This week we are looking at why simply meeting your customer’s requirements usually leads to losing.
The situation:
Sellers become excited when their prospect lists their required features and knows their product checks all the boxes. Unfortunately, this is usually a red flag.
The problem:
Your customers are not experts in your industry/solution. Their requirements will skew towards the most basic/standard features – not the differentiated parts of your solution.
If your solution easily meets your buyer’s requirements, then most (if not all) of your competitor’s products will. Best case, you slash pricing to win in a price war. More often, you lose to the low-cost provider in your space.
The solution:
To avoid this pitfall, build on what your prospect thinks they need with your product’s differentiators. You need to enhance their decision criteria to encompass features/value only you can provide.
Teaching the importance of your differentiated capabilities can eliminate your low-cost competition from contention, even though they meet your buyer’s original requirements.
How to improve:
Build a list of the most common requirements you hear from prospects. For each requirement, add a differentiated feature and why it matters. Where possible, attach a case study to the differentiators.
Refer to this document frequently until the motion of “if you think you need x, you also need y, here’s the value of y, and here’s a story that proves it” becomes natural.
