Your Toughest Competitor Is The (Often Irrationally-Defended) Status Quo

Your Toughest Competitor Is The

(Often Irrationally-Defended) Status Quo

(and a quick video with more details)

💡 Today’s Slattery Sales tip of the day: Your toughest competitor is the (often irrationally-defended) status quo.

In complex enterprise B2B sales, you might expect players to act rationally. 🤓

I’ve seen many sellers enter complex sales expecting that the strongest case, rationally and logically, will win. They believe that as long as they make the best case for their solution over their competitors, then they will win. 

(Naturally, this tends to lead to a lot of sale-killing behavior like showing, telling, declaring, announcing, persuading, and explaining. The sale then ends up at Wimp Junction®. That’s when they call us. ☎️)

💡But sales are completed by individual human beings on both sides – the seller’s side, and the prospect’s side. 

💡Humans have strong rational motives to act in their own self-interest. They have families to support and careers to protect. It’s very possible that trying something new (and failing) could sabotage everything they’ve worked for, so they have tremendous incentive to protect the status quo.

This doesn’t make them bad people. But it does make them your natural opponents in your quest to drive something new into their organization.

➡️ As a seller, you are an agent of change.

If you have Differentiating Value (DV) for a prospect enterprise, then your solution alleviates very real problems, pains, and consequences that they are living with right now. 

Your DV may help your prospects carry out their mission objectives; hold their position in the marketplace against competitors; or retain and hire great talent. Your DV makes your prospect better off than they would be without your solution. 

But just because it would be good for the enterprise doesn’t mean you’ll be welcomed with open arms. Not all players in the cast of characters will be excited for the change. 

⚠️Your presence is a threat to the status quo. 

💡One of your jobs as a seller is to figure out how your prospect enterprise will reconcile the differences between those who want to protect the status quo, and those who want what’s best for the enterprise.

🔹🔹🔹Because that process, and how you influence it, is the difference between losing the sale at Wimp Junction®, and a successful win. 🔹🔹🔹

~

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