7 moves to beat competition in B2B industrial sales

Trying to move the game on another battlefield is a quite specific effort, however there are some general rules or best practices that we can use:

1. Anticipate Google:
   Instead to talk about the problem and promote the solution with your content marketing, talk to customers who are experiencing the symptoms of the problem (D.Kurlan), but are not yet aware. To do so you need to anticipate supply crashes monitoring the market with proper analytics and intercept the customer inviting, informing and (i)ntertaining her.
2. Perturb the status quo:
   Instead to promise a gain or soften a pain, show them the loss and tell them to get their’s back. “Make America great again” is the lesson for all those believing a customer is moved by luring her or helping her regain efficiency. Customers move only when they want their stuff back. Tell them that good performance is the enemy of great performance – the one someone has stolen to them. (J.Berger)
3. Change the scale:
   Instead to let your customer compare apple with apple, change the scale used to compare your offer, stopping them profile your offer. To do this you have to put your offer in a class of its own: positioning it on a unique step of a category’s ladder, or positioning the competition’s offer in the box of the old games. (A.Ries / A.Raskin)
4. Redesign the market:
   Instead of traying to differentiate to appeal existing customers, create a value profile that appeal non-consumers. Check what are the level of non-consumption in under-developed market and build a proposition that can appeal those that cannot (yet) consume. (W.C.Kim – C.Christensen)
5. Move to the service side:
   Instead to insist proposing a solution of the past, leverage the competitor’s disruption. When a disruptor tiers down your business model like Air B&B has done with small hotels, remember you can always jump on the new solution trajectory, building the services needed to make the disruptive solution work.
6. Shift the sales focus on the story:
   Instead to offer something that your competitor cann’t, make a claim not otherwise made in that particular field, or build a unique brand. (R.Reeves). In other words: sell your approach or sell your why.
7. Get a Bigger Ally:
   Instead of fighting the Goliath Corporation on the market, outflank it with the help of a Political Ally. They are always interested in bringing work on their territory, and get the merit for it.
8. Make the customers lock themselves
   Instead of shaping the solution to the customer needs, ask the customer to help you fit your solution for him. A wise negotiatior ask the other party to take part in the creation of the solution, and therefore lock out the competition (C.Voss).

Don't try to get inside the customer's head by offering logical and informative support for their decision-making process.

Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon demonstrated that the more information you give the customer, the less they are able to draw conclusions. You'll only end up confusing them, and they'll seek refuge in the safest possible response: doing nothing—or worse—choosing the market leader. (Simon won the Noble Prize for this in 1975, before the digital tsunami…)

Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman demonstrated that when a decision is complex and involves high personal risk (for example, risking one's career), our brain stops using logic to find a solution. It relies on seven alternative mental associations: like when we have to choose a good wine from an unfamiliar menu. We use price as a proxy for quality. Having nothing better, we pretend that price is a substitute indicator for our taste buds. He warned us in 2002 and won us the Nobel Prize.

Attract the customer towards the mental association that is best for them, and guarantee us an ethical reward. with Professor Cialdini's 7 Principles of Persuasion.

I hope these insights help you beat the competition in your next B2B sale.
If you'd like to learn more, contact me.

Flavio

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