Sound familiar?
Death and taxes may be the only certain things, but the growth of the U.S. healthcare sector comes close behind. Competition is fierce and buyers often cannot tell the difference between one vendor and another.
Perhaps the buyers don’t care – but you do.
It’s frustrating. You are pounding the pavement, trying to get meetings and set up demos. Yet the buyer can hardly distinguish between you and the last sales rep through the door.
Worse, the odds are that your product sounds a lot like your competitors’. Your messaging may be similar. Heck, you may even use the same bland, corporate tone.
So what can you do?
If your product is solid, if your company’s tech is, if not cutting edge, at least up-to-date, then there is usually a way to make your case and close the deal. The trick is to get that close a little easier – and a little more often.
There are things that can help. You can build really detailed competitor summaries, so you know each competitor backwards and forwards. You can create comparison matrices to show how the competition stacks up against each other – and against you. You can go through their websites and marketing materials and figure out the precise messaging that will help you stand out. You can even pull all this intel together to create sales battlecards for your team.
These are the kinds of things I put together for my competitive intelligence clients. They’re called sales enablement tools, and they can make a huge difference to your bottom line.
Sales enablement tools can help you …
1. Improve win rates.
When you have all your intel in one place, it’s easy to review it all before each sales conversation. That keeps the details fresh in your mind, so you’ll know exactly what to listen for and how to respond to questions. All that goes a long way towards a successful close.
2. Accelerate prospects through the funnel.
The more your questions are on target, the more you know how to steer the conversation, and the better you understand how to counter your competitors’ messaging, the faster you can get to “yes.” And that gets you moving on to the next prospect sooner.
3. Secure more meetings in accounts where a known competitor is incumbent.
You can’t win if you can’t get in the door. If you struggle with getting buyers even to meet with you, sales enablement tools might just become your best friend. You’ll know exactly what concerns to raise to make you worth talking to.
Preparation is everything.
The one who wins the deal is usually the one who was best prepared. Sales enablement tools help make sure that person is you.
Photo by Adeolu Eletu on Unsplash.