Selling me-too product lines is always a challenge. First, there are often no differentiating factors other than price. Second, selling these products is akin to selling a commodity, one where extreme price fluctuations leads to market uncertainty. Third, there’s always the threat of a customer playing your price against you in order to lower your competitor’s bid. While it’s never fun to appeal to the lowest common denominator, selling on price is simply unavoidable when it comes to selling me-too product lines. However, one vital aspect of sales success is to make sure your salespeople maintain a sense of urgency by keeping their sales pipeline full.
Maintaining a Sense of Urgency!
I’ve written many times about the importance of maintaining that sense of urgency in sales. Now, the intention isn’t to use strong-armed tactics in sales. Nor is this meant to imply that your salespeople should push too hard for an immediate answer. After all, your salespeople should focus on gross profit over the long-term, rather than trying to maximize gross profit on a single order. However, when you think of selling me-too product lines, what’s the first thought that comes to mind?
In order to answer this aforementioned question, think of how a salesperson approaches a sale when they must sell product, have a limited amount to offer and most importantly, have a price that can’t be beat. How do they sell during these circumstances? Well, they’ll often immediately get on the phone and contact as many customers as possible, but most importantly, they’ll just present the facts. They won’t exaggerate the deal, they won’t bend on price, and they won’t capitulate to the customer’s scare tactics. Why? Because they know another customer will eventually buy the product. In essence, the sale is guaranteed to happen – if this customer doesn’t buy the product, another one will. Now, how can your company duplicate this sense of urgency so that your sales are less likely to give in to customer demands for lower prices?
“When salespeople must sell a product, they are less likely to exaggerate the deal, less likely to give in to price demands, and less likely to react to scare tactics, simply because the sale is guaranteed; someone is sure to buy!”
The above video explains how to defend your position as the incumbent supplier: Stop Losing Business to Overseas Competitors: Define Your Customer’s True Purchasing Costs
How Can You Help Your Salespeople Maintain a Sense of Urgency?
Granted, selling me-too product lines is never easy. There’s always a “back-and-forth” that takes place in terms of pricing, and no customer will ever buy something if the price doesn’t make sense. However, your company can still help your salespeople maintain that sense of urgency by following these simple strategies.
1. Keep That Pipeline Full: The more opportunities your salespeople have, the more likely they are to close the deal. However, aside from keeping that funnel full, you must also keep it simple. Don’t put up internal roadblocks to sales. Make your company’s sales funnel simple, straightforward and easy to work with. This means your CRM must be easily navigable, and not so cumbersome that sales wastes too much time updating information. Keep your sales on the line and visiting customers face-to-face. The more they do that, the more likely they are to close deals.
2. Give Sales the Power to Make Those Deals: Make sure your salespeople have a workable range to make immediate decisions on pricing. Don’t handcuff them by forcing them to ask for internal approvals. Give them a baseline price and incentivize them to maximize sales by paying them commission on gross profit. If need be, scale that commission to correlate with higher gross profit margins. At the very least, don’t ask them to come back for approvals.
3. Create a False Sense of Urgency: The surest way to duplicate that sense of urgency is to manipulate one of the variables; it could be the price of your product or the amount of inventory in-house. What exactly do I mean by this? Well, what if you claimed that your company had an “overstock” situation (when it didn’t) or that it was about to immediately withdraw a product offering from your market? Immediately, your salespeople would respond as if the urgency of the situation was real. Yes, you would be creating a false sense of urgency and it might be misconstrued by your salespeople. However, it would show them how differently they sell me-too product lines when they have to – as opposed to normal circumstances.
It’s easy to see how differently salespeople approach a sale when they have a sense of urgency. The best sales professionals stick to providing the facts. They offer the price, the conditions of the sale and ask for a customer’s decision – not to force that customer to buy, but simply to let them know that if they don’t take the deal, some other customer will. This is entirely different that using strong-armed sales tactics that are based on forcing customers to make a decision "on the spot," so to speak. Don’t do this. Instead, present the offer with the caveat that the product must be sold ASAP and that you’ll be calling other customers to liquidate the inventory. This is entirely different because you're not asking for an immediate decision, but instead letting that customer know they have the first shot at a great deal.
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