With the sharpness of the downturn in the economy, trying to sell pretty much anything has become significantly more difficult. The technology industry is currently one of the most difficult industries in which to generate sales.

A big part of the reason for this is that information on products is so easily accessible that quite often a prospect will know just as much about a product as the salesman. The technology consumers of today are far more sophisticated and well informed buyers than what they were five years ago.

Sales pitches in which the seller reels off the functionalities of a product of which the buyer is already aware quite often shoves the sales process into reverse as potential buyers will most likely resent being force-fed information that anyone can look up with a few clicks of a mouse.

Another reason that technology is becoming more and more difficult to sell is that there are many skilled developers and programmers constantly making new solutions and more commonly, replicating other solutions and tweaking them to make them their own.

The reason this is creating a problem is that as these technology developers create more and more software based on other versions, consumers are seeing the different solutions from different companies as more or less the same thing. Therefore their decision of which one to buy becomes based more or less solely on price.

What if there was a way to create enough value for the customer that price was no longer the deciding factor? Getting the most for their money — that’s what buyers are after, aren’t they? Is it possible that if a seller could actually create real value in the sales process, customers might be less interested in price and more willing to pay a premium?

One thing’s for sure, if you’re like most companies out there delivering a pitch, day in and day out, based entirely on products and features, you’re succeeding in only one thing: driving the customer back to price. So then, how does a technology company differentiate themselves today?

In order to compete based on something other than price, you must focus on how youre selling your products rather than what they are. PowerPoint seems to be a main selling tool in the technology industry, probably more so than any other, and all it is really capable of is describing. Are your animated slides and graphics really any better than anyone elses? In todays competitive marketplace, customer value doesnt lie in the selling of products, but it lies in the way in which they are sold and the way in which they are acquired by the customer.