When we ask salespeople in our workshops to raise their hands if they have ever lost a deal to an inferior competitive offering, they almost universally raise their hands – even though we have told them ahead of time, “It’s a trick question.”
The truth is: No one ever loses to an inferior offering.
“How can that be true?”, you ask. “How,” you may ask, “could anyone consider that crap, superior?”
If you lost, all the evidence indicates it wasn’t really an inferior offering, after all. That truth of it lies in two facts; 1) the decision-maker’s perspective and the values from which the relative superiority and inferiority judgement arose both differed from yours and 2) the outcome satisfied only one person’s needs – and that person wasn’t you. But, ultimately, the outcome is the final proof.
At the moment a customer, and/or the ultimate decision maker, makes a decision to buy another “inferior” offering instead of your “superior” offering, that other offering is being perceived as a superior alternative in the eyes of that decision maker – by a unique, hidden or secret set of evaluation criteria that you simply don’t understand or chose to ignore. Your personal opinion doesn’t, and didn’t matter. Relevant value is only in the eyes of the beholder – not the seller.
There are several reasons we are led to self-deceptively believe this harmful myth.
1. We, in sales, think all value is economic. That’s the reason we put so much emphasis on price competitiveness.
Perceived value can be economic, but it can also be emotional or physical. When my family was young, I remember spending a lot of time analyzing car models and test driving a half dozen or so, narrowing them all down to two finalists. I sequentially drove both of them home for my wife’s final OK. She ran out to the driveway, a new-born in her arms and our other child, a two-year old, clinging to her jeans. She sat in the first car while I held the baby. She didn’t drive it. No excitement.
I returned that car and came back with the other option – a different brand and model from a different dealer. We repeated the drill. While she was sitting in the second car, she reached down, ran her hand across the seat (not leather in those days) and said, “This is it. It feels right.” We bought that car. It had nothing to do with the performance, reliability, handling or any other criteria I was discussing with either sales person. I didn’t have a clue that a “feel” test was going to be the ultimate consideration and the final decision point. I thought, as the salesperson did, that I was acting as the “official” power purchaser and “ultimate” decision maker.
This “feel test” was an obvious physical value – not an economic or emotional one – and it held importance in the criteria by a “hidden” decision maker.
2. We don’t understand the real decision criteria. In the story above, I narrowed down the choices. However, there was another final hurdle that neither the sales person or the purchasing agent (me) knew of.
3. We don’t understand all the decision makers (See my new car story, above)
4. We emphasize the wrong product (or service) strengths. Not all strengths are meaningful to all buyers – or with the same relative importance. There is nothing more irritating and distracting than a salesperson spewing data, stats and features when you are trying to focus on the one, two or three most important things in your personal decision tree.
5. We try to sell to the wrong target customer in the wrong target market. We continually hear, particularly from inventors and entrepreneurs when we ask them who their target customers are, that “everyone” can use their new product, service or invention. This leads to inefficient use of sales time, and significant mismatches in message. Telling the whole story, while missing the relevant customer or market-specific benefits, is common and leads sales people to say things like, “They (the customers) just don’t get it.”
We have witnessed a company that believed so strongly in the universality of their value proposition nearly go out of business as they scattered their message as broadly as possible. Panicked by their rapidly dwindling marketing and sales pocketbook, lack of success and anxiousness to avoid failure, they engaged us. We told them to focus very tightly on markets and customers where the value received was the greatest. They finally agreed and the business began to turn around in less than 3 months. That simple change resulted in a four year run of breakthrough growth.
6. We don’t understand our own value proposition and differentiation: Each of our products or services should have a clearly articulated value proposition and differentiation in all three value areas; economic, emotional and physical. These values must be enhanced by the corporate brand – the ambient light that our products shine in. Johnson & Johnson, 3M, GE and Apple (to a somewhat lesser extent these days) all bask in the glow of that favorable corporate light. The corporate light typically shines an intangible emotional and implied physical light on products and services.
Don’t bail on price as a last desperate attempt to fix your perception mistake.
One final point: To think that price is the only variable available to trigger a buy is flat wrong. But that is the topic of another myth. Suffice it to say, if that were true we’d all be driving the cheapest cars on the road.
Watch our QMP Insights blog for Sales Myth #3: “It’s relationship business”
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