Participating in a bake-off against your competition is no cake walk. When your prospect decides to compare you apples to apples against a competitor, it can be nerve-wracking. But you don’t have to leave it up to chance and hope they go with the right choice (you, obviously). There are some essential ingredients that prepare […]
Participating in a bake-off against your competition is no cake walk. When your prospect decides to compare you apples to apples against a competitor, it can be nerve-wracking. But you don’t have to leave it up to chance and hope they go with the right choice (you, obviously). There are some essential ingredients that prepare you to come out of a head-to-head as the winner. Here are our tips to help you stand out.
But first, in case you’re a little lost, let’s go over what a bake-off in sales is all about in the first place.
What’s a sales bake-off?
This kind of bake-off isn’t about cookies and pastries, although that would probably be more fun. In sales, a bake-off is an evaluation process where your potential customer pits you head-to-head against other providers in your category of product or service.
A prospect will run a bake-off for a high-stakes purchase where they don’t have the time or money to make a wrong choice. They want to test their options at the same time so they can feel confident going forward with a big investment.
Essential ingredients to prepare for sales bake-off success
So let’s start with the good news: if buyers want to compare you with a competitor head-to-head, that means they see you as a serious option that meets all their basic buying criteria. Now, they want to understand what sets you apart from your competitors – and how that might be good for them.
They could be looking at anything from significant benefits to something as basic as price. But no seller wants to be pushed into a race to the bottom with price. To avoid that, you need to have a developed understanding of your own competitive advantage and communicate that in terms your prospects will want to hear: ROI, efficiency, etc.
Thankfully, we’ve got a recipe for success you can follow.
Offer meaningful value
Winning a bake-off isn’t just about what you sell, it’s how you sell. Sometimes when you go head-to-head with a competitor, they might offer a better price. You don’t want to get caught in a discount war to try and seal the deal (especially close to the end of the month or the quarter).
To really set yourself apart, you have to show how you offer value that’s meaningful to them specifically. You can only really do that if you understand where the buyer is right now, what their challenges are, and what their goals are. In addition to basic research on the company (like size, revenue, and mission), you should also take the time to look into their likely pain points. A tool like Lusha can help you look into company details and get a glimpse at the prospect’s tech stack. And intent data – which shows you what companies show interest in certain topics – can help give you insight into their pain points.
You can also use corporate reports and press placements to get an idea of what your prospect’s organizational goals are. There are so many ways to gather intelligence on your prospect. And the more you know, the better you can understand the value that will work best for them.
Once you know the prospect’s company inside and out, you can use that information to carefully craft your messaging and practice value-based selling. What will your solution do for them: will it save them money? Stabilize their bottom line? Differentiate them? Help them earn more? Be sure to showcase the benefits of your solution that meet their core business needs.
Let’s use Lusha as an example here.
If our prospect doesn’t need to use more than 50 credits in a month, then saying our Scale + plan offers unlimited credits isn’t going to mean much to them. That’s just excess functionality– even if our bake-off competitor can’t match it, that ultimately won’t really matter. But if the prospect highlights their struggle keeping Salesforce data clean, then the Salesforce Data Enrichment feature will resonate much more.
Remember, it’s not about rattling off what you do — it’s about centering the prospect and what brings them the most meaningful value.
Keep the focus on your prospect & their problem
In a head-to-head, it’s easy to talk about yourself and why you’re the best. After all, prospects are asking you to prove yourself against your competitor. But keep your approach geared toward “you” questions instead of “we” statements. This is a strategy often called “WIIFM” – what’s in it for me?
In your communication with your prospect, keep your messaging consistent and focus on what they want to accomplish with your product or service instead of what you have to sell them. A potential customer doesn’t necessarily care about your company mission or the story of how your company was founded when they’re really just looking to solve a problem.
So, instead of:
- Here’s what our product does.
- This is what makes our product great.
- Our product is better than the competitor.
Try:
- What do you want to accomplish, and what’s keeping you from that?
- This is what you can achieve with our product. Is this going to give you what you want?
- Here are examples of success that others like you have found with our product.
See how the second set of questions can prompt much more meaningful, value-driven conversation than the first set of statements? If you center the conversation on the prospect, they’ll get a much clearer vision of how your solution can fit them.
Make sure sales and marketing are on the same page
Good sales-marketing alignment is a must-have. If there’s any one time it’s critical that your approach is consistent across the GTM organization, it’s when you’re in the process of being evaluated against a competitor in a head-to-head. Not to mention, consistency is always a good look
Your training, methods, tools, and collateral should all be consistent in promoting that all-important customer-centric messaging. TheGTM team needs to agree on how to best help customers in their buying cycle so marketing can give sales what they need to seal the deal. In this stage of the buyer’s journey, your prospects will want in-depth information on your products and services, all in a way that still centers them. At this point, they’ve identified their problem– it’s up to you to show them how you’re the best way to solve it. Having marketing-produced materials that give the details your prospects look for in a competitive bake-off is key to setting sales up for success.
Use specific examples
Any salesperson can talk all day about why their product should win. But to convince a prospect, you need to give them something they can quantify.
When a potential customer is looking to solve a problem, their focus is on how you can help them meet their goals. They’re going to be looking for tangible examples like case studies that prove how customers just like them found success with your solution. As they compare you to a competitor, they need facts that set you apart – not meaningless statements like “we have better integrations” without the specifics to back it up.
Sell with confidence
Ultimately, a bake-off is similar to giving proof of concept; you’re asked to prove your solution can do what you claim and solve a problem for the prospect. If you believe you can – and that you have a shot to do it better than your competitor– then go and sell with confidence. A bake-off can take a lot of time, energy, and resources, but it also proves to your prospect that you’re willing to go the extra mile to partner with them. Embrace the challenge.
Key Takeaways
- Center your conversation and collateral on the customer’s business needs, not just a list of your great attributes.
- Offer specific and meaningful examples of what your solution can do.
- Make sure that the whole GTM organization aligns on how to speak to prospects about your solution.
