Even though gap selling has been around for a couple of years now it seems that its application is somehow still limited to the industries that have previously worked with similar techniques like consultative selling - especially services, software and technical products. In those industries the identification of the gap is far more intuitive.
In other other industries you need to take a step back, out of your box, and maybe become creative to identify the quantifiable impact your product has on your customer's business. But it is possible - and worth it!
Don't be a replacement product - become an impact product
The core is to identify how your product impacts the people relevant to your customer. Whether it is their customers or their employees. Once you have identified the ways your product has impact, you need to work on quantifying the impact. And sometimes you need to twist your product a bit to ensure a quantifiable impact.
I recently worked with a client on a great example for this.
My client was a successful niche business offering high quality goose down bedding to consumers. Their product was a great quality offering at a good price and they had been very successful in driving customers to their online offering.
Their idea was now to enter the B2B market. Due to their size and quality positioning large retailers were not an option, so we decided to focus on the hotel market.
Sometimes a small feature change goes a long way to quantify impact
The challenge was now to identify and quantify the gap their product would close. Just calling hotels and telling them to replace their existing bedding with our product because of it's higher quality was obviously not an option.
So we took a step back and looked at the impact our product would have - from the existing consumer feedback we knew that people who bought our bedding experienced better sleep. That's great, providing their guests with a better sleeping experience is an obvious benefit for a hotel. But unfortunately not a quantifiable impact on their bottom line.
Next we looked at how guest satisfaction impacts the hotel's bottom line. Clearly satisfied guests impact a hotel bottom line in two ways:
they might return and generate additional sales
they leave positive reviews on booking sites which attracts new guests
But both actions only happen when guests are highly satisfied and aware of it. Simply providing guests with a good night sleep is not enough - they need to be aware that their good sleep is due to something special the hotel offers, something worth noticing (and hopefully talking about).
So we decided to offer our bedding with high quality point of use materials, informing the guests that their bedding was a special product and that they were about to have a special sleeping experience, increasing their awareness to the quality of their sleep.
In addition our material contained also a QR code with a link to our website, where guests could buy the same bedding for their home. Offering the hotel to benefit from an affiliate deal, as well as the opportunity for the hotel to offer a special return booking deal on our website. We also provided a link give online feedback about the hotel.
All of the sudden we had moved from being the provider of a replacement product or commodity to offering our customers, the hotel, real quantifiable impact in the form of additional, traceable sales due to higher guest satisfaction and guest awareness.
Are you ready to quantify the impact of your product?
If you want to have an outside view on your readiness or in case you feel you could use help to get ready for the challenge, feel free to contact me for a free initial consultation to see how I can help you create a truly quantifiable impact offering.
Comentários