Every sales person has had it happen to them.
Some important potential client asks why your product is better than your competition’s. After 5 or 10 minutes of you talking about how great your product is, the potential client’s eyes glaze over and you part ways.
The potential client most likely won’t remember much about your product. There are lots of reasons for this including the fact that if you talk about product features and functions without tying them to benefits that solve the client’s problems, they will likely never really connect to what you are talking about.
Another reason is that most people only really remember about 20% of a conversation or presentation unless there is a strong interest or something that helps them remember.
Let’s talk about a technique that will help you address this issue.
As a professional sales person, you need to prepare for the “why you?” question. The act of preparing rather than winging it will improve your delivery. You’ll be able to respond smoothly with all the reasons your company and your product are better.
You should also tie every feature to a benefit for the client. Features without benefits will not only soon be forgotten, but will likely never really be heard.
To prepare, write down all your features and how they benefit the client. Then try to come up with a positive word to use as a memory tool for you and for your potential client. The word shouldn’t be too long and each letter in the word should address one or more of your features and benefits.
As an example, I will use the word SMART to describe how Continuum CRM is better than the competition.
S for Sales
No matter how great a CRM tool is, if the sales people don’t use it the system won’t work. Continuum CRM has a heavy focus on ease of use.
The easiest system to use would be so simple and would require no data entry. Such a system would be of no value to the sales person or to management, however.
Continuum CRM addresses the ease of use issue with many features like color coded activities to ensure the sales person knows what activities need to be done today, which are overdue and which are due in the future.
Continuum CRM also has Smart Forms, which allow the sales person to easily add the right data at the right time. This benefits both the sales person and management. It benefits sales people by making it easy to enter data. It benefits management because the proper data being entered into your CRM ensures that you will have up to date data in your management reports.
Also through the use of these Smart Forms, Continuum allows sales people to enter readiness indicator data for to calculate readiness scores. The readiness indicators and scoring capabilities, along with the unique process engine, allows sales people to be more effective and close more business.
M is for Marketing
Continuum CRM includes a robust Email Marketing tool.
The marketing group can use the information in Continuum CRM to drive email marketing. For example, you could send an email to all the prospective residents that attended an event or visited a particular community.
It is also valuable to sales people because they can use the email marketing tool’s templates and scheduling features to improve their efficiency.
There is also the added benefit of a consistent, branded messaging from the sales group and from the marketing group.
And there is one more little benefit: you will save money by not having to purchase a separate email marketing application.
A Stands for Analytics
CRM analytics are only as good as the data in the system. Because Continuum CRM is easy to use and prompts uses to enter the right data at the right time, any analytics from Continuum CRM are more likely to be accurate.
Continuum CRM has state of the reporting and dashboard functionality that can assess any data in the system for real time analytics at the touch of a finger.
Continuum CRM can even take a snapshot of a report and save it for comparison to the same report run at another time. You can easily see how your sales and marketing results are changing over time.
With Continuum CRM, management will have the analytics to make informed business decisions.
R is for Relationships
Continuum provides tools to easily manage the entire resident relationship from end to end. You will have details about the resident, about their family, their church or pastor, and other points of influence.
Continuum also gives you the ability to track personal interests, activities, and much more. You will also have a complete record of events, visits, emails, and phone calls with the resident or their family.
Continuum CRM is all about managing relationships for life.
T is for Technology
The senior living industry has not had a history of using advanced technology for customer relationship management. Continuum CRM changes that by using state of the art technology and security.
With Continuum CRM, you receive superior performance ensuring that no one is staring at a blank screen waiting for the CRM to update instead of doing their job.
You can be assured that Continuum CRM will continue to provide high performance and will also be in line or ahead of compliance and technology standards.
Unlike many other CRM vendors in the senior living industry, Continuum CRM is fully HIPAA compliant.
Due to our technology advantage, Continuum CRM also leads in the ability to integrate to other systems.
Since Continuum CRM is cloud-based, you can also access your data from anywhere on multiple devices and you won’t have to pay to keep up with changing technology.
Corny or Effective?
Some of you may say this is a little corny. Well, I tend to agree.
But it works.
You can even tell the potential client in the beginning that this might sound a little corny, but it is a way for you to remember to cover the important differences and hopefully a way for them to remember them as well.
I also like to tell them what I am going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what I just told them. For example, I might say “I’m going to us the word SMART to describe why we are better. What SMART stand for is Sales, Marketing, Analytics, Relationships and Technology.”
I would then go into the details as I laid them out above. After I finished, I would then tell them again, “SMART equals Sales, Marketing, Analytics, Relationships, and Technology”
Give it a try, you may be surprised at how well this works. You can even use it in your presentations.
If you’re ready to experience a SMART CRM solution that’s simple to use, sign up for a free Continuum CRM demo today!
