4 Tips To Outsell Your Competition

While every founder and most CEOs like to think of their company's products or services as unique and life-changing, the fact is that most solutions are a dime a dozen. So when your solution is actually quite similar to your competitors, how do you stand out from the crowd?

The answer is so simple, it's often completely overlooked: your Unique Value Proposition (UVP). A UVP is what differentiates you from the crowd and makes buyers want to buy from you and not them.

Here are KSW Solutions' tips on how to identify your UVP, and other technical terms that sound like jargon, but are important for you to find and close new clients.

1. Understand what is UNIQUE in your Unique Value Proposition (UVP): It's okay for you to have 99% in common with your competition — just make sure you understand that 1% that sets you apart and really use it to shine. It's something that you've verified your top competitors don't have. Let's use us as an example. There are probably tens of thousands of sales and marketing consulting firms in the US. What differentiates KSW Solutions isn't our years of experience (the competitors have that), it's not our understanding of every part of the sales and marketing processes (we do have humble beginnings as SDRs and in SEO). It's that we offer Sales AND Marketing, even when you only hire us for one. All marketing clients get the benefit of having a senior CRO consulted for key deliverables. Every sales client gets a Fractional CMO that looks over their website and messaging. We even offer free, one-off consultations for our partner's clients. No strings attached. How many marketing or sales consultants offer that? Maybe a few, but it's so rare that it's a distinctive value for us.

   Your UVP should line up with what your ICP (ideal client profile) is looking for, so a Sales and Marketing Consulting Firm that offers free ice cream might sound enticing, but it's not what our potential clients are looking for in a service provider. This is so important that it's worth paying a consultant to help you identify. One of our clients manufactured a valuable product, but the industry they received 90% of their purchases from was winding down, so they needed a new industry (or industries) to target. An outside consultant identified the UVP of their product and matched it with growing industries. Now they make tens of millions of dollars a year utilizing their UVP for other industries.

2. Identify Relative Advantages: Even if your product is 99.9% similar, you should still have a relative advantage. These are the areas where you aren't unique, but you excel compared to the industry standard. Examples of relative advantages are things like faster turn around times for supplying orders, faster shipping times, extended warranty periods, exceptional customer service, or exclusive features. These are advantages that can push you over the line when the client is making a decision about who to purchase from, and can also help you charge a little more since you are providing more value.

3. Validating Your Absolute Advantage: If you are going to make a claim that you are the biggest, fastest, or otherwise most superlative in your industry, you can, but you better be able to prove it. Absolute advantages could be things you have that no one else does, like patented technology, special awards, unique expertise, or proprietary processes. These types of advantages should be communicated in a serious way, such as a white paper, case study, or if possible, verified by an impartial third party. The expense of validation should be recouped in sales.

4. Building Trust and Credibility into Your Brand: Last but certainly not least, to effectively sell your products or services, building trust and credibility are paramount. That is to say, word of mouth will spread faster than most marketing campaigns, so you want to make sure your clients have good things to say about you and your brand. Make sure you are asking happy customers to leave reviews on Google, Facebook, Capterra and the like, and make sure to add these testimonials to your website and regularly (but not too often) share on social media. Make sure that your testimonials and case studies highlight how your clients benefit from buying from you in objective ways (money saved, new clients attained, hours saved, accidents prevented, etc.). When you do right by your clients, they want to do the heavy lifting for you and bring warm leads to your door. Make sure to also offer an incentive program if relevant, such as 1 month free for every qualified lead met with or 15% off their next order for every referred client that closes.

The more you understand why your ideal clients should want to buy from you, and the more effort you put into making sure working with your brand is a pleasant, value-added experience for your clients, the more leads you'll have lining up at your door making your SDRs very happy.

Ready to make sure you get this important task done right the first time? Reach out to us today.