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In situations where you are selling a product or service that is perceived as a commodity you have very few options with which to win other than to compete on pricing.  To get around that you need to either get your customers looking at other things your company provide to help their business, or show them that your product is superior.  If you’re just an order-taker type salesman, you can stop reading here as you’re the perfect person to sell a commodity product or service based on pricing.  If you consider yourself a professional, or have aspirations of becoming one, then keep reading.

One might say, at this point, that most of what we do as salesmen is show customers why doing business with you versus Company X is exactly what I’m talking about here.  In a way it is, but at a core level it is not.  By selling Benefits you are showing value to a client that may come from things outside your product or service, but you aren’t necessarily decommoditizing your product.  By this I mean, just because someone sees the value of doing business with your organization versus Company X because you have faster shipping times, better terms, or easier to understand billing, it doesn’t mean you’ve decommoditized your product.

Decommoditizing your product means that the client would see your product or service as a superior option to the competitors options. Making your product stand out and breaking the customer’s perception of it being a commodity typically requires a data-intensive and technical discussion.  Here are a few situations where decommoditizing your product may be useful:

You are Stuck in a Pricing Battle
If the client sees your product as a commodity (Basically, Company X’s and your product are equal), and they see your offerings outside your product as equal, you are going to need to alter their perception.  If you don’t change their perception, they will nickel and dime you and your competitors until one of you cries, “Uncle!”  If you can make the client see that their product is superior in a way that matters to them, and not the same, the pricing war ends and you win!

The Customer Can’t Seem to Make a Decision
If the client is stuck and can’t pull the trigger you should not only be asking questions about what is causing the hold-up, but also ensuring that your product hasn’t been commoditized during their decision-making process.  When a customer can’t see find a difference in the product or offering they can often sit on proposals.  In these cases, they should be asking questions of you and your competitors to try to find differences, but don’t assume they will do this.  There are plenty of situations where they won’t ask because they don’t know the right questions to ask, and they don’t want to appear like they don’t know what they are doing.  It’s much better for you to ensure your product stands out as superior, and to ask them questions to help them find what they need to make a decision without affecting their ego.

Your Competitor is Attempting to Commoditize Your Products
The obvious counter is to bring the customer back to seeing your product as the superior option.  This is especially important if you are a market leader, or truly have a superior product or service.  While at Airborne I would push hard to commoditize our domestic services because the perception in the market was that UPS and FedEx (especially FedEx) were superior services.  If I could get the customer to see that delivery times and on-time percentages (two key things of importance for many clients) were nearly the same across all services, I could then get them focused on other Benefits I could offer.  If I couldn’t get them to see the services as a commodity I would struggle because of the market perception.

Luckily for me, FedEx and UPS rarely countered my tactic properly.  If you’re viewed as the superior product, ensure you maintain that perception. If it starts to change because of your competitor, immediately decommoditize your product or service.

Commoditization (or the inverse) can give you advantages over your competitors, or help you shore up a deal with a client that has proven challenging.  In many cases, you can use this tactic to help you with indecisive customer, or to find additional wins and benefits.  This is especially useful when you have clients that aren’t giving you much information to work with because of their perceptions.  By changing their perceptions you can find your way to more fruitful discussions allowing you to find areas of need and want.

What other situations have you found where decommoditization has been valuable?  Have you won business by doing so?

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Is your product a commodity?  If so, are there times when you wish it wasn’t?  If it isn’t, do you sometime yearn for a situation where your product or service could be viewed as a commodity?

As a sales tactic, commoditization (or the inverse) can be a factor that helps close your deal.  This week I want to focus on situations where your product or service isn’t viewed as a commodity, and how helping the customer see your product as such can help you shore up the deal.  Here are a few situations where helping the customer to view your product as a commodity can help:

Customers that say, “You get what you pay for, and you’re less expensive than <Vendor A>”
In many cases, these types of customers are focusing too much on the product or service itself, and not other points that may be important to their business, or the execution of delivery of the product or service.  Helping them to see that your product or service is similar to what your competitors are offering can help them understand why your product or service is less expensive, and how that can affect their wants and needs.

Customers that say, “Your product/service is much more expensive than what I currently use”
This is the exact opposite of above.  If you’ve shown the customer the Benefits of your Features and Advantages, they are still focused on pricing, and they aren’t answering your questions well enough to figure out why they are so price sensitive, you’ll need to try a different tactic: Shift your focus to commoditizing your product/service in their eyes.  By doing so, you can get them look at other areas of what your company provides because they agree that your base product and/or service is equal.  You can then use those other areas as features and advantages of doing business with you to support their benefits which help them justify the increased cost.

Customers think their current vendor is the best provider or manufacturer
In these situations commoditizing your product/service can take a customer focused only on the quality of the good/service itself as the determining factor of “best,” and get them to look at a bigger picture by agreeing that your product/service is similar to their current provider.  This situation often necessitates a very technical and data intensive discussion to get them to see that Brand X is no better than your product/service.  If you can get them to view your good or service as a commodity, you can then help them see what other benefits you and your company can supply independent of the product or service itself.  In the end, you’re out-selling your competitor more on the merits of what you and your company can help them do versus just selling your good or service.

By commoditizing your product or service you can move the customer’s focus away from the direct product/service details or price, and onto the bigger picture of helping them grow their business.  Anyone can learn how to apply the features and advantages of their products to create an individual benefit for their client.  It takes a skilled salesman to commoditize their product or service in order to ensure their customers are focus on the big picture benefits that you can deliver rather than on prioritizing some other specific detail or factor (including pricing), higher than those benefits.

Have you ever had the occasion to commoditize your product?  What was the situation and how did you do it?

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For the first part of the question the response was standard, and it looked like my friend understood that Benefits were personal to the individual to whom they were presenting.  The answer to the second part of the question left me a bit surprised in that it didn’t appear that they understood a clear action to take once the Benefit was presented.  I then asked, “What do you think you should do?”

The response was accurate in that they said, “Well, I should probably confirm that what I’m presenting is understood in that they agree that I am delivering the Benefit via the Features and Advantages mentioned.”

This was a perfect answer!  The action that should take place once you’ve presented is the simple asking of questions to ensure three things:

1. Your customer understands those how those Features and Advantages benefit them individually
2. The Benefits you are presenting are good enough to progress the sale
3. You’ve covered everything that is important to them in their decision making process

Here are some example questions you can ask:

Clarifying Benefits
Would that benefit your situation?
Would something like this work for you?
Do you see how this would help you do/achieve X?

Will the Given Benefits Progress the Sale
Does this appear to be the type of solution you are looking for to help you do/achieve X?
Will this help you and your business?
Will these types of Benefits help you make your decision?

Covering All Points to Help Them Make Their Decision
Have I given you everything you need to make your decision?
What haven’t I covered yet that may be important to you in the decision making process?
Have I caused any confusion for you during my presentation?  How can I clarify for you?

Without clarifying these things the FAB is really pointless. By asking questions you confirm that what you are presenting is actually beneficial.  You also leave the customer room to mention further needs and wants to ensure you can close without any reservations from the client.  They will also appreciate the fact that you are slowing down to ensure they understand, and that you are being thorough.

What other questions do you like to ask to ensure your Benefits are beneficial?

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I read an article today where the writer gave four examples, and the benefit associated with the example.  From a training and development standpoint it was an awful article.  Had a new trainee read that, they’d have thought that because Client A was in X Situation, of course the BENEFIT would address X Situation.  WRONG!

Just because the potential client is in a crummy situation it doesn’t mean the Benefit has to fix the situation.  In fact, the only way to really know the Benefit, a personal win for the individual, is by asking questions to clarify what truly matters to this person.

An example in another article used a maintenance manager.  The CFO had told this manager to cut costs on the maintenance of the manufacturing line.  The manager was concerned that he couldn’t do this without sacrificing his staff’s safety.  The writer then just assumes that the benefit for the manager is reducing costs.  WRONG AGAIN!

The Missing Link
What these articles are missing are the previous step of questioning, and none of them talk about how to find a Benefit.  By just talking about a FAB process and not training the far more crucial part of sales, questioning, people (Especially new salesmen) tend to start making assumptions.   Maybe the writers are assuming that the salesmen are asking questions, or even know how to ask questions to effectively find a Benefit?  Just like the examples assuming a client’s Benefit, that’s a terrible assumption.

As a manager, when you’re talking about FAB with your team ensure that you talk about questioning and finding the REAL BENEFIT each time the subject comes up .  As a salesman, you shouldn’t even be thinking about dropping a FAB on a customer unless you are 100% sure you know that the Benefit is going to help that individual.  Don’t assume you know the Benefit; ensure you know it by questioning in a systematic way.

Have you ever assumed the Benefit and fell on your face?  Tell us about it.

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It’s funny, but I talked to a few friends of mine to get some other perspectives about bullies for this blog.  All three said very similar things about how they dealt with it as kids, but as adults people just don’t act like that anymore.  They believed that people don’t go through their day trying to bully others into giving them what they want.  My follow-up question was as follows:

So you’ve never had to deal with someone who always tries to steamroll you into getting what they want or need at work, or in life?

To which each responded with something along the lines of, “Well of course.  I’ve dealt with people like that at work.”

So wait, they don’t get bullied, but they deal with bullies at work?  I am very confused.

Yes, we all deal with bullies from time to time.  People that think they can push, coerce, force, or even threaten you in order to get you to do what they want.  Unfortunately, some of these people are our superiors (which creates other issues I can’t cover in just one blog posting), but often they are simply lazy people (or co-workers) that either don’t like how you’re doing something, or you’re good work is making them look bad.  As adults it’s a bit easier to deal with these people than in our youth, but handling them, in this writer’s humble opinion, is pretty much the same.

As a child I was what we might refer to as a “little fatty.”  I weighed in at 150 pounds at age 10.  I was unable to play youth football because I was heavier than the weight limits, and when I was able to play at age 9, coaches called me The Icebox while wearing #72 (Gotta love The Fridge!).  This size created ae a source of ridicule for other kids and made me an easy target for bullies.  At a young age I learned to deal with these people in one of two ways:

1. Ignore them, and eventually they just go away because their intimidation tactics aren’t getting the reaction they want.
2. When ignoring them doesn’t work you have to rain down hellfire and brimstone so they’ll never bother you again.

Ignoring them worked for me in all but one situation, a guy we’ll call “Craig.”  As a kid I could only assume that Craig just took pleasure in tormenting other kids.  It wasn’t just me thankfully, but ignoring the guy just didn’t work.  He’d start to bully me, I’d turn and just walk away with my friends, and he’d just shove me in the back and laugh.  I even talked to my dad about this one.  He gave me the sage advice of, “Don’t let people bully you.  Some people you’ll come across in life are just jerks.  In their own delusions they think they are special, and some have insecurities, and they will keep coming at you, and you’ll need to fight back.” He then said something I’ll never forget.  He said, “It’s never okay to start a fight, and if you do, you’re getting punished, but if someone pushes you into one, make sure you protect yourself and finish it.”

As a child I wasn’t a fighter, I was actually very timid and a bit shy which is very different from who I’ve become.  My father’s words were a bit foreign to me.  Sure I had been in scuffles and scrapes, but it wasn’t something I did willingly.  He explained that standing up for myself, and not allowing others to push me around will be important throughout life, and that I needed to learn it now.  The long and short of it was that Craig wasn’t so tough once I realized he didn’t like people fighting back.  In the end I had some bruises, and I don’t think there really was a winner of the fight, but Craig never bothered me again.

In hindsight and with age, I now realize that Craig had his own fears and issues he was dealing with, and that maybe all bullies have insecurities or fears they struggle with.  Maybe it’s their ego being too small, and bullying helps them feel bigger.  Perhaps their ego is too large, and bullying solidifies in their mind that they deserve to carry the big ego.

As adults it isn’t our individual issue to worry about why someone is a bully, but sadly we do have to deal with them more often than we’d like to in the workplace and in life.  Bullying can come from people not wanting to carry their load of the work, or from people that may not want to take risks, so the bully pressures others to put their necks on the line for them.  Regardless of why people bully, or how they do it, my tactic is still the same.  Ignore them, and if ignoring them doesn’t remedy the problem, make them never want to push you around again.  I guess the positive to being an adult, is that it rarely has to come to fisticuffs.

How often do you have to deal with bullies?  How do you handle the situation?

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DO use them
Even if you aren’t the type that needs anecdotes are stories to grasp concepts it doesn’t mean that your audience couldn’t use one.

DON’T always use personal anecdotes as examples of how to be a success
If you talk about yourself only as a winner people will start to see you as needy, and it may affect your credibility.  If your ego needs stroking then you probably need to address that issue separately from your coaching sessions.  I’ll talk about successes from time to time, but I usually use failures and lessons learned from failure when I use personal anecdotes because those lessons usually were much more valuable than how I succeed at something.  Success may have been because I got lucky, and it had nothing to do with skill.

DO use other peoples’ stories
By using someone else’s story of success, especially someone your audience is familiar with and/or respects, gives your lesson a huge amount of credibility versus talking about you again.  There is also nothing wrong with attributing a success of yours to someone else associated with you at the time.  The important thing is to make sure your audience learns the lesson, right?

DON’T steal someone else’s anecdote or story to use as your own without crediting them
Doing this is a sure fire way to get nailed and look like a fraud.  Remember the DO above. It’s great to use other’s stories and experiences because it gives you credibility.  If you try to steal their story and someone finds out, you lose a ton of credibility.  It’s not worth it.

DO be pointed in your approach
When using anecdotes to train your people, or help them see a different way of looking at a situation, ensure that you aren’t just throwing out a story for the sake of storytelling.  Start by making your point, then use the anecdote or story to show an example, and finally ask your audience if they understand what you are attempting to convey.  By ensuring they see the point; you are doing your job as a manager.  Without the audience seeing the point, you’ve just told a story.

The moral of the story (pun fully intended) in the use of anecdotes is that the anecdote has to make the point and help your audience grasp what you are trying to train or manage.  Without their grasp of the lesson you’ve just wasted everyone’s time.  Always ask whether or not they understand where you are coming from after you’ve used the anecdote.  The dialog, brainstorming, and training really start after you’ve told the story.  Application of what you’ve coached/taught via the anecdote or story is most important.

What types of anecdotes do you like to use?  What are some other DOs and/or DON’Ts that I may have missed?

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Sorry for missing a week, but I was in hardcore study mode for the GMAT.  Also, to be clear, below I am talking about being BOLD, not BRASH.

I just finished a book called The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, and I loved it.  The book made me think about quite a few things including:

• How my past affects my actions and thoughts today
• How little things you grew up with linger in your mind, and how simple things like smells can trigger memories
• How a lack of action or boldness creates regret today

Let’s focus on the third one.  Recently, my father passed away after battling with cancer.  Over the past few months, I’ve given my father space as he was a very private man, and I know that he didn’t want people to see him as he deteriorated.  There were a few times where I had spoken to him, or my step-mother (a strong lady by the way that had her own battles along the way), and just wanted to drive down to the Bay Area to visit them, but the response was often, “Today isn’t a good day,” or, “It’s been a tough week.”

I would push a little, but then acquiesce because Dad was sick and I didn’t want to make it tougher on him.  At least that was my logic in all of this.  Part of it was because I didn’t realize that he was in such bad shape.  Another part was because Dad didn’t really let on how bad he was in pain, feeling, or what was going on.  Even my step-mom thought he wasn’t in pain even in his last couple of days.  Still another part was that I thought he would still be around longer, or pull out of this.

My regrets, like Ali’s in The Kite Runner, were because I wasn’t bold enough to just drive down to the Bay Area, and tell him, “I want to spend some time with you, Dad.  Just hang out, watch some tube or football, nothing crazy.”  Unfortunately, now I get to live with the regret that my last real conversation with my Dad was about the pain he was in, and giving my permission for him to let go which was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

As I sit here writing this – with a tear in my eye caused only by my regret brought on by my lack of boldness – I’m thinking of the things I would have liked to talk to my dad about.  Some were serious, others just wanting to know more about him, his youth, why he made decisions he made, and learning more about our family.  I never got to have those conversations with my dad, and I’ll always regret it.

There are two types of regret:

1. Regret because you were bold (e.g. you made a tough decision and it didn’t quite go the way you hoped)
2. Regret because you were not bold (e.g. you failed to be decisive, and missed an opportunity)

Those people that say they live their lives with no regret are naïve, or full of it, because they’ve never made a big or tough decision in their lives.  Sadly, I’d imagine that many of those people will have regrets when they are much older because they weren’t bold.

In sales we are called upon to be bold fairly often:

Do I go over the middle manager’s head to get to the actual decision-maker? My bet is that you regret not being bolder in the first place and calling the C-Suite of the company.

Do I break away from exactly what the RFP is asking, question people in multiple departments, and present a solution based on real input and not what was asked? Is it worth the risk of being disqualified in order to give the potential customer something real?  Do they really know the right questions to ask for an RFP as the area covered by the RFP isn’t their area of expertise?

Do I close the deal now?  Should I wait until I get a few more buying signs?

I could go on, but you get the point.  Part of our job is to be bold, and I’d rather have regrets over making a decision, taking a risk, and being bold.  It’s much better than the feelings the character Ali dealt with through The Kite Runner, and that I’m dealing with now because of my lack of boldness with regard to my father.  It’s also easier to learn from a mistake or failure caused by being bold, than it is to only regret not doing something when you had the opportunity.

Do you have regrets (I’m sure you do)?  Are they because of being bold, or because you weren’t?

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I did everything for my sales team, made reports easier, didn’t require them to do SFA/CRM work because it was just a waste of time (I was so wrong), and in general just tried to keep them in the field selling as much as possible.  This also led to me doing a ton of little tasks for my team daily to keep them focused.  I was always taught you wanted to be hands-on with your team, but I was too hands-on.  What inevitably happened was that I got buried in minutia by doing everyone’s work causing me to work later in order to get their work, plus all of my work done.  Most importantly, what suffered was my time in the field with my team.

I had a couple of strong sales guys that were able to be effective without too much guidance from me, but I had three times as many that needed my guidance, experience and coaching.  I had zero time to help my team grow.  I had them in the field, but they were generally ineffective because they were struggling without their manager to coach them and help them improve.

Next, I realized the above, and made some changes.  This caused frustration with my team because I had over-committed to them, and now I had to renege on that commitment.  It also led to me being less of coach, and more of a “Here just give it to me and I’ll handle it because I can get it done more quickly by myself than I would having to train you to do it” kind of manager. This cost me much more in the long-run because I didn’t actually transfer that work back to them.  I was still doing their work in addition to being on more sales calls, and my work.

I then learned to be a coach, and not a manager.  A manager manages minutia and business, a coach trains his team to perform their jobs.  Sure I still had to manage the business, but when I took ten minutes to train someone how to do their job rather than just doing it for them in two minutes, I saved two minutes each time it needed to be done.  Did it take more time that first time?  Of course it did, but then that’s our job as managers.  We are there to train our people to do their job to the best of their abilities, and hold them accountable for their work.

It was at that point that I started to gain more respect and trust by giving that individual the time they needed to learn how to do something rather than treating them like a child and just doing their work for them.

Being hands-on is what we do as managers and leaders.  We have to train our people and develop them to grow, but there is a line that is far too easy to cross when you’re pinched for time.  Ask yourself whether or not you are being too hands-on.  If you find you don’t have the time needed to have the one-on-one time with all of your employees that they need to succeed, even your “Rock Stars,” you are doing something wrong!

Make sure you’re always training, and not just taking care of everything.  As a leader your job is to develop everyone else, and ensure they know how to do their job, and then hold them accountable for their responsibilities. If you could do everything, there would be no reason for the employee.  Are you too hands-on?  Were you at one point?  How did the demands on your time change as you learned to be a coach rather than a manager?

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