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How to Beat Your Competition

Guest post by: Mike Brooks

Article Overview: Once again, these questions (and all the other ones I know you're thinking of right now) will reveal what your prospect's true buying motives are, and until you know them you've just shooting blind. Kind of like 80% of your competition does. Once you understand what it's going to take to sell them, you need to build the value of doing business with you and your company.

How to Beat Your Competition

Many sales reps send me emails asking the same thing, "How can I sell against my competition and win the deal?" They tell me it gets more and more difficult as there is always someone who has a similar product for less money, or who can offer their kind of service with more bells and whistles, etc. What can they do? Let's look at a few facts and then put together a sales strategy. To start with, if a prospect hasn't bought anything yet, it means they haven't found exactly what they're looking for, right?

And, as always, only your prospect knows what the magic "it" is (their true buying motive), and so it's up to you to ask the right questions to figure out what it's going to take to close each particular prospect. I'd start with these:

1. If your prospect is telling you they can get it cheaper somewhere else, ask:

"Why haven't you gone ahead and placed your order there yet?"

Or,

"Yes, that is a good price, just curious, what's preventing you from going with them on this?"

Or,

"What were you hoping to gain by talking with me (or with my company)?"

All these questions will force your prospect to tell you what their real buying motive is and will give you a chance to earn their business.

2. If your prospect says they have been doing business with X, or that XYZ offers more service, or better add-ons, etc., say:

"Yes, I've heard about their offer - what's missing about it that still has you looking around?"

Or,

"Yes I know, in fact many of their customers call me as well. What motivated you to call me?"

And,

"Yes _________ I know all about the other companies and their promotions. Just out of curiosity, why haven't you made a decision on this yet?"

Once again, these questions (and all the other ones I know you're thinking of right now) will reveal what your prospect's true buying motives are, and until you know them you've just shooting blind.

Kind of like 80% of your competition does. Once you understand what it's going to take to sell them, you need to build the value of doing business with you and your company.

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Article Tags: build value, inside sales, phone scripts, sales reps, sales training, scripts



Related Forum Posts
Re: Congratultations to GT! - Hi GT, Competition is great and i know I wouldn't be here without it, but it is not the main reason for posting and participating. But I admit, it is the trigger I need to get some work done. If there is none, i create one for myself and try to make it. First prize is ice cream.
Re: Company services - [quote="bmueller47":2rl7ve6q]Hi there, Just for curiosity, can anyone share, what was there longest wait on the phone. As for me, it took me near enough an whole hour. Mind you, I had it on the speakerphone and it was not a timed call, ie it was free. I was doing something else during that time. Regards Beat[/quote:2rl7ve6q] Hi Beat, I was recently put on hold and had to wait 40 minutes before I got through to a live person to take my tennis court booking (and by then, most of the good time slots were already taken). For a $194/Winter Season Membership, I expect a little better service than that.
Re: Is Google Search getting better or worse? - Competition and that too stiff is something I have always loved and being a true web user I hate spammers the same way and so I am very happy with the recent changes that Google has made and so I must say that it is getting better. I am happy because now we could be able to get and read fresh and unique content instead of the repetitive ones. Now the value of actual SEO will be seen as results now will be completely depend on the hard work SEO and strategies an internet marketing company will apply to get on top of search giant's ranking. surfing the web daily as addiction I have seen most of the webmasters asking several questions related to real time search and how they should commence now to get better and faster results, found lots of useful information and learned new strategies too.
Re: What Keyword research methods do you use? - Hi GT, Good post, I also typically use the Google Adwords keyword tool for no other reason than I have always used it. If other members have a better one they can recommend then please join the post. I have also found the Stealth Keyword Competition Analyzer extremely useful for selecting the most effective keywords to use. Back to Google, if they are main website keywords then I am looking for fairly large monthly global ‘exact’ searches but if it is just for extra weekly content then I am quite happy to run an article optimised with a long tail keyword phrase that may only have a monthly search of 200-300 because I know I have a better chance of ranking highly for that keyword phrase. regards, Mal.
replying to forum posts with no answers - Thanks Beat - we solved the problem but I appreciate the reply!


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