What makes your product stand out? What makes your customers choose it over the products of your competitors? The price? It shouldn’t be. There are so many other, more important things to focus on when selling commodity products.
Bidding Wars
Having the lowest price can be a great selling point, whether you’re selling directly to the customer, or you’re selling your products to a retail store. But prices can change at a moment’s notice. If your competitor sees that you’re underselling them, they can lower their own prices, making them the most attractive option. So you lower your prices again. And they lower theirs. Suddenly, it’s a race to the bottom; a struggle to see whose prices can get the absolute lowest, thus winning the sale.
The problem with this approach is that, every time you lower your price, you’re eating into your profits. Eventually, you get to the point where it’s hardly worth it to win the sale at all, since the overall rewards are minimal. Instead of being the company with the lowest price, it’s much more beneficial to be the company whose products your customers simply can’t do without, and are willing to spend that extra amount to get. But to do that, you need a sales strategy that plays to your unique strengths.
Sales Strategies
When you get into bidding wars with your competitors, you’re sending a message to your potential customers that your two products are exactly the same in terms of usefulness, quality, reliability, and most other ways that matter. Whoever has the lowest price is clearly the one they should be buying.
But in fact, everyone’s products are different. What you should concentrate on when selling commodity products is what makes yours unique. What will the customer get from your company and product that they won’t get anywhere else? Then the next step is to design a sales strategy based on that. Something that shows your product for what it is and demonstrates to the client why it’s their best option.
The key is to design this strategy specifically for your unique sales situation. Too many companies try to use a generic, cookie cutter strategy: often the same one their competitors are using. This makes it all the more difficult to set yourself apart. How you sell should be determined by what you’re selling and who you’re selling to. If you’re targeting retail chains, then your needs will be different than if you’re targeting individuals. Maybe you need a sales demonstration that can then be easily replicated by your retail client’s employees, to show to their customers. Maybe you want something that demonstrates the fundamental differences between your products and your competitors.
Whatever your needs are, when selling commodity products, you need to meet them head on. Sculpt the sales strategy that works best for your company and shows what your products are really like. It’s a much more effective and profitable way to make sales than simply being the lowest bidder.
