To Sell More, Put the YOU in Unique

A reader writes:

I work for a software development company. We were the first in our country to develop a software for automating everything in gas stations (ticket printing, tank inventories, customer credit handling, and 100% web access). Nowadays we've got competitors and even a company that was born from copying our software. All of our competitors are selling with a lower price than we are. We do have some differences which make us better but most people look at price rather than quality or other values. What should our sales team do to make the difference bigger so that people look at our benefits rather than our prices?

That's what's happening here. To promote their own interests, your customers are pretending that your product is just like everyone else's. They even have some evidence of this, in that one of your competitors actually copied your software. Your challenge is to make the customer realize that those differences have value so that they not only won't mind paying a higher price.

The key to doing that is making certain that the customer -- not your product or firm -- is the core of all your sales messages, and making sure that there are financial proof-points. Here's what you do:

• Step #1: Realize that price isn't the issue. Research reveals that even with fully commoditized products (where there's no differentiation at all between competitive offerings), low price is the dominant factor in the buying decision only 15 percent of the time. In the majority of cases, other factors (convenience, location, brand familiarity, personality of the sales rep, etc.) are either more important or just as important. So even if your offering didn't have differentiators, you could still command a higher price, as long as that price is not wildly out of line with the competition. (See: "How to Sell Overpriced Services.")
• Step #2: Determine the value of your differentiators to the customer. Don't accept your customers' pretended opinion that price trumps everything. Instead, estimate the financial impact of your product differentiators on the customer. Example: If your system uniquely uses the web to retrieve information on average gas prices in your region, estimate the impact that feature might have on the customer. Thinking about financial impact forces you to consider the problem/solution from the customer's perspective, rather than your own, internal, technical perspective.
• Step #3: Express those differences from the customer's viewpoint. Stop talking about your product or your firm. Instead, craft a set of sales messages that use the second person (e.g. "YOU" in English) rather than the first person (e.g. "WE" or "I" in English) to tell a story that's meaningful to the customer. For example, rather than saying something like: "We have a leading-edge, early warning system" say something like: "You will be warned when the average gas price spikes, so that you can reprice quickly -- at an average saving of $1,000 per station, per day."
• Step #4: Retrain your sales team. Now that you've recrafted your messages, retrain your sales team to sell your solution as it's seen from the customer's viewpoint. Make sure that the sales team can eloquently express the financial impact on the customer as a proof point that more than justifies the higher price. (Please note that this will probably mean throwing out most of your marketing materials, if they're anything like the wretched stuff that U.S. software firms produce.) Important: Also train your team to NEVER discount, because discounting undercuts the value of your uniqueness.

One more suggestion. This is specific to your company's situation, so I'm breaking it out here. If one of your competitors actually stole your code, you should immediately bring a lawsuit against them. When you publicize the lawsuit (a press release should do), make it clear that you're bringing suit not to get your money back, but to save gas station owners from potential problems. Explain that the old version (now fixed in the real version) contains "significant" bugs that you've since fixed. Then call on all that vendor's customers and offer them a special rate to "upgrade" to the real deal. You'll put them out of business in six months.