Competing against The Status Quo
For those who are dedicated to sell complex products to business customers is sadly often alleged that the "opportunities" to make sales because they eventually lost by the prospect makes the time pass without taking a decision or explicitly decide to do nothing.
This means that the winner is not a competitor of ours or a replacement or alternative option or a solution developed internally, but the status quo, inertia of leaving things as they are. This option is to eventually rival the numbers of any one product, but unfortunately many do not insist on marketing strategies to take this into account.
Many times the decision of the buyer to do nothing is but a mirage of the seller, you identify sales opportunities where there was actually a need to cover or a major problem to solve. Sometimes this is legitimate opportunities where a multitude of factors (ranging from psychological biases related to loss aversion and resistance to change do to some poor value of the proposals made by various providers) are the buyer to stay as .
The weight of the status quo is even more innovative products, in categories not yet adopted by the market due to the higher risks for the buyer, to resolve the needs of the users are not aware because their value is not perceived by the market.
For a supplier, eventually discover that the buyer prefers not to deal with change and maintain the status quo is bad news not only in terms of lost revenue, but real and opportunity costs: the resources spent, time wasted, and so on.
So the question is how do we avoid falling over and over again in this error and to compete effectively against Mr. Status Quo? And the answer is to treat it explicitly as a rival in our business processes.
For example, a company that I worked years ago still had some sales process (designed by DSG Consulting) where everything revolved around three questions, defined from the perspective of the buyer:
- Why would the buyer to do something (to undertake the change)? - Why not keep doing things as usual? What are the costs of not doing so?
- Why would the buyer to do so now? - Why not wait a month or a year? Is there a compelling event?
- Why would the buyer to do with our products?
Have clear answers to these questions, especially the first two, avoiding the trap of a customer that ultimately does nothing.
In "Competing Against Mr. Do Nothing" Sridhar Ramanathan gives some tips to compete against that alternative, focusing on various activities of the sales cycle:
- Qualification. Try to identify and obtain the views of potential opponents to take the project to understand why they would prefer to stay as they are. Ask why not keep doing things like that so far, why not wait a year or why the project is a priority. Decide whether it is worthwhile to invest in counter such objections or disqualified is the best opportunity as soon as possible.
- Find support among those involved in the purchase (decision makers, economic buyer, technical assessments, etc..) Identify potential winners and losers when it adopts a new solution and try to create profit for them.
- Demonstration of value for the business. Building a business case of our solution with respect to the alternative of doing nothing. Helping the buyer receives both the benefits of our solution as costs, lost opportunities and consequences of continuing as before.
In short, how to defeat the status quo is explicit and proactively treat as our main rival.
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