Remember Spock from Star Trek?
Fingers on the head, instant thought transfer.
Imagine having that in sales. Calls would be 30 seconds: “Here’s what I know about your problem and my solution.”Done.
The Knowledge Gap Problem
At times you’ve probably thought: “If they only knew what I know, they’d buy instantly.”
What’s the gap? It’s communication.
You live in your specialized domain every day. You’re surrounded by experts. You know the product inside-out.
Your prospects? They don’t live in your world. They’re not as well-informed about your domain.
Sales = bridging this gap and transferring knowledge effectively.
Why Customers Don’t Decide in Your Favor
If you have something special that solves a specific customer problem that they are motivated to solve, but can’t get traction, you have a communications gap.
Start with your messaging. If it’s not precise and targeted to specific pain points, prospects won’t understand your value. Worse, you’ll sound like every other vendor.
A Strategy I learned selling for IBM
Here’s how to differentiate when everyone has similar features:
The scenario:
- Your product has features A, B, C, D
- Competition has A, B, C, D too
- Result: You’re commoditized. Price war incoming.
The flanking strategy:
- You uniquely have features E & F
- Customer determines they absolutely need E & F
- Result: You win.
Critical caveat: If E & F are just “nice to haves” in the customer’s mind, you lose, or it goes to a price decision (a race to the bottom).
Making Your Uniqueness Matter
Your job: Make your unique capabilities (E & F) critical to their decision criteria.
Don’t compete on features everyone has. Compete on what only you can deliver.
The Procurement Battle
Expect pushback from consultants and purchasing departments. Their job is to:
- Level the feature playing field
- Downplay your uniqueness
- Create price competition
Your job: Make your differentiation so tied to their business outcomes that it can’t be dismissed as “nice to have.”
The Bottom Line
You can’t do a Vulcan mind meld. But you can:
- Get crystal clear on your unique value (features E & F)
- Tie that uniqueness to critical customer needs
- Communicate it so precisely they can’t imagine buying without it
That’s as close to mind reading as sales gets.