One of the most challenging balances in sales: showing too little of your solution vs. showing too much.
If you simply meet buyer requirements, you’ll lose to a lower cost competitor.
This sounds like:
“You had everything we need but we found it all somewhere else for less.”
If you sell more than they need, you’ll lose for being too fancy.
Your buyer will say:
“We love your product… but it’s a Ferrari and all we need is a Camry.”
So what’s a rep to do?
Let’s look at it through the view of a rep selling a forecasting/revops tool like Clari:
1) Don’t oversell basic features
Here’s how I would introduce table-stakes functionality:
“Role-based views for forecasting is something you’ll need to be successful. Everyone in our space offers it. Just wanted you to know we did as well.”
If you act proud of basic functionality you’ll look silly. Label it, show it, move on.
2) Expose a bigger problem
Here’s how I would expand how they think about their problem:
“Companies worried about forecasting accurately should be equally (or more) worried about getting leadership attention on the right deals. Just filtering by “deal size” means you are ignoring the deals that will actually make or break your quota.”
3) Tie differentiators to the bigger problem
Here’s how I would set a trap against low-cost competitors:
“If all you want is to roll-up forecasting in complex hierarchies you’ll do fine with anyone in our space. You’d save a lot of money by going with the cheapest solution.
The reason we built deal scoring was to help companies forecast more accurately… while winning more business.
Let me walk you through why companies that started with ‘I need a tool to help me forecast accurately’ are ending with ‘I need to forecast accurately while increasing win rates across our most critical deals.’”
TL;DR:
Check the box with your basic stuff.
Expand your buyer’s requirements with a bigger problem.
Differentiate your solution by solving the bigger problem better than your competition.
Win more deals.
