Pummel the Heathen

This past week was our annual sales kickoff week. You know, that time of year when the entire field sales force descends upon the home office and drains the surrounding territory of available beer. Then we train the sales peeps on products, competition, and strategy while they’re all hung over.

During the training, we discuss competitive positioning or how to beat the enemy. This is otherwise known as pummeling the heathen. The CEO will like that perspective – but I digress.

When your product is not well differentiated from similar offerings in the market, or if you don’t know HOW it’s differentiated, you end up focusing on nits. Our widget has a sprong setting 2 one-hundredths of a furlong less than that of brand C, providing huge superiority on something, but we’re not sure what. That’s why you should pay big American dollars to buy our gear rather than theirs. Please… your 5-year old nephew knows that’s weak.

I’m a very big believer in focusing on a few major things and letting the rest go. Clearly articulate the three major differences. Then specify, how they translate into value and dollars – to the customer, not to the sales guy. The remaining nits will take care of themselves in being discussed by the gear heads ad nauseum while they’re all on line gaming.

The Big 3 should provide clearly distinct differences which allow your product to be quantifiably and qualitatively separated from the riff-raff in your space. If your product absolutely doesn’t have these, it’s a commodity. Or a clone.

For instance, if you can’t demonstrate that your widget holds 3x the volume in 50% of the space, delivering 125% greater performance at the same price point as the heathen – preferably through direct comparison to your competitor’s products or documentation for the sake of veracity, you have a problem. And your hung-over sales folks will know it. You will be summarily jeered from the speaker podium by them as they reach the bottom of their mimosas.

Remember. The word differentiation means “set apart by differences”. If that’s not happening with your product, you have your work cut out for you. And the beer saturated sales people will make sure you know it.