Create competitive advantage by splitting one buying criterion into TWO criteria

Recently I was doing a deal coaching session with a global market research company, strategising around a current opportunity for them. It was a competitive situation, where they were hoping to win the customer's business in a tight field of three other agencies. We frequently work with our accounts to build strategies to help them win important deals in situations like these.

In competitive situations, it is important to understand exactly the criteria that your prospect is going to use to evaluate the options. This may sound obvious, but it requires having actual conversations with the account; don’t assume you know what they are thinking. 

In this specific case, an interesting situation arose. We were looking at one specific buying criterion that was very important to the account, but where there was little difference between the competing suppliers. No one supplier could deliver that area more effectively than the others.

However, as I probed a bit, we discovered that, while it was true that all competitors were mostly equal, there was a small part of the process where our account had a distinct advantage. This sub-process would deliver better and more reliable results from the research, but it was an issue that the customer did not think of as a separate component.

For instance (and this is a made-up example) let’s say that one key buying criterion was the ability to Source Research Participants that matched the profile of the research. The customer felt that all the suppliers could do this effectively. However, let’s say that our account has developed a proprietary step in the process of finding participants that tends to yield participants that both match the profile AND are likely to Complete all of the Steps required by the research. In terms of Sourcing, there was no advantage, but in terms of “Completion” there was. The problem was their customer didn't think of that as a separate issue, and they lumped it all into Sourcing.

So we helped out our account to create a strategy for how they would split the issue into two criteria. They would acknowledge that all players in the field were best practice on Sourcing. But then they would emphasise Completion as a critical sub-component of that process, demonstrating both how important it is and proof of their expertise. They emphasised that Completion should be considered as a separate issue, not rolled up into Sourcing. Importantly, they emphasised not just their proprietary capabilities, but the business impact that would result – in this case better and more reliable results over the long term.

By splitting the one issue into two issues, they effectively introduced a new consideration in the buying process, one that was “hidden” within something that the customer was already asking for. This yielded a significant competitive advantage, even though the capabilities of the competitors were very similar.

What should YOU do?

•  -  Coach your teams to make sure that they really understand the criteria that your customer will be using. Validate that they are not just using assumptions, past experience or gut feel, but are actually having conversations with key contacts at the account.
•     Even where there seems to be no real competitive advantage, dig deeper to see if there is some sub-issue that you can deliver better than the competition.
•     Where there is competitive parity, split criteria into two issues, graciously acknowledging the parity in one of them, but emphasising a true competitive advantage and customer benefit in the other.