Leverage Your 'unique’ Capabilities, by Gary Walker

When your prospect is contemplating which vendor best meets their needs, do you want to be lumped together with all of the other vendors that are competing for their business or, would you like to be viewed as a provider of unique capabilities... something that they must have in order to: achieve a goal, solve a problem, and/or satisfy a need?

If you haven't done so already, make a list of those features/functions that are unique to your offering. What are those things that your offering alone can provide? Determine in advance how you will introduce them into your sales conversation (by using plausible emergency questions). Through your conversations determine how your customer operates today without your unique capability(ies) and determine what the value would be to them, the organization, etc. if they were in possession of that capability today.

Buyers are taught to position every product as a commodity; something they can obtain from any comparable vendor, as a tactic to get a lower price.  If you can leverage your unique capabilities, you can begin to differentiate your offering from your competitor's, eliminate potential competition, prevent yourself from being treated like a commodity, and arm yourself with a legitimate business reason not to agree to a request for a discount.

One Response to "Leverage Your 'unique' Capabilities, by Gary Walker"

1. David Cooke Says:
   August 25th, 2007 at 11:05 am

   Great suggestions. I have found that the biggest challenge for my clients have been identifying the component of their offering that is unique to them Many companies fail to understand that what they think are special to their product offering, i.e., service, experience, quality process, etc. are the same things being presented by their competition. Identifying the unique value proposition and how it matches to solving the customer's identified needs is the only way to get beyond commodity thinking.