This is a slightly edited version of my answer to the following question on Quora:
Given below are five things that you, as a seller of a B2B product or service, can do to stand out from your competition in a highly crowded B2B market.
- Respond to inbound leads received via your info@company.com email address. From personal experience and anecdotal evidence, very few vendors bother to do so. By being different from them, you’ll give your prospect an aha moment that will stand you in good stead during the sales process. Better still, implement a SAAS solution like our EMAIL360 on your website, so that it becomes snappy for your prospect to convey their exact requirement to you.
- Be the first vendor to respond to your prospect’s questions. If you do this consistently, you’ll go up a few notches in your prospect’s eyes compared to your competitors.
- Respond to RFPs in a way that your prospect uses your proposal as the benchmark for evaluating your competitors’ proposals. This tactic is especially useful in product categories where specs are fluid, thus inviting obfuscation from your competitors in their responses. Quora culture – answer both the question that’s asked and the question that’s not asked – is helpful in this regard.
- Identify differentiators beyond product features. In crowded product categories, it’s difficult to differentiate yourself solely by functionality. Our STRADOF framework can be useful in finding differentiators in the Total Ownership Cycle that go far beyond core product features. More at www.stradof.com.
- Provide some information about their business / industry that the prospect may not be aware of. Check out the tire manufacturer example in my blog post entitled 3 Secrets To Uncovering Business Pain Areas for one such information, which Gartner / CEB calls “commercial insight”. This tactic requires relatively higher caliber of sales and marketing talent. Ergo, it’s not easy to execute. However, from personal experience, it’s absolutely the best way to stand out in a crowded market.
By no means is the above list exhaustive.
What are your favorite ways to stand out in a crowded B2B market? Share in the comments!
Happy Selling!