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Recently I was meeting with a consulting client of mine and we were going through the preliminary stages of his sales process when I asked him a very simple question: What is your company’s value proposition? To my shock and surprise, there was silence followed by the sound of crickets (it was late August after all).
A few seconds later he blurted out a bunch of jumbled generic answers to why their company was great and what they offered that was different from the marketplace. Now this company is no small player in the lawn care industry – in fact they are one of the largest privately owned companies in the country.
We all had a good laugh as I sat with the president of the company, as well as his sales director, about how they could not answer this very simple question. After all, the answer to this question was the very essence as to why they were in business in the first place.
The reason we were laughing was because due to all of their success and the amount of market share they had they were clearly doing something right. In fact, they were doing many things right and executing on their strategy, but they had not once consciously thought about what they offered to the lawn and landscape industry market that was different.
From there, it was safe to assume that they were not constantly communicating to their entire company of more than 120 employees what made them better than the competition. After we were done laughing, I gave them an hour in one of my company’s classrooms to really think about and write down what made them different as a service provider. When I returned, they had over a dozen reasons and the level of their confidence and enthusiasm about what made their company great had tripled.
Practice, practice, practice. This is not the first time I have encountered this problem. In fact, I became aware of this communication within my own lawn care company. Each year I gather my team of executives, managers and sales leaders and I do this same practice. I give them several hours in a room together to discuss what makes our company, Noon Turf Care, truly different in the marketplace. I then ask them to write these specific features down. It sounds like a simple task to do, but in many cases it can be very challenging.
It’s challenging because, such as our case, we offer so many service differentiators to the consumer on a daily basis that we almost take it for granted and forget about them. That is all well and good, but as business leaders and sales leaders we must not forget about what these are and it is up to us to communicate them clearly to the sales prospect.
When asking yourself why you are better as a company than your competitors, you need to dig deep and make sure that the entire company knows every single differentiator within your value proposition. From there, they will be 10 times more confident in selling your company’s services, and it will then validate and provide reasons as to why your company’s pricing is what it is.
A challenge. This month I challenge you to revisit your value proposition. Write down at least 10 features and benefits that your company offers that differentiates you from your competition. Now, we all know you only really need four or five features in order to be confident to sell your service, but reaching for 10 or 12 will allow you to push to innovate and find even more that exist within your organization.
They may even already exist, but you may not be conscious about the fact that they are there. While doing this exercise, I also want to remind you (and rain on your parade) that the days of “we are fully insured” or “we offer free estimates” are over. Today’s consumer is more educated on what they are buying and why they are buying it from you versus the other options they have.
Yes, some of them may sound quite simple or elementary but maybe your competitors aren’t doing them. Below are a few examples that can offer you a starting point that you can draw inspiration from when thinking about your own company.
• We provide free service calls within 24 hours and we really execute this because it is tracked and managed by the entire company and our team members are financially incented by them.
• We offer an iron-clad guarantee – we will work with you until you are completely satisfied or we will refund you on the last service provided.
• We provide the best terms in the industry by offering the highest pre-payment of service discount
• You are assigned one field specialist to your account so that they will get to personally know you and your property.
• We call, email and text you prior to each service visit to your home so you are aware of when and what services will be performed at your home.
Of course your value proposition can go much deeper than this, but it could take just this amount of information to make your sales team confident in selling your company’s services. Once you have completed the task of establishing your bulleted value proposition, it should be written down and given to all of your team members.
Most importantly, it should be given to your sales team so that they can then sell off of those features and provide these differentiators to their sales prospects in writing. This is what we call educational based selling. No matter how you chose to utilize this exercise after it is completed, I guarantee you will have a more cohesive team that will execute this with synergy as an entire company.
The author is CEO of Noon Turf Care and owner of Green Light Sales Consulting
