2/28/2024-Competitive Selling

The best path to take is to probe early – and often – about what the prospect thinks of your offering compared to others being considered.

"I’m gonna do business with you OR Acme…I haven’t decided yet."

If you are lucky enough for a buyer to say those words, congrats, you’ve made it to the finals! …but you’ve got work to do. In this example, you must prove why your offering deserves the prospect’s money versus Acme.

Competitive selling requires one keen skill combination: probing and qualifying.

Probing and qualifying. (Write ’em down.)

Before you use your value prop strategically to differentiate your offering, you must first understand your prospects’ options.

Write down all the competitive selling probing questions you should ask buyers.

Start with goodies like these:
1. What do you like most about our offering versus the other company?

2. What do you like most about the other company?

3. What aren’t you getting from the other company that you need?

If you don’t prepare for a competitive discussion before your meetings, you’ll make zero progress getting the prospect to forget about your opposition.

Probe early in the sales cycle and identify what the prospect could potentially do with your money.

Some of your best sales will come when you beat out another foe. Hard-nosed selling is involved when you mount a case as to why your prospect should give you the bag of cash and not the other guy.

In market-share battles, where there is a defined number of vendors battling for a set amount of seats on the bus, you must talk frequently about how your offering stands up against prospect expectations, and the competitive field.

The best path to take is to probe early – and often – about what the prospect thinks of your offering compared to others being considered.

You may receive vague answers from the prospect, but don’t let that disarm you or make you take your foot off the gas.

Keep probing. Keep qualifying.

This all leads to preparing competitive questions ahead of your meetings and integrating them into your agenda so you can have proactive and honest discussions. The signal that proves whether you are proactively probing and qualifying customers about their options is your close rate – a low close rate means you’re hearing a lot of "No’s" …and you’re hearing them late in the cycle.

Keep pushing to find the truth about you versus the other folks.

It’s Alex Hormorzi again in this YT short offering a quickie on beating the competition: "…do something they don’t want to do."

Alex’s suggestion highlights service, one of your most important differentiators. (ALL prospects care about how they are serviced!)

Probe your prospect with this question: "Describe the service expectations you need and want."

After listening intently, respond with this line, "When we talk about service, we mean X." And then, explain what X means through an anecdote the prospect can relate to.