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Out Sell Your Competitors – The Easy Way!

Guest post by: Meridith Elliott Powell

Article Overview: Last week I was onsite with one of my favorite clients, a manufacturer in South Carolina. During a dinner meeting with the CEO and CFO, I heard a great sales story. My client had been looking for a new insurance provider. Seems that the company they had worked with for years sold out to a larger organization, and their account was now being handled out of Texas. My client really wanted a firm with an office in their state, and a representative they could meet with in person. Sounded reasonable, so they started taking bids and interviewing providers.

Out Sell Your Competitors – The Easy Way!

Last week I was onsite with one of my favorite clients, a manufacturer in South Carolina. During a dinner meeting with the CEO and CFO, I heard a great sales story. My client had been looking for a new insurance provider. Seems that the company they had worked with for years sold out to a larger organization, and their account was now being handled out of Texas. My client really wanted a firm with an office in their state, and a representative they could meet with in person. Sounded reasonable, so they started taking bids and interviewing providers. This is where the story gets good. After two-months they narrowed it down to three candidates, and were close to a decision when out of now where they simultaneously landed two big contracts. All of a sudden Human Resources, the department overseeing this decision, was swamped having to recruit, hire and train new staff to handle all of the work created by these contracts. Needless to say the urgency to find a new insurance provider fell to the back of the line. So did two of the insurance providers desire to stay in touch, follow-up and keep in contact with my client.

Six months later, when the dust had settled and the new staff was in place and working, Human Resources was once again focused on finding a new provider. This time the decision was easy. Originally they had narrowed it down to three candidates, but by the end of this whirlwind of activity it was clear to them there was just one choice.There was only one provider who bothered to stay in touch, provide value, and routinely follow-up.

Besides keeping her name in front of her potential prospect, she built a relationship and ensured that when they were ready to make a decision she was top of mind.

If you want to outsell your competitor then you need to follow-up. I know it is not sexy, not exciting, but it is one of the most powerful ways to outsell your competitors. Research tells us that less than 81% of sales people make more than three follow-up contacts with a prospect. Research also show us that most prospects buy after the seventh contact. (I believe that is even higher now, given the shift in our economy.)

Most sales people "give up" because they have decided the prospect is not interested, or they simply don't want to be annoying. Two very bad assumptions.

The point is, we really have no idea why a hot prospect suddenly goes cold, but more often than not it has nothing to do with us. Perhaps a bigger priority came up at work, they have a family issue, or they simply got behind due to a vacation or holiday. Who knows? You see people are busy, and rarely is what we are selling at the top of their priority list. The sales person who is proactive, makes things easy, and continues to follow-up is the sales person that will win the business.

And this whole idea of being annoying, well you are only annoying if you are making the follow-up contact about you and not about them. Too often, our follow-up systems consist of sending an email or calling every 30-days to ask if they are ready to make a decision. To follow-up effectively you need to keep the focus on the prospect, and follow these three simple steps:

Design A System - you need a process in place that reminds you when to follow-up, who to follow-up with, and one that can record important notes and ideas that you learn from each contact.

Make It Personal - follow-up needs to be customized and individualized to the prospect. Too often I see follow-up systems that are just that a one-size fits all. Follow-up is about building relationship and establishing trust, so you need to take a very personal approach.

Add Value - however you choose to follow-up with your prospect, you need to add value. Articles providing information about challenges, opportunities they have. Tickets to events they are interested in. Introductions to people they would benefit from knowing. Adding value ensures your client enjoys and benefits from the follow-up process.

My client's insurance new provider did not win the business because she is smarter, had a better product or quoted a rock bottom price. She outsold her competitors simply by following up!

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Article Tags: Competitor, Sales, Sell



Related Forum Posts
Re: Congress To Make eBay A Rat -- Good Idea or Bad Idea?? - Hi GT, I agree with you. Competitors can use this against each other which is not good for business
Re: e-Commerce and e-Payment providers - When I came back to Japan in 1999 I sometimes used to ask my students if they would buy anything on the Internet and at that time most thought it was too risky. I'd encourage them to try by using well known sites such as Amazon.co.jp and also pointed out that using a credit card on a reputable site was safer than using it at a restaurant. I can't remember the last time I had that discussion or when the "tipping point" occurred in Japan. To answer your other question, I use Paypal for several reasons: 1. Brand familiarity 2. Easy to use 3. Free to withdraw 50,000yen+ to my Japanese bank account - a huge benefit (but maybe other systems also offer that...?) 4. Easy to cancel subscriptions On the down side, their transaction fees are quite costly, they are difficult to contact and when disputes arise you can sometimes lose even when you can prove via your tracking service that the disputed item was "delivered" to the customer's address!
Re: Domain name sugestion - Hi Anelly, Support-Box.com sounds very good to me. Easy and catchy.
Re: SEO... - 1: Find the Best Keywords 2: Discover Your Competitors 3: Optimize Your Title 4: Optimize Your META Tags 5: Use Headings 6: Use Title and ALT Attributes 7: Nomenclatures 8: Create a Site Map Page 9: Include a robots.txt File 10: Install a sitemap.xml for Google MySQL/Oracle:
Delegating - Good info and interesting list. Easy to see how the authority or power is slowly passed to the person - the secret would be knowing WHEN to move to the next step. I like to avoid people who are stuck at the #1 level. Chris


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