Once you understand those key elements from your buyer, everything needs to be related to what's important to your buyer. If it's not important to your buyer, why are you talking about it.
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Hello, I'm Rachel Klett Miller with an audible Ready sales podcast. Thank you for listening. Today. We are going to spend our time in this episode talking about differentiation. John Kaplan joins me today. Hi John, Hey Rachel, how are we different and better? We all want to be selling a highly differentiated solution, but sometimes that differentiation isn't so obvious to us as salespeople. We need to work to determine how we can position our features and functions in a
way that has value for the customer. So John, let's just start with short discussion on where reps most often go wrong with differentiation.
Yeah, you know, I think that the some of the biggest challenges are is that, you know, reps don't articulate it in a way that has, you know, meaning to the buyer. They get a little cocky about it and feel like they can win the deal alone on differentiation, and many sellers don't know how to set it up in a conversation. You know, It's like it's like giving
away a punchline too early. And lastly, most companies don't do a good enough job arming their sellers with the knowledge and skills about the company differentiation and how to position it properly.
Yeah, it's understanding that differentiation, but how what it means to the buyer, which is a difficult part. So let's talk about what you do right. First. You have to have a solid understanding every differentiation, and what we mean by that is you have to know what makes your solution different and or better than competitive alternatives.
Yeah. At Force Management we break differentiation into three major categories. Unique differentiation and this is the differentiation that it has value to the customer and only you can do it. So therefore, you want to get this differentiation influenced into the required capabilities and you'll win every time. So if you have unique differentiation and the customer sets it's required, you know, and you get it into the required capabilities,
you'll win it every time. And you know, the way the world works today, though it is today's unique, differentiation becomes comparative in the future, so if it's any good, it's going to get copied. So that's why we also talk about another one called comparative differentiation, and again it has value to the customer and others say they can do it, but how you do it is better for the customer, and these are where we really compete most of the time. And then the last one just for information.
We're going to focus on unique and comparative today, but holistic differentiation is powerful as well, and you know, it has value to the customer. It tends to be more about the company, like company performance, financial stability, background of ownership and stuff like that. And in a customer's mind, these tend to lower the risk of doing business with your company, so they're important. The problem is that reps tend to use these too early in the sales cycle and they don't get credit.
Yeah, they mitigate we always say they mitigate risk, but the deals are one and loss. On that comparative differentiation most often. So for this conversation, John, let's focus on that unique and comparative group. Once you understand, then you can go to the customer execute the right type of discovery. And it starts with that first basic sales skills uncovering customer need.
Yes, like everything we talk about on this podcast, Rachel, it's always starts with an outside in with a customer problem. You need to uncover the outcomes that they're trying to drive and what's required to drive that outcome. It always starts with great discovery. You can't use differentiation to your advantage if you don't understand how to position it to solve a customer problem.
We have a concept that we use called trap setting questions. These are important in discovery.
Talk about why, Yeah, trap setting questions are really really critical and a couple things. We want to make sure that when we start this conversation, a trap setting question is nothing more than a discovery question with the intent to trap the competition. You are not trapping the customer. Repeat, you are not trapping the customer, So it's a discovery question, but the intent to trap the competitor around your differentiator.
So every morning you need to wake up, know your differentiators, and prepare great discovery questions that will set up your differentiation. So you've got to remember in discovery, I can't just tell someone they have a problem. If I tell them they have a problem, they're going to resist me. So I have to get them to tell themselves that they have a problem. And let me give you quick example. So I worked for a software company back in the
day that had very powered, powerful differentiation. It was called bi directional associativity, and what it meant was that a change made anywhere in the design through manufacturing process was immediately reflected everywhere. So it was like global find and replace, you know, for manufacturing and changes and timing of changes which significantly impacted money. So I knew that I had to get the customer thinking about the pain of making
changes in the process, and especially late changes. So I'd wake up and prepare questions like walk me through the last engineering change that created a challenge for you, and what impact did that change have on the timing of the project? And what impact did that change have on the cost of a project? So you know, I kept going deeper and deeper. Who ultimately pays for that? You
were the customer. So I was trying to, you know, uncover profitability issues, and so now I have them standing in a moment of pain when a change that's made in let's say, in an engineering drawing is not reflected in manufacturing. And then Rachel, the last thing, which I call the crux move, is I have to cement the fix for this problem, which is my differentiation in the
customer's require capabilities. And so i'd follow up with the crux move is so, mister and missus customer, it sounds like you're going to need to make sure that a change made anywhere in the process is reflected everywhere automatically. And they would say, yes, absolutely, that would be great. And later on, when I was done with my discovery, I would pivot to how we did that and tell
them about our functionality called bi directional associativity. So the crux move, you know, took that software company that I was talking about from zero to a billion dollars in less than ten years and stock splitting five times in seven years and forty three straight quarters of never missing
our number to Wall Street. It was an incredibly important, not only incredibly portant differentiator for us, but the fact that they taught us how to position it effectively was just astronomical in our success.
I think you bring the way you told that story, John, there was one thing I wanted to call out. Once you heard the customer mention your differentiation as part of the requirements for success, the buy dep directions utivity, you didn't just jump into the fact that you had it, you said later on, when I was done with my discovery, then I would pivot to show how we did that and how we did that differently than others.
I'm glad you caught that. I'm really glad you caught that because I have this vision in my head of you know, braveheart and mel Gibson yelling hold hold. Because what we have a tendency to do is the minute we hear anything in a conversation that just smells or sniffs like our differentiation, we jump all over it and start talking about, you know, how we can do that.
And you have to get the customer in a position that is so critical and so urgent that they know they have a problem, they've created their own urgency around solving it. So it's totally related to what we always talk about in differentiation. And I want to just simplify it a little bit, because trap setting questions are nothing more than great discovery questions with the intent to trap the competitor around the differentiation. So don't over complicate it.
Right, you're trapping the competitor, and then you're also getting the customer to reveal requirements for success that align to
what you can do. And to say it a different way, John, what we were talking about is you have to understand the problem fully, right, So when you're holding like Mel Gibson in Brave Heart, I mean, it's exciting when you hear a requirement that you know you can do better than the competition, but you really have to understand that problem, what's required to fix it, and importantly, the outcomes that the customer is trying to drive all of that information,
all of those components really allow you to correctly map your differentiation to do it in the right way. So let's talk about that, John, I want to spend a little bit of time on that. We just don't want to rattle off our features that we know are differentiated, like, oh that's important to you, Oh we can do that. Here's right. You need to hold on that a little bit too.
Yeah, really really good. So once you understand those key elements from your buyer, everything needs to be related to what's important to your buyer. If it's not important to your buyer, why are you talking about it. So you have to position that differentiation as it relates to the requirements for success and the outcomes they're trying to drive. If it's not related to the buyer, don't focus on it.
Yeah, and you've told a great story so far on this podcast. We love the stories. I would love to hear a story where you worked a comparative differentiator this comparative angle really well, or maybe just where you sucked at it. But we can focus on something you did well well.
No, I got one. This one. This one was a cliffhanger for me, but it's one of my favorites on this topic. So it's when I was selling software and I was closing. I was in a closing meeting with the CEO of the company, and we've done an incredible job with discovery. We found out which critical project was in trouble and demonstrated how our software could solve those project issues. You know, way better than anyone else. And
I'm smiling like a cheshire cat. When all of a sudden, the CEO says to me, mister Kaplan, we have a problem. So I'm thinking to myself, okay, I'm always prepared for objections, but this one almost got me. This one almost got me. And I said, you know, what's the problem? And he told me the color of your screen is blue and not green, and which was a true statement, but it was so simple it was I couldn't tell if he
was kidding. So I thought he was kidding me. And so luckily I was trained extremely well, you know, by my company and about you know, the importance of differentiation and how to properly position it. So after settling myself and holding my composure, I asked a discovery question. So when in doubt, ask a question. So I said, yes, mister CEO, the color of our user interface is blue, but can you tell me what problem that creates for you?
And he answered, you know, my engineers are telling me that they've been looking at a you know, a green screen for over ten years and it's distracting for their work. And I instantly knew that this was the last ditch effort by my competitor, who was about to lose the account. They had a green screen, and after all the validation events that we did proving our technology, all that they come up with was the color of the screen. So
I immediately went to the final required capabilities. And I want you to just listen to this point, audience, please, this is so important learning moment for me and my life as a seller. So I immediately went to the required capabilities that have been agreed upon it by the customer. There was no screen color listed, so no problem, I said, no problem, ceo, here's a list of your required capabilities. At the top of the list was what we were
talking about earlier, is bi directional associativity. So I'll add green screen to the list. And then I asked, can you stack rank these for me? And so I went through and asked if green screen was more important than next, if it was more important than why, And on each one, you know, of the previously agreed upon requirements, it wasn't more important than any of them. So in the end, green screen wound up last. And it was one of my favorite interactions with a business owner when the CEO
said to me, John, that was well done. I wish my sellers could do that. I'll take care of the green screen issue. We're all good and so I really really have contemplated that over the years, is that if I've done a good job positioning my differentiation, it should
show up in the required capabilities. If somebody brings up, you know, another required capability, don't be afraid to go back to or they bring up some difference between you and the competitor in this case, don't be afraid to go back to the required capabilities and just have a discussion about those. And in the end, you know, even if it's a required cap even if it is a some type of differentiation. In this case, I guess you could call it comparative. However, we started this podcast by
saying it has to add value to the customer. Green screen in the end did not add value to the customer that was overwhelming enough to change the require capabilities. So it was such a huge learning moment for me.
Oh, that's great, and we've all had to deal with our own green screen.
It's right, it's right green screen moments. I love that hashball.
We have a great podcast also with Marty Mercer on stack breaking the required capabilities in your favor. I'll go ahead and link that in the show notes for everyone else, Thank you for the conversation, John my pleasure. All right, thank you to all of you for listening.
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