Meeting your Customers Needs
In today's globally aligned business world, customer needs, demands and expectations are constantly changing. Every business executive has unrivalled access to information regarding geographies, markets and product information.
These factors have led to business conditions in the 21st Century being tougher than they have ever been. Differentiation from the competition has become more difficult to achieve and hence competitive advantage much tougher to obtain and maintain. Failure to successfully differentiate offerings from the competition means someone else will, and they will be the ones to succeed.
What could be the result for those businesses that do not succeed? Falling margins, loss of shareholder value and less certainty in the pipeline, amongst other things.
In today's markets, there is rarely any differentiation between one product or service and another, yet many organisations still operate on the belief that adding new features to a product offering is the best way to differentiate from their competitors. This could not be further from the truth, as when one competitor adds a new feature or service to a product offering, the competition follows suit soon enough. This is still a 'product-centric' approach in what is becoming a 'customer-centric' world.
So, how can an organisation achieve differentiation through its offerings? Differentiation can now only be created when the customer perceives one organisation has a better understanding of the needs of its business than another. By identifying market and customer needs earlier than anyone else, a business can utilise this critical knowledge to successfully engage with customers who have any identified given need, way ahead of the competition.
By aligning your offering with your customers needs, your sales and marketing teams will be able to offer real Value to your customer and enable them to win more strategic accounts. Another major advantage is that with the market needs knowledge at their fingertips, sales teams will be enabled to have conversations with the Senior Executive decision makers, building trust, advocacy and a long lasting business relationship.
ICDL have developed a number of workshops that enable organisations to effectively analyse the market drivers and needs of ANY given sector, which enables organisations to identify which of their offerings successfully align to the needs of their customers, creating competitive advantage for customers and net future value for the ultimate end-user.
Related workshops:
SUCCESSFUL EXECUTIVE SELLING
lies at the core of ICDL's thinking.
Differentiation from an ever growing band of global competitors can no longer be achieved through better positioning of product, service or solution, so your approach to selling has to change [+]
ICDL'S RecruitSMART PROGRAM
ensures successful recruitment of fully trained and capable Executive level sales people.
If Executive level selling is key to successfully differentiating your company and growing EBIT, yet sales people of this calibre are rare - how can I achieve success? [+]