Selling More By Saying Less
I recently had the privilege of presenting at the 110th Annual Meeting of the Water & Wastewater Equipment Manufacturers Association (WWEMA). For those of you who aren’t members of this fine organization, I encourage you to check out their advocacy, events and membership benefits here. It’s a great group of industry leaders representing manufacturers, rep firms, business consultants and investment partners working together to create opportunity for all. The meeting featured a selection of speakers discussing a variety of business issues from GDPR compliance to international trade, procurement practices to corporate tax strategy. All of which are available on demand to WWEMA members following the meeting. Let me know if you’d like an introduction.
I was speaking on the concept of Selling More By Saying Less which is really just a half-truth (and hopefully a catchy title). Full disclosure: I don’t believe that you should say less. I advocate that you say more. It’s just that you need to say less about your products and more about the challenges your customers face.
We discussed a variety of factors as to why ranging from reptilian fight-or-flight responses to differences in how generations react to salespeople. I spoke about the comfort we all feel when we do what we’ve always done and promote what we know i.e. our products and services. I call it the Illusion of Control. The reality is that we no longer control how our customers access information about us, our competitors or our reputations. That information is all available with the click of a button on a computer keyboard or a cellphone screen.
Because of this, many manufacturers in the water and wastewater market are looking to build a better relationship with the end-users of their products by focusing resources on aftermarket service and support. This movement validates how difficult it is to win the attention of new customers, which often arrive in the world of water and wastewater treatment on the backend of a low-bid battle of attrition where we’ve outlasted the competition but destroyed our profit margins. Why not try building value on the backend of the sale rather than attempting to hold on to our value up front?
It’s not that manufacturers are capitulating in the fight for new business. But we’re slowly realizing that it’s hard to differentiate ourselves at the bidding stage on a project. We’re concluding it’s enough to be present and then roll the dice on whether we win or lose the bid. Quantity over quality.
Content remains the most economically-savvy thing you can invest in to give your reps a fighting chance of outperforming the low-bid mentality of this industry. By providing uniquely helpful content to the customers you are servicing and valuable insight about the challenges your prospects are facing, you support the credibility of your reps, build brand awareness and loyalty for your company and create the foundation to differentiate your offering earlier in the purchasing process.
If you say can find a way to say lots more about what your customers are up against when they’re trying to understand issues and establish objectives, then you’ll be much happier saying less about your products in the midst of a bidding war at the other end of the purchase process.
Image credit: "DSCN8018," Albuquerque Film Office © 2009, used under an Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license: https://creativecommons.org/lcenses/by-nc/2.0/