You Don’t Need a Better Sales Process, You Need a Better Sales Message

When Sales needs to hunker down and improve its performance, what do you typically hear from sales management? “We need a better sales strategy.”

Then, your sales management team and your sales skills training experts spin the dial to pick one of the many options available in the marketplace, in hopes that it will help you rise above the economic pressures and rapid commoditization of your market.

Unfortunately, many of these programs struggle to deliver the results hoped for. In fact, a few years back, McKinsey & Company documented that 75 percent of the efforts at companies using one of the hottest sales process methodologies in the field—solution-selling—were deemed to be failures within three years.

It’s Not About The Sales Process…

Sales processes and methodologies have been around for more than 20 years. Most companies have tried two or three of them. And most salespeople have been trained on at least that many.

Don’t you think maybe something is missing?

…It’s About Having The Right Messages To Fuel Your Sales Process

Several years ago, we performed a survey of marketing and sales executives. We found that 70 percent of the executives surveyed ranked commoditization or competitive differentiation as their number one threat to growth—outside the economy.

Why?

There are more capable competitors than ever before. And customers are overwhelmed by the amount and complexity of information. As a result, customers, in their confusion, were telling salespeople that they see all the competitors as the same.

Your challenge is to avoid commoditization and set yourself apart from the competition. And that’s not something that can be accomplished with a new sales process.

Your Message Is Your Most Strategic Competitive Asset

Your sales conversations are becoming the last battleground in competitive differentiation. And, your messaging, even more than your methodology, is what matters most in this hyper-competitive environment. In fact, you could argue that your message is your most strategic competitive asset when everything else appears the same.

So, how do you develop messages that make a difference – no matter which sales process your organization uses? Corporate Visions can help. Our sales and marketing message solutions help you find your unique point of view so you can create differentiation strategies with clear points of difference between you and your key competitors.