Use this sales and motivation training to re-frame your viewpoint on your competitor’s products and services. See opportunities where you used to see obstacles, and motivate yourself with a lasting positive outlook that will help you close more sales.

Start by learning your competitor’s weaknesses and the issues that their customers have with their products and services. All products and services have some weakness that you can exploit. Some weaknesses are only an issue from certain customer’s perceptions. Even the competitor strengths that up to now you have found a real obstacle to sell against can be re-framed and seen as a weakness that helps you to sell more.

For example, a top quality high price item may appear to have no weaknesses, nothing that a sales professional can use to influence existing customers to change suppliers. But what about those customers that don’t need all of the features of a top end product. They could be paying for features that they do not use. From their perspective the additional features, and related costs, are a negative and a weakness that you can use. If your product is priced lower and is of a lower quality, because it has fewer features, this could be an advantage over the more expensive product. When you are willing to open up your perceptions, you can see what used to be a strength of your competitor’s products as a weakness that can be exploited.

Another example I have seen is when a competitor’s sales offering is a simple no-nonsense service. I have seen many sales people who thought the service they were selling against this was too complicated and difficult to sell in comparison. This was their viewpoint, based upon their beliefs. It wasn’t a truth, or a definite fact, because anything based on a perspective cannot be true or false it can only be an opinion or a belief. It is not based on fact it is merely a viewpoint and it can be re-framed.

In our example, of a service that is too complicated to be sold against a competitor’s simple offering, the sales person’s belief can be changed by asking the questions: Which sales prospects would want a more complicated service, and why would they want it. The sales prospect’s that could want a more complicated service could be someone who wants an itemized breakdown of all charges. They could want a service with some flexibility and not a one-option offering that ties them into a standard package. With an open mind, and a willingness to try out some new beliefs, you can find strengths in all features and benefits of all products and services. Remember, there are no strengths and no weaknesses. There are prospects with needs, and the closer you can make the benefits fit those needs the easier it is to sell to that prospect.

So when you re-frame your viewpoint on competitor’s products and services you can start to see some real positives. What are positive features and benefits from one viewpoint of a competitor’s products will be negatives from other perspectives. Find the perspective from which what was one of your competitor’s strengths is now a negative. Then target the sales prospects that are viewing from that perspective, because they are the ones seeing the weaknesses, and they are the prospects that you will be able to sell to.

Source by Stephen Craine