It’s Not About the Price

by admin , May 28, 2007

My wife took me shopping at the mall. As we passed Macys, I saw a display of mens shoes, all very good looking. Later, we were picking up some household items from Wal-Mart and I saw the same styles of shoes sitting on top of boxes in the middle of their aisle and at least 70% less than Macys. At that price, only a fool would pay more for (more or less) the same product.

But, I went back and bought the shoes from Macys anyway.

Why did I spend the extra money? Because Macys provided me with an experience, perception of quality and personal attention that Wal-Mart couldnt. If it were all about price, I would have made a different decision.

But, it wasnt.

And it usually isnt in B2B sales either.

Recently, Primary Intelligence interviewed a lost sales opportunity for one of our clients. They had battled it out with two other providers and in the end, they werent selected, but it wasnt about price.

Primary Intelligence: What were the primary reasons you did not select Rare Gems?*
Prospect: The program costs were high relative to the other finalists, especially under the subscription model. We looked at both scenarios because we werent sure we wanted to keep the subscription model. They were pricier either way, but especially pricier if you looked at the subscription scenario. The other thing was they made a business decision to withdraw from retail participation, and so that was going to be viewed negatively by our client base.
Primary Intelligence: Would you say that Rare Gems’ final price proposal was more than, less than, or about the same as the other short-listed vendors?
Prospect: More.
Primary Intelligence: Were you going to choose the lowest-priced vendor no matter what?
Prospect: No.
Primary Intelligence: Would you have selected Rare Gems if it had been less expensive?
Prospect: No. That was not the only factor.
Primary Intelligence: What could Rare Gems have done differently to win your business?
Prospect: If you are going out to the marketplace and you are looking for a vendor, moving away from the retail thingthat whole business modelis a difficult approach for our population. They came with a great variety of products, but they were high-end products, which is not always what people are looking for in terms of product. I think there was a gap there that they werent filling. Their price was way off as well.

*Vendor names were changed for confidentiality purposes

To be competitive, you have to understand the value that sells. Price will be a component in the value equation, but it wont be the only one. And, from our experience, it isnt even in the top two most of the time.

Dont believe the price myth. Listen to your wins and losses. Find out what they value and how you can best meet those value needs. If you do, you will win more. Lots more. Otherwise, youre hoping that your price is attractive enough to lure in the price shoppers and those clients are hard to keep around.

If you have thoughts on the subject, give me a call at 801.838.9600 x5050 and well chat.

Getting the Most out of Win Loss Analsysis

by admin , May 25, 2007

What is Win Loss Analysis?
A Win Loss Analysis is a systematic analysis of the new business opportunities for which your sales team (or channel partners) has competed. By implementing a Win Loss Analysis program youll be able to obtain reliable, actionable and unbiased feedback about how well your sales team performed in recent competitive opportunities. And, youll be able to identify much more, including the best practices of your top performers, your competitive positioning within each opportunity, and how well your products and services were received.

What are the benefits of a Win Loss Analysis?
A Win Loss Analysis will reveal the risks and opportunities associated with your sales strategies, your competitors strategies and your target markets. You can learn about your marketplace in a way that transcends simply knowing about your own customers. A Win Loss Analysis will also reveal the varied buying habits, challenges and adoption rates of your customers, your competitors customers and your mutual prospects.

If you want a clear picture of each individual sales opportunity and the emerging trends across multiple opportunities to help sales professionals win more business, a Win Loss Analysis can do the following:

-Improve individual and company-wide competitive win ratios
-Establish clear Win Loss benchmarks
-Increase sales per employee
-Build successful sales organizations that are always improving
-Discover the reasons for lost opportunities
-Increase your competitive advantage
-Enhance your understanding of competitors

By obtaining reliable and unbiased feedback from your recent sales opportunities, sales representatives can refine their techniques, learn how to effectively target a clients needs, and make appropriate presentations that put your company and products in the best possible light. A Win Loss Analysis will provide you with empirical, yet pragmatic, information to drive your business, products, and marketing decisions toward an improved competitive advantage, increased revenue growth and greater market share.

Which departments within an organization are impacted by a Win Loss Analysis?
Although many people assume the information from a Win Loss Analysis is only for the sales force, we have found that Win Loss will impact every department in your organization. Additionally, key individuals in your organization such as Sales Representatives, Sales Management, Product Development, Marketing and Executive Management will all be able to leverage the actionable information that is captured in a Win Loss Analysis program to make better decisions.

Sales Representatives will better understand the perception of their prospects and what they were really thinking about the representatives abilities and effectiveness. Sales representatives will also begin to better understand their strengths and weaknesses, the companys positioning, their competition and the overall marketplace.

Sales Managers will get data on the key issues that are hampering their over all sales efforts. Hard data on what your competitors are doing right, what youre doing wrong or not doing, and data on how the market perceives you. This information will help sales managers to refocus, redeploy, and retrain where its most important.

Product Development can now begin to understand more about where a solution or product may be lacking against their competitors and what features and functionality are most important to the prospects in the pipeline.

Marketing will receive direct feedback from their audience as to what is working and what isnt working. Theyll learn which marketing tools have the most impact with whom and which are not worth the investment of time and money.

Executive Management will now get actionable intelligence on every aspect of the entire sales process. Theyll learn about new players in their markets and gain insight into current market trends.

Life on the Prarie – The Best Ranchers Protect the Herd

by admin , May 23, 2007

At the risk of alluding to your client base as cattle, lets consider the experience of a successful rancher. A small part of his year is spent on increasing the herd (birthing calves). Most of his time is spent nurturing, caring, feeding and protecting the herd from dangers. He builds fences, renders aid, steers the herd to the greenest pastures and fights to keep wolves, poachers and other predators away from his livestock. This herd of cattle is his life. He doesnt have the luxury of a safety net or fallback plan.

A business has a great deal in common with the rancher. You work hard to bring in a few new accounts every year. But, if you are like most businesses, 75%+ of the value of your business exists in your current accounts.

Your competitors (either other ranchers or wolves) know the value of your accounts and want them for their own. They are fighting hard to get inside your fences. They may even dress up in funny little cow suits so as not to spook the herd and possibly even fool the rancher.

This is the reason why you have to focus a substantial amount of your competitive intelligence on maintaining your accounts.

There are two very important sources of competitive intelligence that need to be mined in the client lifecycle:

1-During the normal course of business (e.g. during the execution of the project or fulfillment of the contract)
2-Post renewal-defection (after the company chooses to renew its engagement or defect to a competitor or otherwise)

Your current client list interacts very frequently with your competition. Even the most satisfied accounts listen to your competitors. Occasionally, they reach out to discover new developments in the marketplace.

A big benefit of your current client base is that they are generally friendly to you and willing to provide quality information about your competitors. Usually, all you have to do is ask. They will talk.

They can tell you new development and tactics. They can tell you how you stack up in many different areas vs. various competitors. They will tell you what you will need to do to maintain competitive advantages in the marketplace against specific companies.

And, you can quantify competitive performance scores in order to perform statistical analysis and predictive analytics. With these tools, you can build very strong fences to keep the herd intact.

Keep riding cowboys (and cowgirls). If you want some ideas on how to implement Competitive Intelligence among your current accounts, talk to me. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)