We always believe that our B2B product or service is the “greatest thing since sliced bread”. Most of us love to go out and talk to prospects about how wonderful our offerings are, and how quickly they can make our prospects’ lives easier.
It’s amazing how crushed we feel when someone that we want to talk to about our offerings is not as excited as we are about the value of our offerings.
Do you sometimes feel lost in the crowd?
It’s not that you don’t offer value. And it’s not necessarily true that these prospects are short-sided. It’s just that our human nature is to categorize and group things in order to manage the overwhelming information that bombards us each day. (It is one of the tactics that keeps most of us sane these days.)
So, immediately after you introduce your ‘unique’ product/service offering, many of your prospects will be trying to categorize the concepts that you are discussing. Very quickly, their brain will attach your concept to concepts that they already know. It is only meant to help them cope with new info. But, what does this mean for you?
What it means for you is – the prospect quickly starts to put your product/service offerings in a mental ‘bucket’ full of other offerings that might be ‘similar’, but are not who you perceive to be competitive products/services.
How can you address this marketing challenge of commoditization?
- First, acknowledge that we all categorize concepts. It’s not an effort to demean your product/services.
- Next, step back and try to see the categorization process from your customers’/prospects’ point of view.
- Be honest and list those ‘alternative solutions’ that your prospect would associate with yours. This may take some time to go back through your sales contact records.
- If your comfortable with the feedback (which your business health requires), ask your customers and prospects how they position your product/service in their mind.
- Include several less obvious options in your list — internal solutions that a prospect may consider, etc.
- Don’t forget the BIGGEST competitor – inertia. How does ‘doing nothing’ factor into the prospects’ mind.
Once you have a list of ‘alternatives’ that will probably pop up in the minds of your prospects and cause them to want to commoditize your products/services, begin to look at real differentiating statements between your products/services and these alternatives. These statements become additional information that can be utilize in your sales and marketing message – both online and offline. But, it is especially helpful to include the concepts in your interactions/dialogues, when you feel that your are becoming aware that your prospect is beginning to categorize your business offerings.
The goal of this exercise is to help build more objective data that can be turned into positive marketing messages during the “Awareness” building phase in order to keep you out of that ‘commodity bucket’, and keep you from getting lost in the crowd.
I would really like to hear what other strategies have worked for business owners and sales managers.
