With tremendous market opportunity comes increased competition. When you look at the total available market opportunity for Collaboration, it's a $40B market! Cisco, a market leader in Telepresence, Contact Center, Web Conferencing, is looking to capture more of the Collaboration market share by expanding its portfolio into instant messaging, enterprise social collaboration and enterprise content management. At the same time, Microsoft and IBM, both with strong presence in email and team collaboration are looking to take market share from the areas where Cisco have market leadership. On the periphery, Google, Salesforce.com, Oracle, are looking patiently waiting for the right opportunity to capitalize on.
With all this competition, how does one win? What can you do to increase your win ratio against the competition?
1. Differentiate on all levels. Differentiate your company, your product and yourself. Your company must be viewed as reputable, your product must be higher quality, easier to use, more reliable. You have to ask better thought provoking questions and be a perceived industry expert while understanding your customer's business. Years ago, I blogging about Do Commodity Products Exist? and it's worth a read as it focuses on differentiation.
2. Focus on your strengths and downplay your weaknesses. How and when to leverage your strengths? Read Sales Strategies
3. Qualify your opportunities, disqualify your opportunities even faster. Read Sales Secret #1 from Top Sales Secrets
4. Attitude and confidence. Exude so much confidence in your company, product and yourself that your customer feels compelled to do business with you because it minimizes their perceived risks.
5. Be creative. Find ways to get your customer to say "yes." Can you add something to your proposal to make it of higher value to your customer? Is there something you can offer that your competition cannot?
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