How do you compete in a world of commoditized services? “6 Practical Ideas” 💡 for you.

If you are operating in a services business, you may find it challenging to “differentiate” your offerings to others.

Here are my thoughts on how you can make a serious attempt at being different and better to others :-

💡 1. Impact First Approach

You may be selling common services, however, the impact of your services may differ from others

How can your services deliver better value or impact to your customer’s business? E.g. Saves more costs, helps improves C-SAT/NPS better than others

May be, your current happy customers could advocate that value on your behalf.

💡 2. Thought Leadership!

You may use “content-centric” approach with white papers, eBooks, success stories as part of your sales cycle with prospective customers.

They may include changing industry dynamics, how your customers peers/competitors are navigating such business environment

Tell how your services can make a difference to help your prospective customers navigate this environment, successfully

💡 3. Value Creation throughout the Sales-cycle

Be proactive and go extra mile to answer their questions, address their concerns and issues

Drive substantial value at each stage of the Sales-cycle. For example; you may provide templates, digital assets or even conduct a mini-workshop and give away your findings with $ 0 cost to customers.

💡 4. Think of Proof of Concept (PoC)

You may have created many accelerators, which are used in many of your customer projects

You could identify a handful of use cases relevant to your customer to build a quick PoC

This demonstrates your commitment to invest first to get their business

💡 5. Flexibility is Key

Consider offering flexible engagement model – fixed price, time & material, shared services and the like

Share Success – do you offer base fee with outcome based fee? This can be a great incentive for your customers to consider your services

You may offer this model especially if you have delivered many projects in a similar business environment, successfully

💡 6. Relationships

All things being equal, relationship with your customers make the MOST important differentiator

This is true in ALL cases, more so, if you are in a commoditized services business

Any current customer references, employee connections, your network leverage go a long way to build relationships with prospective customers.

I would love to hear your thoughts…

#sales
#businessacumen
#differentiation
#valuebasedselling
#consultativeselling