4 minute read
Many marketing and sales experts, including me, have been saying for several years that “differentiation” is vital to the success of a salesperson, a brand, or a company. When you look, act, and sound like every other salesman or marketer – the prospect will see you as just another annoying seller. Unless you provide your prospect or client with a compelling difference between you and others, there is no contrast, so you get lumped into the same boring category.
TRUE STORY
One of the newer marketers I regularly coach (weekly), approached an insurance agent and explained to the agent the following: “We help your policyholders recover quickly with the least amount of cost and inconvenience when they experience a property disaster in their home. In addition, our goal is to always make the agent look good and help with client retention.”
The agent was pleasantly shocked and called all the agent producers in her office to come out and meet the marketer. The agent informed everyone that from now on they were to call this new restoration company! Plus, they were no longer to use XYZ – (the “other” company). Her comment also included “These people are different and are the kind of people we want to work with.”
CHOOSE DIFFERENTIATION
Being different involves many factors, but certainly one of them is to not look, act, and sound like all your competitors! With the overwhelming “noise” in the marketplace, with as many as 15 sellers, marketers, and vendors visiting a typical insurance agency in a single day, differentiation becomes critical. There is simply no way to stand out and be heard by the prospect if you can’t separate yourself from all the others.
With over 7 billion people in the world, over 330 million people in the US, and 31 million businesses in the USA, it’s a challenge to be unique, unusual, and DIFFERENT. But you won’t be highly effective unless you are able to create differentiation for yourself and your brand.
SIMPLE
The single easiest way to create and present something different than your “fellow marketers” is to speak differently. The example above (a true story) is one of the simplest ways to be unique, different, and not sound the same as everyone else. People notice when you make it about them. People want to be the center of attention. People will embrace a salesman that focuses on the pains and issues of the client. That elevates the salesperson’s credibility and increases the trust factor. Without that Trust factor, they aren’t likely to do business with you!
Differentiation will be the single most important aspect of your marketing and sales efforts. If you aren’t comfortable learning an elevator speech that makes it about the client, or you just want to keep doing it the way you always have – you are in the wrong position. To be an ultra-high performer today in the marketing/sales world require you to adopt an entirely new level of separating yourself from the pack.
Want to know more? Call me: 419-202-6745
By Dick Wagner, Co-Founder of The CREST Network, LLC
Nationally recognized coach, consultant, trainer, and speaker
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