Sales Warrior Lesson 3:
The Goal of Sales Strategy
Sun Tzu
saw that this mindset of battling opponents was worthless. Instead, he
taught that success came from "positioning." It is the position
you occupy
in the customer's mind that is the key to your success. The position that
the customer occupies in your mind is also the key to your success.
For a salesperson, the problem of "the enemy" is particularly difficult.
Some of Sun Tzu's lessons about enemies apply to competitors, but others
apply to customers. We will explain later in these lessons the real nature
and surprising nature of "the enemy" in sales.
At this point, it is important to understand that competition is not a zero-sum game. We can win
sales without others
losing them. A salesperson and his or her customers must both win for
sales to work. But a lot of sales systems teach the need for win/win
solutions. The difference is that classical strategy provides relatively
simple guidance on how and when to construct them.
The art of good positioning depends on elements of the situation that are
usually overlooked in most methods of sales training. The key is knowing how
to see your relative position.
Defeating or surpassing your sales competitors can be useful, but only if it
improves your position. Beating opponents does us no good if it leaves us in
a worse position than before. Winning as sale from a competitor can cost us
more over the long term than the sale is worth. This is another issue we
examine in more detail later. Often, your position can be improved by
partnering with those you might consider competitors. The goal is only to
improve our position over time.
