Apples or Pears?

Specification selling - Rethinking how you sell your specification product.

In the world of specification selling convincing the specifier to want to use you is about creating a feel good security blanket that reduces risks, enhances the specifier’s service and adds value through the transaction.

How can you do that?

Focus on the capability of your product, not the product itself. What application does it excel at? What are you really delivering? What does your product do? – How does it deliver, perform, and meet different needs? This is more important to buyers (specifiers) than what it is. The belief that content (for example your content can be defined as the “application needs” that the product fulfils) is king in special-sales marketing, and the old adage, “find a need and fill it,” was never more relevant.

Focus on target customers. Segment your total market into several “mini-markets,” each with identifiable needs and selling idiosyncrasies. Promoting how your product reduces installation time to the specifier might be a valuable part of the products attributes, but may not be so important in the specification process. Advising how much more energy efficient the product is, when the look is more relevant will probably not get you very far. Neither of these points might be relevant to the specifier who is perhaps focussed on the problem that the product solves and the risks that it removes. Think hard about the message you are delivering.

Do you know what your different clients’ needs are? Which of your products can deliver unique solutions to your client’s needs? How do they do this? What is it that your customers want from you and your products? Think niche and build on this niche.

Focus on marketing as much production.  The constant delivery of new products is important, but it is more important that those products offer unique deliverables. However, producing more products to keep your range current is not nearly as profitable as concentrating on selling the products you already have. Do all of your customers know what you already offer? Really?

Focus on getting people to buy rather than selling to them. Discover what your business prospects need -- which will probably be some combination of products and services -- then describe how you can help them improve revenues, margins or brand image. Add value to their way of doing business. For example, you may be trying to sell a product to a client without knowing what they need it for. What type of project are they working on and what the challenges of the project are. Spend time investigating and questioning to find out what the real challenges are (they are probably not the first things they tell you). Then explain how your product meets the challenge and can add value or enhance what they are offering to their client. Know what it is that you add value to. What costs or risks does your product mitigate? What does this mean to your client and in turn their client?

Focus on the differences of your content, not on its sameness. Some brands focus on the sameness of the competition pointing out the similarities then they advise how their product is superior or areas a product is better in. Specifiers do not want more of what they already have. They want to hear how your information is different from the other brands and why it is better. Do you know what makes it better? What does this do to the value of the product?

Focus on push and pull. Push marketing is directed at the specification of your products, helping them to understand your product and making it easier for them to justify its inclusion or to specify it. On the other hand, pull marketing is directed at the ultimate consumer, making people aware of your Brand and getting them to buy into it. While both strategies are important, push marketing is the preferred strategy in non-retail marketing and pull is the strategy of choice in retail marketing.

Focus on what you can control. There are four primary activities you can control when marketing your product or service. 

Product - its content and form

Price - the price at which you sell it

Place - the ways in which you distribute it

Promotion - how you promote it. 

Succeeding in your chosen market is not just down to luck, you need to work at it, to define your unique value added proposition, why should someone buy from you?

Look at your customers and their specific needs, wants and demands, then deliver to those specific requirements. The world is full of the same, find new niches, be flexible with how you service your niches and how you react to new opportunities.

Product for products sake is not going to bring you success, providing customer difference will. How will you do that? 

Think about how you can meet the needs of your clients, how you add value, where you add value and how your client can turn that to their advantage.