Define Your Tie Breaker and Reenergize Profitable Sales Growth

If you have taken the time to discover what your customers and prospects truly value as differentiators you are well ahead of your competitors.

But why stop there? Why not take the extra step. The extra step is to discover what factors mostly influence your customers buying decisions, more specifically which of your differentiators are relevant to them. Without these you don’t have a ‘tie-breaker’ and commoditize yourself where price is the only perceived area of differentiation.

A live example

Let me provide for a realistic example that happened today. One of my customers is the largest distributor and importer of stainless steel fasteners. In fact they provide fasteners to 85% of the boating manufacturer’s in the U.S.

Needless to say they sell a commodity in the highest order. But they have taken the time to differentiate themselves. Rather than letting price dictate, we have worked together to meet with their key customers to find out what their requirements and expectations are. From there they established their areas of differentiation and value proposition. Rather than price dictating the decision, they sell on the following:

• Quick and accurate response (in this case they are providing quotes).
• Accurate fill and on time deliveries.
• Knowledge-both industry and product.
• Financial stability of their company
• Deep inventory levels (no back orders)

Now that these relevant points are established they have defined their tie-breaker. Price has been removed as their customers and prospects safety net in the negotiating phase. Again, without knowing what your tie-breaker is a lower price is the natural recourse that a customer or prospect will always resort to.

How you can benefit from knowing your tie-breaker

1. Equip your sales team to hold price levels or perhaps raise them slightly.
2. A renewed sense of confidence that your service/product is worth more.
3. A stronger sense of confidence in asking for a price increase with certain customers.
4. Increased earnings.

Price outweighs value every time, unless you know what your customers and prospects value and how to sell that value.

I would encourage you to give this some serious thought. Set up a simple survey with your key customers and ask what they value and why. Ask them to rank the importance of receiving what you offer into a priority list, I think you will be surprised that to learn that price is seldom in the top five.

Many companies are walking away from additional profits simply because their differentiators and value proposition are not relevant to their customers and prospects; make the choice not to be one of them.

Own your success,

Andy