We have all sat through the same conversation. The customer has built their short list. Three alternatives, maybe four. We’re one of them. And as we look at the list, if we are honest with ourselves, we know any of these solutions will solve the customer’s problem. The features overlap. The functions are the same. Whatever gaps exist in one offering will be eliminated in the next release. Whatever advantage we thought we had this quarter will be eliminated next quarter.
Each of us has seen this in virtually every deal we work. We struggle, thinking, “how do we differentiate ourselves? (Yeah, too often, we fall back on, “I could discount our solution!”)
Feature parity isn’t new, it’s decades old. We know it comes up in virtually every deal we work on. We say we can do everything our competitors can do, our competitors say the same thing.
So what we thought of as product differentiation has really never existed.
Some sellers recognized that the product was never really the point. They sought to differentiate themselves on something else, something competitors couldn’t easily copy. These sellers focused on differentiating themselves in the customer’s buying process. The focus was on how they showed up to the customer. Did they demonstrate understanding of the problem? Did they ask a question no one else asked? Did they bring a perspective or insight that made customers see their own situations differently?
For some time, it was a real differentiator. We’ve seen the proof of it in people using things like the Challenger Sale, sensemaking, value-based, solution, and consultative selling. These sellers moved past features and functions as the differentiator, using how they engaged the customer in their buying process as the differentiator instead.
But now we see that differentiating point disappearing too. As we compete with others using the very same methodologies, each of us is running the same engagement process with the same customers. What set us apart before is now just the same as everyone else.
Where our product and feature-and-function-based differentiation was never sustainable, the engagement-based differentiation is proving difficult to sustain for the very same reasons. We watch the plays our competitors are using and copy them. Our competitors copy our playbooks, perhaps with a small tweak.
We read the same books and attend the same conferences where experts tell us how to differentiate our selling approaches. We train our people in the same methodologies.
We have created benchmarking processes, which in reality facilitate our ability to converge with our competitors. We identify best practices, which is consultant speak for mimicking what everyone else is doing. By its nature, benchmarking doesn’t help us identify how we might be different.
And now we have layered AI on top of all of it, and we are using it in precisely the same ways, for precisely the same reasons. In layering these tools onto what we already do, the advantage we had hoped to achieve isn’t there. Why? Because we are all using the tools for the same things in the same ways. AI is permitting us to do is achieve sameness at scale.
Think about it. AI trained on the collective works of everyone’s outreach, all of our messaging, all our research, discovery, and objection handling doesn’t produce a unique approach. It’s using the same models, producing the same output.
Imagine you and two competitors are using the same methodology, MEDDICC, on the same deal with the same customer. You are not differentiating yourself to that customer. AI is doing the same thing. When everyone uses it in the same way, it can’t differentiate us. It’s designed to give us similar answers. All the tools we use to help us stand apart, when adopted by everyone, just make us look the same.
Our customers see this, even as we may be blind to it. They’ve been telling us for years. Customers want rep-free buying experiences. It’s not just us they don’t want to see, it’s also our competitors. We are all treating them the same way, doing the same things, and the customers are saying, “No, leave us alone, you aren’t helping.”
When we started with these approaches years, even decades ago, we thought we were trying to be different, we thought we would stand out. But over time, as we look around (benchmark), our competitors are doing the same things. We stair-step each other, obtaining a temporary advantage, until a competitor takes a step to catch up and another to move ahead.
The mistake we make in seeking differentiation is looking at each other and taking that step for the temporary advantage. In this process of differentiating against each other, we lose the customer.
And that’s the biggest thing we misunderstand. Selection, choosing one solution from a short list of alternatives, isn’t where the customer struggles. It’s the smallest part of their buying process. Where our customers struggle, the reason over 70% of their buying initiatives fail, is not selecting a vendor. It’s making sense of their own situation.
Recognizing the need to change. Understanding there might be a better way to achieve their goals, getting clarity and alignment on what those goals even are. Building their commitment to change, getting people in their own organization aligned around the effort, managing quickly changing and conflicting agendas, assessing the risk, gaining support across the organization and with senior management.
Deciding whether to do anything at all, when the easiest answer is to maintain the status quo.
When you look at everything the customer is struggling with, selecting a vendor or solution isn’t at the top of their priorities. Deciding which to choose, when all of them can solve the problem, is the easiest part of their process.
This is what I and many of my colleagues have been arguing for years. When we understand it, we can begin to see how we differentiate ourselves. Differentiation is not something we create to set our solutions apart. It is not something we present to our customers.
Differentiation happens when our customers are struggling to solve a problem, drive a change initiative, or identify new opportunities, and we are working beside them, helping them understand and navigate the challenges those present.
We do not differentiate ourselves by being different from the alternatives. We differentiate ourselves in the way we show up to help the customer think about and understand the problem, and navigate the change process.
We work with each individual, learning what the change means to them, helping them address the fear of messing up that each one experiences. We work with the customer team, helping them navigate the challenges of aligning goals, agendas, priorities, and biases. We help them build the discipline and accountability critical to success.
We cannot benchmark this, because each customer and situation is different and constantly changing. None of this can be reduced to playbooks, templates, and scripts.
To equip our people to show up in a way our customers value, we have to have curiosity and customer centricity at the core of everything we do. Our people have to be comfortable helping customers navigate the ambiguity, uncertainty, and complexity of the changes they face. We have to instill the discipline and accountability in our own work that we are then helping the customer establish in theirs.
As we look at this, as we ask ourselves, “Do we have the capability to turn everything upside down in what sets us apart from the alternatives our customers are considering,” there is reason for optimism.
These capabilities aren’t scarce because they are hard to find, hire, or develop. They are scarce because we have spent decades removing every reason to use them. We have invested so much in automating outreach, scripting each call, designing playbooks everyone must follow, and measuring our people on how well they comply and on the number of activities they undertake.
We have trained the curiosity, the customer centricity, and the ability to navigate complexity and ambiguity out of them, replacing it with a regimented approach. We have removed the ability to exercise judgment in adapting to what the customer sees as most critical for their situation.
We and our competitors were doing the same thing; focusing on each other while the customer still struggled and too often failed. We did all of this in the name of differentiation.
What sets us apart was never how we differ from the alternatives. It is whether we focus on what matters most to the customer; caring deeply enough about them and their success to show up in the ways that create the most value.
Doing this and the differentiation becomes obvious. Differentiation stops being something we present to our customers and becomes something we do with them.
Afterword: The opening sentence of this AI generated discussion, captured what took me several paragraphs to communicate. We experience the differentiation challenge every time we stand in the store looking for toothpaste. They each advertise something different, but in reality they are all the same. This is a great discussion, Enjoy! (Though they do struggle saying MEDDICC)
