Why should a customer choose you over your competition?

It seems like an easy question, right? Yet, I find time and time again when I ask business owners this question, they are rarely able to give a clear, concise and compelling answer. It’s not that they don’t know their business and their competitive advantages – in fact, there might be a dozen or more reasons why a customer would select them over their competition. The challenge is how to share this info (or at least some of it) in a clear, concise and compelling format so that your customer is persuaded, not overloaded with information.

Some sales managers refer to this as an elevator pitch, with the idea that you and your potential new client are on an elevator together and you only have the amount of time from the lobby to their floor to persuade them to choose you over your competition. What might that sound like? It should answer three key questions:

1. Who are you?

2. What do you do?

3. Why should I care?

I know some reps have struggled with this notion of a generic elevator pitch, saying that every customer is different so theirs must be customized for each call. Certainly, as you get to know your customer and their needs become more apparent, you can further build on how your company can address the customer’s needs. However, at its most basic level, when a customer agrees to meet with you, you can assume that they are busy and probably have other things that they would rather be doing than meeting with a sales rep. Even if they don’t explicitly say it, you can bet that they are thinking it. And in my mind, if you can’t get your elevator pitch into words, you are doing a disservice to your company and wasting that customer’s time.

A key part of prep for any sales call is being able to state in a clear, concise and compelling manner who you are, what you do and why they should care. It might never be stated verbatim on the call, but having it top of mind, you can bet that a good rep will find an opportunity to pull some of that info into the conversation with their customer.

At your next team meeting, run your team through this exercise of building out their elevator pitch and watch what happens – it’s a great sales training refresher!

#elevatorpitch #salestraining