Category Archives: Deliver Conversations that Win

How to Steal Your Competitors’ Best Customers

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Most of the time, when you steal customers from your competitors, they are one of two types: extremely unhappy with the product or service (which could also mean they’re high-maintenance), or loss leaders that your competitors don’t really want. The customers you really want to steal are the ones that are profitable and low maintenance. Impossible, you say? Your competitors’ loyal clients may be less secure than you think. They may have problems they don’t even realize, or may be missing opportunities they are unaware of, but in either case, their desired outcomes may be at risk if they continue to take a “status quo approach.”   What they don’t know can hurt them!

If your competitors’ salespeople are like most, their intuition tells them that their job is to always keep the client happy. They think a successful client relationship is one in which everyone is always smiling. They spend a lot of time and energy trying to maintain a positive equilibrium, as if the client relationship, and whether they are liked, is the endgame.

Incumbents also don’t like to introduce change for fear that it may open up the customer to consider alternatives. When you are the status quo, maintaining it is job #1. It’s a dangerous belief—and a little naïve.  It also makes for a great opportunity for you to steal some business.

What the competitors’ customers don’t know can hurt them. And as the outsider, it’s your job to break the “bad news.”

You need to get their senior executives’ attention by telling them something they don’t know, about a risk or missed opportunity they don’t know they have.  You need to challenge their status quo approach (which includes your competitor).

Here’s what you need to do:

  • You must be willing to push your competitors’ customers out of their comfort zone.
  • You need to help your competitors’ customers see their challenges in a new light.
  • You have to highlight specific, painful situations and make them unmistakably urgent.
  • You need to create constructive tension and use it to your advantage.

This is counterintuitive to many companies and salespeople who are afraid that the customer will shoot the messenger… but it’s what it takes to make an impact. You need to deliver a distinct point of view that adds value to these prospects by getting them to consider why their status quo is no longer safe, and see the opportunity in doing something different.

To learn more, watch our on-demand webinar: Distinct Point of View: Bring Them the Bad News.

Are you relying on Union Rules for your sales messaging?

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Then you’re killing deals.  

Recently one of our consultants, Scott Weinhold, was on a tram while connecting flights between client events, and he couldn’t resist sneaking a photo of an airline pilot’s luggage. What caught his eye was the bag tag promoting the pilot’s union. Here was the union’s attempt to create value for themselves:

In case the image is too fuzzy for you to read (this was a “stealth” snap on a phone while the tram was in motion) the tag says, “WE ARE WORTH IT!”

This union message reminded me of the same theme in thousands of marketing and sales pitches happening this very moment. Sales reps rely on “union rules” for delivering messages to communicate the value of their solution. For example:  “We have the best technology!” “We have the best people!” “We have the best service!”

In other words, “WE ARE WORTH IT!”

What happens to your prospect or customer when you start telling them why your solutions and your company are “worth it?”  Do they grab for their checkbook and say, “How much will that be? We’ve been waiting for someone to come in and tell us how ‘worth it’ they are…”

Charlie Sheen Effect

This type of “union rules” sales messaging approach triggers what I call the “Charlie Sheen Effect.”

Several months ago, Charlie Sheen hosted a webcast of his own (“Sheen’s Korner”). During the first few seconds, over 100,000 attendees logged in. Within four minutes, less than 5,000 remained.

Why over a 95% reduction in attention? Because no one wants to hear boring and irrelevant bragging.

When your prospects and customers see a salesperson present slide after slide of why your company and products are so wonderful, they tune out. Your sales rep’s effort to create value in the mind of your prospect comes across as boring and irrelevant bragging.

Based on our work with hundreds of the largest sales forces, these “WE ARE WORTH IT” sales conversations spread across your organization with no effort at all. They are like a virus. If you do nothing to stop them, these boring and irrelevant sales messages will replicate all on their own.

In fact, unless you’re laser-focused and intentional about equipping your sales force with the right messages, tools, and skills, you can assume at least 80% of your reps will follow “union rules” in their next sales conversation.

Why do “Union Rules Messages” Happen?

It may seem obvious to you. You’ve been told for years you need to be customer centric. So, why do companies continue to create and deliver “union rules” type messaging?

Because it makes companies and salespeople feel good about themselves, the product they are selling and the company they work for. The biggest enemy to great sales messaging is the natural drift of companies to create messaging that fires them up. That gets them jazzed. That rallies the troops.

Have you ever been in a message development session? How do messages get chosen? It’s usually the phrases that get everyone, especially the executives, inside the company excited when they see it on posters, advertisements, billboards, buttons and t-shirts.

But, none of that has anything to do with getting your customers to care. Your prized prospects don’t care about what fires you up. Don’t force them to love your “union rules story.” Save the internal cheerleading for inside the company.

Click here to watch an instant webinar on how you can put an end to boring, irrelevant sales messaging.

Is Your Brand Message Archaic?

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Desktop computers, fax machines and the floppy disk drive – at one point each of these technological advances were fundamental components of our daily lives, but now, most are considered archaic.

The same may be true for your classic 30,000-foot brand messaging. It’s obsolete.

The proliferation of new media channels and mobile devices creates buyer demand for information and insights that are relevant to them and their needs, when and where they need it.  They don’t have the time or the inclination toward the big, bad company-centric branding campaigns of the past. It’s now a 3-foot brand message – the distance between your customer and their digital access screen of choice – that counts.

Unfortunately, the coolness factor associated with the technology involved has skewed some of the focus toward the medium, but it’s still the message that really rules. And, it requires you to re-think your brand messaging development approach.

Insights not Promotions

People want ideas. They want to be inspired. Insights are for sale in this new messaging environment where re-tweeting stuff that impresses you is part of the daily routine. Unfortunately, research shows that your prospective decision-makers believe only 10-14% of company selling messages offer anything unique or relevant.

That means 90% of the stuff you put out is seen as the same as your competitors. After a while, your prospects and customers will just tune out the blah, blah, blah. And now you are faced with breaking through a physical barrier more difficult than penetrating the earth’s gravitational field.

Make your Brand Live Inside Your Customers’ Story

Here’s how you do it. Instead of telling a brand story that is all about you, translate your messages to live inside your prospects’ and customers’ story.

All humans live in story. Your story is the window through which you look at your world. Your story affects how you make decisions. Developmental psychologist refers to this concept as your “schema.”

Pretend for a minute that you are a sea captain living in the early 14th century and you believe that the earth is flat. Your long-range planning tool is a spyglass – a little telescope that you can pull out of your pocket and extend so that you can see far distances. This is your risk avoidance tool. It helps you determine where the earth “ends” so you don’t risk falling off.

Now imagine that there’s an inventor who happens to be living during the same period. He has discovered a great new navigational technology – the compass. He brings it to you and says, “With this new invention you can sail your ship due West and discover the other side of world.” Would you be sold? Probably not. Why? Because you live in a “flat world” story. You believe if you buy this technology, it will kill you as you blindly sail off the edge of the earth.

This analogy holds true today when your sales and marketing team tell the brand story about who you are and what you do. Your story needs to be translated into your prospects’ world. What top companies have figured out is that everything they do must be translated from a story about you to a story about your prospect. Otherwise, your brand risks becoming archaic like the desktop computer, fax machine, floppy disk drive and the spyglass.

Learn how to tell a story that sells watch – The Power of Story.

Why Your Brand Message Does Not Convert Into Sales

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Your company brand message tends to be all about you. It tells the story of who you are, what you do, who you’ve helped, and how you’ve helped them. Sales professionals learn the corporate story and then go tell it to prospective customers. You assume that if your prospects knew as much about your company and solutions as you do, they would buy from you, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

There should be a difference between your brand message and your field message. Your field message should be about who? That’s right – your prospect. Not a big deal, you say? Well, actually it is. Your brand message is most often communicated through the written word – things like your website, brochures, advertisements, white papers, analysts’ reports and even PowerPoint slides (which are written words projected on a screen).  Field messages are customer conversations, most often delivered through the spoken word – a completely different dynamic.

The Dating Game

To get a better understanding of this, go back to the time in your life when you were dating.  Think of your brand as the clothes you wore, your hairstyle, the perfume or cologne you spritzed on, or perhaps the car you drove. Collectively they represented your brand and were designed to attract that other person into a relationship with you. Your corporate brand has the same purpose.

Now what happens to you when you go out on your first date and your brand message does not turn into a field message?  He or she will later tell their friends, “What a conceited, self-centered, egotistical person.  All they talked about was themselves. There would not be a second date. Yet, this is exactly what salespeople are forced to do when delivering a brand message that’s all about your company.

Everyone Lives in a Stories: Even Your Buyers

Why is it important to translate this brand story about you into a story about your prospect? The answer lies in how the human brain works.  Humans live in story. Your story is the window through which you look at your world. Your story affects how you make decisions. Developmental Psychologist refer to this concept as your “schema.”

Your story needs to be translated into your prospects’ world. What top sales performers have figured out is that everything you do must be translated. From the written word to the spoken word. From a story about you to a story about your prospect!

You job is to take the story that you tell and make it a story about your prospect that provokes them to see the world differently, while also being a story that makes them feel that moving forward with your solution is the surest and safest thing they could do. Just like in a court of law, whoever tells the best, most believable story wins.

Want to learn why stories work and how to use the Power of Story in your messaging? Watch this instant webinar: The Power of Story: How to Tell a Story that Sells.