its new [solution]?”
5. Engage Primary Intelligence to work with recent prospects to uncover the real message. A third-party vendor can usually approach this topic more easily than your company.

Let me know if I can help. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Sales Intelligence - Competitive Positioning

Especially in B2B sales, most companies that sell products, services or solutions have to compete against other vendors to gain a new client. Everyone in the deal works to differentiate themselves. Not only do you need to know how to position your product in the prospect’s company. You should also know how to anticipate the messages provided by competitive vendors in order to give your efforts the best chance. In your sales opportunities, how well are you able to identify what the competition says to position itself specifically against you?

Benefits
Differentiation: the first step in avoiding the curse of commoditization. Your company seeks to demonstrate value propositions that help move price further down the decision chain, but that’s not all. Proper positioning of your company and offering provide an advantage over the competition. Just remember that each of your competitors has the same goal. Knowing how each competitor positions itself against you reveals strategic direction, differentiation, and their perception of the current “hot buttons.”

Marketing
Gauge the effectiveness of your message versus the competition’s. Watch for changes in their positioning over time while monitoring the effectiveness of your value proposition. Understanding how your prospects react to your message and that of the competition provides an immediate tactical advantage.

Sales
What is the word on the street about you and the competition? With intelligence geared toward revealing the positioning of your competition, you gain the upper hand. Use this knowledge to beat the competition to the punch and steal their thunder. Know how to weaken their position before they arrive to the opportunity.

Recommendations

1. Use primary research methods to communicate with prospects
2. Prospects may not think like marketers or business intelligence specialists. Make sure to ask specific questions
3. “When [competitor] demonstrated its [feature], what did it say to justify the ROI?”
4. “What kind of emphasis did [competitor] put on its new [solution]?”
5. Engage Primary Intelligence to work with recent prospects to uncover the real message. A third-party vendor can usually approach this topic more easily than your company.

Let me know if I can help. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Same Vision Insurance Plan, Different Model

It was easy for our client to go into the sales opportunity. They were pitching a comprehensive vision plan to a multi-billion dollar computer systems vendor. They had the right people. They said the right things. They had a price advantage of six figures.

But, (based on this opportunity review by Primary Intelligence) it wasn’t enough to knock out the incumbent:

What were the primary reasons you did not select VisionPlan?
“Network disruption was the primary reason. The business model for VisionPlan is strategically different than the business model for RIGHTEYE. RIGHTEYE’s model relies on incorporating individual, independent ophthalmologists and optometrists across the nation. VisionPlan utilizes chains like Optical Mart. When we did a network comparison between the physicians within the respective zip codes of our employees, the disruption was more than 80 percent. That would mean, if I were currently a patient of Dr. Jones and we selected VisionPlan, Dr. Jones may not be a part of the VisionPlan network. The cost model was very compelling, but we weren’t willing to disrupt 28,000 people and their family members to save a couple hundred thousand dollars.”

Was this a case of not having the right service, communicating poorly or staying in deal too long when the chances of winning were too slim?

What do you think? (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801.838.9600 x5050)

For VP Sales Only

Some say that knowledge is power. We at Primary Intelligence believe that the right kind of knowledge is exponentially powerful.

An example of our intelligence and feedback we provide is listed below. In this example, our client is Tenscon, a software solutions provider. Now, we have changed the names to maintain confidentiality, but our customer list includes companies such as Microsoft, Avaya, Symantec and EDS are the kinds that tend to do very good work with us.

The table below shows "Tenscon's" competitive advantage against 4 competitors (again, names have been changed to maintain confidentiality, but the results are real).

The results show some competitive advantages in the company and sales, but the product has some significant weaknesses against Sistemic and Howein Partners:

Overall, Tenscon had generally higher performance ratings than the competition, especially in the company and service drivers. However, several ratings for the sales team were lower than those of the competition as a whole, indicating that some improvement in these areas may be needed.

An analysis of the responses from clients yields the following key findings concerning Tenscon’s performance:

-Tenscon was seen as a strong and solid company, but was not generally seen as an innovator. As a senior vice president from Dillent explained, “I don’t think they showed as much innovation in their solution. I think they took a much more conservative approach, a much more introverted approach rather than an innovative approach.” The CIO from ABC Aerolineas echoed this sentiment by saying, “We have some applications that we expected to be technologically advanced, but what they offered us was delayed during the delivery process. By this I mean that some applications were not as innovative as we expected them to be.”

-Some clients were concerned that Tenscon was not offering a unified solution, but rather a set of pre-packaged offerings. For instance, a respondent from ABC Aerolineas said that the initial Tenscon team did “have a real understanding of our model, and they just trying to sell us stand-alone systems. This was the idea. The idea was a cost-effective strategy, and people from Tenscon did not understand our model, our strategy, the market, or our needs. They just about systems and stand-alone processes.” A representative from Flentic Crendall explained, “One of
complexities of [Tenscon] is it is five separate businesses that have been swept into one company. It’s trying get them to work as one company with one approach. don’t think that there was a perfect solution.”

-While a majority (66 percent) of clients believed that Tenscon put the right people in front of them, there were some concerns that decision makers were not involved in the negotiation process. A vice president at JNPD expressed this sentiment, saying, “As some of these things escalate, or we run across impasses, there might be opportunities in the future that if we were
able to talk directly to the true decision makers, then it might expedite the process.” A senior vice president from Fiserv also said, “It took a while to get the right representatives from the healthcare side and from the financial side [of Tenscon] to be on our team.”

-Understanding the clients’ needs and business requirements was a theme throughout the interviews, and an area where respondents believed Tenscon could improve. Tenscon’s ratings in this area were slightly lower than the average for other bidding companies, indicating an area of advantage for Tenscon’s competitors. As the CIO of Coles Meyer explained, “Sometimes I was worried [that they gave] affirmative answers without really understanding what the issues were. At
times I felt they didn’t understand how big and complicated the work was going to be. ‘Let’s make the sale and then afterwards worry about how we are going to deliver it.’ There was a lack of business and delivery knowledge with the up front sales team. With other vendors we don’t experience that.”

If you have any ideas of how to make these data come to life in your organization, drop me a line. (801.838.9600 x5050, cdalley@primary-intel.com)

Sometimes, It Really is About Price

A few days ago, I said that “it isn’t really about price.” That is only partially true. I have never been in a position to buy a luxurious item “regardless of price.” (Maybe someday, but not yet.)

But, sometimes, it really is about price. If you are a completely commoditized product or service that anyone can provide at an equal level of quality, timeliness and satisfaction, it really is about price.

And, if this describes you, I am sorry. Get out and go find something fun to do.

Most every product and service in existence can differentiate itself one way or another. The trick is to find out which differentiation aspect will make the difference. Product, features, packaging, service level, people, timeliness, quality, brand recognition, reputation and many other value identifiers can be modified, tweaked or emphasized to show an advantage over the competition.

The trick is to figure out which one will matter.

CPG companies know. That’s why they can sell corn flakes and toothpaste at double the cost of generics and stay in business.

If they can figure it out and fight the battle on the store shelves, your product/technology/service/solution (ranging from hundreds of dollars to hundreds of millions) is ripe for differentiation.

Find out what the prospects value and give it to them. If you don’t, you’re in a race to the bottom on price. And, that’s a race you don’t want to win.

Good selling. Give me a call and let’s chat about identifying your value proposition. (801.838.9600 x5050, cdalley@primary-intel.com)

Why are Sales People so Stupid (or are they)?

I recently read a blog posting from last year by Scott Santucci where he talks to marketers about their perception of sales people in general. It starts like this:

"Come on, admit it.

"It’s what you think, isn’t it?

"If I had a dollar for every time I heard “our sales people lack the skills
or ability to (insert any of the following: cross-sell, sell higher, sell to
value, get ahead of the RFP)” I would be a very rich person. But is this really
the problem?"

Then, he goes on to point out how sales people don't live in the simple world that many marketers might assume. Just trying to manage sales messaging and collateral can be much more complex than might be assumed at first:

"Assuming your company has 10 products that all can be sold by your sales force, lets try to determine how much information a sales person must process and manage on any given account they are pursing.

•10 products
•5 key value propositions for each product (50 different value propositions)
•Messages must be delivered to 5 different client stakeholders (250 different messages)
•Each value propositions has a set of 5 questions to uncover and they are different from stakeholder to stakeholder (the degree of difference is not important) – 1250 different messages
•Each value proposition has one competitive knockoff per competitor and you have 4 key competitors (50 different value propositions x 4 competitors = 200 +1250 = 1,450 different messages)
•Each product has a minimum of 5 different collateral pieces that exist about various aspects of the product (5 collateral pieces X 10 products = 50 different collateral pieces to locate, which equals 1,500 different information elements to manage)
•Each stakeholder has a set of 5 personal goals and 5 business goals that must be matched with their corresponding value propositions (5 personal goals + 5 business goals X 5 stakeholders = 50 unique goals + 1,500 information elements = 1,550 information elements.

"So, in this scenario, a salesperson is asked to manage over 1,500 different forms of information for each account they deal with."

So, what is the takeaway? Mr. Santucci suggests that marketing needs to better understand what the sales team is up against. Marketing should produce tools that will help simplify (rather than complicate) the sales process.

Personally, I think that marketing and sales need tighter integration. Put some marketing people in the sales department for a couple of weeks. Let them attempt to use the tools and messages that sound so good in marketing's ivory towers. When they return, they will probably have a better appreciation for the needed materials. They might also want to return occasionally to sales as a source of inspiration.

And, don't let the sales team off the hook. Let them spend a little time in marketing. Some cross-pollination and discussion will do them good, too.

In the end, both teams have to work hand in hand. It's all about selling. And, if anyone in sales or marketing forgets that, big obstacles are looming on the horizon.

Happy selling, and let me know what you think. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801.838.9600 x5050, www.primary-intel.com)