So where’s the differentiation? Selling technology is complex, but nothing compared to the complexity of the ownership experience. Solutions are complicated and customer skill sets are already stretched to the limit. Compelling a potential customer toward one’s solution involves more than vague and look-alike claims. Today, the value of a solution has to be illuminated not just in terms of feature/functionality and basic business merit, but in a full disclosure in customer/ownership terms.

There are multiple facets to this truthful disclosure. Bring every product feature back to a discussion of the customer’s basic needs, concerns and beliefs. If you’re marketing how something works, you have already stopped focusing on your customer. Additionally, respect your customer’ intelligence by appreciating their current solution implementation. Use your understanding of your customer’s current solution to demonstrate how your solution enables an entirely new approach not available when the their current system was designed; and that it resolves issues their current design cannot. Finally, convey your commitment to the customer and their success. This can’t be communicated through four-color glossy handouts of select, happy customers in studio poses. To really convey customer commitment, share the gritty ways your company has dealt with the unexpected by delivering outstanding devotion to customer success and satisfaction.

I believe that truthful marketing is well respected by potential customers. The truth ultimately disarms reluctant and hesitant customers. Truth breaks down the barriers that inhibit sales. Decision-makers today are braced against glossy marketing and will not commit to a sale until they feel they have uncovered the truth. Starting with the truth streamline sales cycles.

Case in point: I had my old Jeep serviced and its front end aligned by a local repair shop. Afterwards, it had a slight pull to the the right that got worse as time went on.

About three months after the service, the shop called me to ask if I was satisfied and if I was ready for another oil change and lube. I had driven very little during those months, so I was not ready for another oil change, but I mentioned the front-end problem — and was invited to bring my Jeep in for a no-charge realignment.

Now, adjustments such as front end alignments are not typically covered by repair warranties, since it is easy for a customer — especially a Jeep owner like me who routinely goes off-road — to knock the thing out of whack. That offer of a free recheck was above and beyond the call of duty. And you know what? It won my loyalty to the point where my car (and my wife’s car) now go to Roy’s Automotive (14th St. W @ 13th Ave., Bradenton) for *all* service work.

Defective parts and service are a statistical certainty if you have a sizable number of customers. A company that gets defensive about (inevitable) customer problems inevitably makes customers angry, and angry customers go elsewhere. But a company that uses a problem as an opportunity to cement its relationship with a customer does just the opposite: it wins that customer’s loyalty *and* almost always gets some word-of-mouth buzz from the customer whose problem it went out of the way to fix.

Did I mention that my wife and I have found Roy’s Automotive, 14th St. W @ 13th Ave. in Bradenton, to be one of the nicest and most helpful repair shops with which we’ve ever dealt?