Back at the turn of the century, I think it was 2001 or so, I read about a study that was conducted in the USA involving financial institutions and their customers.  The goal was to see how effective their messaging was in help to differentiate themselves from other providers.  Very similar to what B2B ale people have to do on a daily basis.

In the study, they took the messaging from magazine ads, billboards and other non TV or radio ads, for each of the financial institutions, they took the names out, shuffled the deck and then brought in the focus groups.  The goal was to see if the people involved in the focus groups could identify the specific financial institution in question.

Well it won’t surprise you to know that very few were able to match the institution to their message.  Not surprising, think about it, how many times did you have to hold yourself back from laughing at those nicely framed ‘Mission Statements’ hanging in the main lobby, they all sound the same: “We want to be the softest, shiniest, cuddliest company, and oh ya, we want to make money too.”  I guess it is the same people writing these as the messages in the ads.

They spend a lot of time accentuating the shades, not articulating key differences.

B2B sales people fall into the same trap, they want to desperately differentiate, but they end up delineating, and worse, at times it sounds like: “We are just like them, except….”, and when it’s really bad, they go to price.  Now I know it may not always be easy to highlight profound differences, especially on the basis of product, functionality or even intellectual property.  But if you don’t differentiate, then what, well you’re an also ran, safety in numbers.

So how do you differentiate? You differentiate yourself through the eyes of the buyer.  By aligning your offering to the true objectives of the buyer.  If you shake off the marketing babble, the product hype and focus on the client’s real objectives, you will differentiate, not your product but your value to the client.  By real objectives we mean the underlying reasons behind what they are letting you know.  By asking the why, how, what if, the Impact Questions, you can get a view on the motivation behind the purchase.  Some of those will be objective based, some will subjective and personal.  If you are in a competitive industry with real alternatives with only shades of difference, you need to connect with the underlying motivators to truly be different in the eyes of the buyer.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto