So Holm was better in punching and likely better at keeping the distance (general movement). But it was unsure, if shecould use her skills in the octagon the same way as in the ring. Rousey, on the other hand, had fought well in octagon and had managed to catch all her previous opponents and won them impressively with no full time fights in her career. So what chances would Holm have to beat Rousey, who was dominant and much better in most of the skills required in a MMA fight?

I am sure, you have encountered similar situation in your sales calls. The buyer could dominate you in the discussion and of course, she has more knowledge on her business than you. She might be using your competitor, who has solved her problems with excellent results. It would not be smart to challenge the current solution by trying to attack it directly. But how can you then winback your customer? Do you need to start talking more about your solution or give her more referrals of satisfied customers? Or how do you continue to ask open-ended questions the right way?

Work with your strengths

Back to the Rousey vs Holm fight. Holm was very well prepared to fight the strengths of Rousey. She knew that she would not be able to beat Rousey in grappling, therefore she kept her distance and used her strikes. Rousey wanted to test her skills in stand up, which suited well for Holm. Holm was diligent in keeping the fight standing and often stepped back after a good punch. She didn’t want to get caught in Rousey’s clinch. In the end, Holm managed to take Rousey down for a short period of time, showing that she can wrestle too. She also managed to escape Rousey’s feared armlock, which also gave her mental advantage in the fight. I think, she wouldn’t have been able to do that, if she first hadn’t been successful with her striking and controlling the distance of the fight with her excellent movement.

Rousey got hurt and got desperate. In those moments, you can’t perform at your best. In the end, Holm got a huge knockout victory, which just added the cherry on top of her cake. She would have won the fight in some other way, if not by knockout. What I was the most impressed about Holm’s performance, was the way she managed to keep controlling the distance using her strengths throughout the fight. She may become a dominant champion, but at least when the fight against Rousey started, she was the underdog, who had a only a slight chance of winning the belt.

Strengths in sales meetings

The other day, I was in a customer meeting where I was told that they just had excellent results of an event campaign they had used another service provider. They didn’t even know, that we could have done that campaign to them. I didn’t want to hear, why the campaign was successful and to enhance the competitors excellent results. Therefore, I directed the conversation to my strengths. I started to ask, how did they promote these results in other campaigns and how are they developing future omni-channel campaigns (this successful campaign was run only on one channel). In the beginning, the customer was telling me, she was content with the current service provider. In the middle of the conversation, she started to write down ideas, which she would take to their current service provider and introduce to them, in order to be able to use these ideas with them. In the end, she wanted to end her agreement with her current service provider and start doing business with us. How did I manage to accomplish this? Just like Holm in the fight, I kept the conversation on my field, not letting the conversation go to my competitor’s strengths.

There were times, when I was almost caught, but I managed to step back and ask a new question which directed the conversation to my field of expertise. In the end, the whole conversation was a good entity and gave a lot of insights to her. It may have looked pretty easy for an outsider following the meeting, to see where it was going, but during it sure didn’t feel like it, at least not all the time. I kept the game where I was strong and had the stamina to direct the conversation over and over again to fit better for my knowledge and ideas. It was not a sure case to win, but I managed to win it with a finishing knockout.

The one thing you should be an expert on, is how your products help your customer the best. If you can direct your sales meetings to that, then you should be able to make a deal. But remember, to have a conversation and you talking about your solution, are two different things. For you explaining what you can do, will not provide the same results, as when your customer starts talking about how you could help her to perform better. Solution selling is a lot different than product selling. You should know the difference, before trying to use this tactic.