The Psychology of Selling: Increase Your Sales Faster and Easier Than You Ever Thought Possible pdfdrive com

Who or what is your competitor?
Who are your major and minor competitors? What benefits do your
prospective customers see in buying from your competitors? How could you
offset these perceived benefits? How could you position yourself in such a way
that people would buy from you rather than from your competitors? This is often
the key to breaking open the entire market. When companies position themselves
properly against their competitors, their sales often increase by hundreds of
percents.
Apple Versus Microsoft
Apple Computer was the first company to crack the market for the small
personal or business computer. They came out of the gate with a user-friendly
personal computer and immediately took the lead in the market, selling hundreds
of thousands of Apple Ones and Apple Twos.
Microsoft entered the market after Apple, determined to catch up and surpass
Apple’s sales volume. But instead of developing computers, Microsoft focused
on software, on the operating systems, and encouraged other software developers
to develop programs compatible with theirs.
The strategies of the two companies were completely different. Apple was
determined to keep all its operating codes and hardware proprietary so that it
could charge higher prices and make higher profits. At its peak, Apple was
earning 49 percent net profit on sales, an incredible amount.
A Different Strategy
Microsoft, under Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, decided to offset the

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Microsoft, under Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, decided to offset the
competitive advantage of Apple’s user-friendly software by opening up its codes
to software developers worldwide. Simultaneously, with each new advance in
technology, Microsoft lowered the price of its MS-DOS operating system.
Rather than focusing on high profits per individual sale, Microsoft focused on
volume sales with a lower profit per sale but a far greater number of sales.
By the time the dust had settled, Microsoft controlled 90 percent of the global
PC market. After becoming a runaway success story, Apple was surpassed in the
market, and never caught up. By 2004, Apple’s market share was down to 3
percent, even though its products are judged by many people to be
technologically superior to those of Microsoft. What or who is your competitor,
and how are you going to position your products against them?