Carol is on a “suicide” mission.

As part of an Oncology pharmaceutical sales team, Carol is in charge of launching a new product into a market that has been dominated by a single competitor for 10 years. For years customers (ie hospitals) have been waiting for an alternative and Carol’s team is about to deliver this long awaited alternative product.

Except things aren’t as simple as they are. Carol currently faces the following challenges:

• Its main competitor, Neuetische, with a 10-year lead in its market, is well connected with key decision makers and influential buyers;

• Neuetische’s sales team also outnumbers Carol’s team 5:1, and could easily deploy more labor to specific customers to discourage customers from buying from Carol;

• In terms of marketing budget, Neuetische also has a lot more to splurge than Carol’s company could afford;

• As customers search for alternatives, most adopt a wait-and-see attitude before committing to buy from Carol. Most simply use Carol’s product as a negotiating tool to negotiate better terms with Neuetische;

• Although Carol’s products offer better healing properties for patients, the results are not immediate. They can only be observed after using the new drug after a while. In other words, Carol’s product, while a better product, is by no means a revolutionary product;

• The Ministry of Health is tightening its regulations to make it stricter for hospitals to dispense medications to patients, thereby reducing Carol’s already very competitive market.

If the above challenges aren’t enough, Carol’s team is young and most had barely any experience selling in tough market situations, let alone selling in such severe adverse situations.

Even faced with such a “suicidal” mission, Carol is undeterred in her quest to provide the best alternative to her market. She knows this will be a test of both will and ingenuity, so she and her team can outwit, outsmart and outlast the competition.

Thriving against insurmountable odds

When we are faced with adversity or any difficult situation, we usually have 2 options: either we overcome it or we run away from it. In most cases, we will run away from the most difficult challenges, UNLESS we have a clear reason why we MUST overcome those difficulties.

Using a goal setting concept from Leadership IQ, if you want to keep yourself or your team motivated to thrive in the face of insurmountable obstacles, you have to do it the HARD way as follows:

1. Sincere. Is there a reason you or your team resonate why we need to get through this tough situation? What is the purpose of the sacrifices and hard work to achieve such goals?

2. Lively. People hardly feel excited about achieving a goal. People may feel a little more excited about “putting a tooth in the universe.” Is there anything exciting for you or your team to experience while overcoming those tough challenges?

3.Required. What will happen if you do NOT overcome those challenges? What are some of the negative consequences if you don’t succeed?

4. Difficulty. Interestingly, people feel more engaged when presented with difficulties, rather than easy-to-achieve goals. This is provided if they resonate with your purpose and are given the autonomy to use the best of their talents.

One of the biggest mistakes top executives make to motivate salespeople is to provide more “perks” or bonuses if they meet or exceed targets. While some may argue that money is a good motivator for salespeople, the big picture of incentive-related motivation can be summed up by the following formula:

• Expected payment, multiplied by;
• Chances of success, divided by
• The amount of effort required

Bottom line, if you’re asking someone to work really hard to accomplish something they think is impossible, they may not even do it for a million dollars because they don’t see any chance of success, despite their best efforts.

If we take a closer look at what goes on in many sales teams, most salespeople and even distributors tend to sell the products they feel most comfortable selling, rather than the products that pay the highest commissions. tall. If you do the math, it’s very simple. If you pay someone double the bonus to sell something that will take 3 times as much time and effort, they won’t do it. Period.

On the other hand, if you want someone to achieve the impossible, you probably can’t motivate them using money or any material incentives. Achieving the impossible means putting in a lot of effort to achieve something that has close to zero probability of succeeding. If someone is doing those things, he must either be madly in love with what he is doing, or he is doing it for something far more valuable than money, or both.

Outperform and outperform the competition

To thrive in severe adversity, it is not enough to have the will to overcome all adversity. You need to outwit and outplay your opponents as well.

From a selling perspective, there are 2 general ways to beat the competition:

• Or you get the customer to stop buying from the competition and start buying exclusively from you;
• Or you ask your customer to try using your products on a smaller scale as a “backup” provider.

Generally speaking, customers hate to switch providers and therefore it is relatively easier to get them to add you as a backup/alternate provider. Does that mean you will always be the backup and not the main provider? Of course not, and here’s why:

• According to Shipley research, 80% of all deals are awarded to current vendors. Being a backup provider means you have a better chance of getting bigger deals in the future.

• If you provide better products or services, let your customers experience how you can add more value to your customer than your competition. Your customer may then decide to switch more purchases to you;

• Being a supplier, even if it’s small, gives you access to key decision makers and buying influencers, thus cultivating your relationship with the customer for potential future sales.

Sometimes, even if your products and services are clearly superior, or even if your prices are lower, it doesn’t mean you’ll win the sale. In fact, the lowest priced bids win fewer deals than the highest priced bids, and the technically superior bids lose 49% of the deals to the lowest bids. To win, you’ll need to consider multidimensional aspects to attract your competitor’s key accounts and get them to buy from you:

• Reliability. Compared to your competitor, can you deliver on EVERY aspect, from product quality, delivery times, maintenance schedules, etc.?

• Answer’s capacity. Compared to your competitor, can you be more responsive? Not only the responsiveness of the service, but also the responsiveness of the sales team to customer needs and concerns. This also includes vendors who are located in customer plants, offices, or facilities to help customers solve problems using their products.

• Ingenuity. Compared to your competitor, can you leverage internal and external resources to provide customers with a comprehensive solution for their needs?

• Relationship. Compared to your competitor, can you look to build a relationship with everyone who has influence over whether or not this customer should buy from you, aside from just growing guanxi with a few key decision makers? These influential buyers include gatekeepers, fault finders, end-users, and just about anyone who will be affected by the products you provide, or have any input regarding how your products can be used (or not used) around the world. your company.

To eliminate the competition, ask yourself these lateral thinking questions:

• Why does the customer buy from their current supplier? Why will they or will they not seek alternative providers?
• Why don’t you suggest something the client doesn’t know about? Why not reach out to someone else in your organization? Why don’t you bend over backwards for the customer?
• What if you help customers resolve some of their chronic problems and issues? What if you come up with some delusional and outrageous ideas?

Give yourself a chance to survive

Most of the difficult challenges require long periods of hard work before you can overcome them. Most difficult periods will get harder before they get easier. So, here are 3 main reasons why many people fail in the face of difficult challenges, instead of overcoming them:

1. Trying to tackle too many problems in too little time, with insufficient resources;
2. Giving yourself too tight a deadline and not being patient enough to see results after a longer period of hard work;
3. Giving up midway or getting discouraged when things don’t go as well as planned.

When things get really bad, there are times when we can see it from the positive points of view. In the jargon of the Six Thinking Hats, it is about using the Yellow Hat in front of many Black Hats. In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), it’s just about yelling and thinking “That’s good!” in the face of severe adversity.

To win in tough times, you’ll need to “go 1,000 miles and NOT feel tired,” says Sun Tzu in The Art of War. When faced with insurmountable obstacles, leaders and team members will have to truly come together as one and be willing to support each other so that the team synergizes and thrives in severe adversity. As Sun Tzu says, if your goal and purpose are aligned from top to bottom, you win.