Written by: Vickie Sullivan | June 01, 2023
How to Compete Against Low-Cost, Less-Effective Options
In today’s budget-cutting times, many buyers create their own low-cost solution and call it done. That creates a problem. How do you compete? How do you sell something that costs more but is so much better?
The real challenge: Low-cost, homegrown solutions have the home-court advantage. They usually involve internal resources. Plus, the process is embedded in the company and has political support from executives.
To compete in this scenario, you must do more than explain how your approach is better. So, don’t try to build a case for change. Instead, make the buyer feel it is in their best interest to explore better options.
My favorite tactic is to ask open-ended questions. Ask questions that cause the buyer to wonder what they are missing if they don’t select you. Example: Instead of asking, “What would be the impact of having (your best feature here)?” start with something like, “Now that you have had this system for a while, what have you noticed that you wished you had but don’t? If you knew then what you know now, what would you have changed?”
If the buyer replies, “Nothing. We love everything about this system,” then you know two things: 1) they need a very compelling reason to change and 2) they may not know what else is out there that could benefit them.
The power of questions like these is they reveal little things that the buyer finds annoying or that are missing. You can take advantage of that small dissatisfaction and open the door to considering options that provide much more. Politicians call this “wedge issues.”
Listen: How to Respond When Buyers Love their Current System
Let’s face it: You’re the underdog in this situation. But it isn’t impossible to turn the situation around. To compete, you must go beyond making the case that your solution is better and focus on helping buyers see they can have more than what they settled for.
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