The Ability to Differentiate – A Vital Key to Selling

The Ability to Differentiate – A Vital Key to Selling

Written By Jeffrey Gitomer
@GITOMER

KING OF SALES, The author of seventeen best-selling books including The Sales Bible, The Little Red Book of Selling, and The Little Gold Book of Yes! Attitude. His live coaching program, Sales Mastery, is available at gitomer.me.

Four major sales questions:

  1. How do you differentiate from your competition?
  2. Do you struggle with “how” and “when” in the selling process? (How and when to close, and how and when to follow-up.)
  3. Do you spend an hour writing and re-writing a simple email, then spend another hour crafting a subject line?
  4. Does your daily email look like everyone else’s email?

These are MAJOR sales-completing questions and barriers to sales that cause consternation, frustration and REJECTION in your sales world.

REALITY: Differentiation has always been a major struggle for salespeople, and at the same time is a vital key to customers buying.

CLARIFICATION:Compare to” the competition vs. “differentiate from” the competition.

  • When you compare yourself to the competition, it’s typically a price comparison.
  • When you differentiate yourself from the competition, it’s about value.

The obvious key is that the customer must perceive a difference, or there is none.

Salespeople are taught all about their product or service. And to some degree they are trained as professional salespeople. Most are taught some system of selling. Many are thrown to the wolves to make cold calls. But almost none are taught how to differentiate from their competition (in the mind of the customer).

Back to the email, or should I say the Gmail, or should I say the ordinary looking email, or should I say the often-deleted email, or should I say the poorly written email, or should I say the unopened email. You get my drift.

Keep in mind that email is still the prime method of communicating between salespeople and prospective customers. And keep in mind that your emails pretty much look like your competition’s emails.

“We’re different, we’re different!” You scream. “Uh, except for our emails. They look exactly like our competition.”

It’s not the email that matters, it’s the outcome from the email that counts.

  • Was it opened?
  • Was it responded to?
  • Was it positively received?
  • Did anyone talk about how cool it was?

Think about it. Wouldn’t it be WOW if your emails were both memorable and viral? If the recipient of your email called a coworker over just to show him or her how cool it was?

A REAL SALES TOOL. Last week I spoke at length with Andy Horner, the founder, chief architect, and CEO of Ace of Sales (now called OutStand). I asked Andy to give me a list of 10 things that made Ace of Sales both outstanding and desirable.

When we finished the call, I gave Andy a brand-new title: “The Ace of Differentiate.”

Here are the top ten sales-making elements that make Ace of Sales (Oustand) a web-based game changer:

  1. Personalized email templates to make a friendly, polished, graphic impression.
  2. Email Greetings to connect visually and creatively. Emails that get responses.
  3. Over a thousand business-class email graphics – from funny to heartfelt.
  4. A library of pre-designed, pre-written, ready to send business messages.
  5. Customize your own WOW designs with your own personalized photos and text.
  6. Send easy to create ezines to build loyalty by giving consistent value.
  7. Send printed postcards, greeting cards and gift cards.
  8. Use ShareCodes to share your best designs with your teammates.
  9. Track who opened your emails and clicked your links.
  10. Manage your contacts with simplicity, elegance and ease.

And yes, for a small additional monthly charge, Ace of Sales will work right alongside of your CRM, in complete harmony, and totally seamless.

This is an exciting sales tool that helps salespeople differentiate, get responses, and actually make sales.

Go to www.outstand.com and take the 30-day free trial. Please.