Killing your sales with a Product Overview Comparison Chart

The Product Overview Comparison Chart

Marketing or Product Management spends a lot of time and effort compiling a Product Overview Sheet that allows comparing all of your products or solutions at one glance in order to state clearly all the features, functions and benefits of all products.

At first this seems to be a great tool for selling as you can:
- Inform the potential customer about all possible products
- Offer all possibilities to the potential customer
- Make sure no single solution is overlooked
- Proof the company has wide range of products

However:
- Too much data to absorb by the potential customer: People will remember 3 things max.
- Too much distraction of competing and similar products: “What’s this?”
- Too much possibility to raise interesting questions about the not suited products: “Why you need this?”
- Too much time to explain by the sales reps: “The seventh product is for …”
- Too much choice to choose from: “We like products 2 – 5 – 9 and 3″

In the end the potential customer is overwhelmed by the information but hasn’t got a clue.
The big product overview has the potential customer confused and he doesn’t know anymore about the features, benefits and reasons to buy.

They will probably select a different vendor that proposes the best suited solution as their salesman have extensively inquired, defined the problem and clarified the benefits of their best suited solution.
Less is more.

The added value of the sales rep.

Using the Product Overview Comparison Chart the role of the sales rep. is reduced to send or bring the comparison sheet and walk through the different options and alternatives.

However the sales rep. has a different role:
- To listen to the potential customer
- To asses the problem(s)
- To define possible solutions
- To present one best solution accompanied by one or two alternatives.

This is where sales rep. are:
- Bringing additional value for the potential customer.
- Limiting the choice to a limited number of products or solutions.
- Builds confidence and a relationship
- Could speed up the buying process

He can position:
- The best product (for both parties)
- Give the customer one or two alternatives in order to have the freedom of choice.
It is like a magician presenting you a hand with three cards and he knows the one you will be picking.
Less is more.

What to do with a Product Overview Comparison Chart?

Thus instead of presenting the great Product Overview Comparison Sheet, keep it internally for sales trainings in order to explain to your sales people or resellers what they should know and how to find the best solution for their potential customer.

A products comparison sheet is a D-I-Y (Do-It-Yourself) solution, to be used in a sales process without a sales rep. like catalog or online sales.

The sales rep can present parts of the Product Overview Comparison chart to differentiate 2 or 3 products, but not to offer the complete offering of a company.

The first rule in sales is to build trust with your potential customer, so don’t confuse them with a gigantic Product Overview Comparison Chart.

Confused people don’t buy.
Confident people buy (from trusted parties or parties that seem trust worthy).

Ever killed your sales with a Product Overview Comparison Chart?