Never attack the competition |
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The critical factor is how you talk about the competition. The best practice is to quickly shift the terms of the discussion from the competitor’s weaknesses to your strengths. When the customer says, “tell me about SlowCo’s machine,” the seller may be tempted to respond, “it’s one of the slowest machines on the market – 40 percent slower than ours.” But it would be better to reframe the answer like this: “SlowCo? Yes, our machine is 40 percent faster than theirs. In fact, our machine is one of the fastest on the market.” A little-known, but very effective, tactic for talking about the competition is to highlight the generic weaknesses of the competitor’s offering rather than appearing critical of a specific company or product. Suppose, for example, that you are representing a small firm that is competing for a piece of business with one of the largest companies in the industry. “How do you compare to GiantCo?” the customer asks. Instead of responding that, “GiantCo is too big to give you personal service,” the skillful seller might say, “Well, there are a lot of differences between a large company and a small company. We’re a small company, so we’re able to give personal attention to each customer’s needs. As a company grows in size, it becomes more difficult to do that. Instead of being one of 50 customers, you’re now one of 5,000 customers.” Successful salespeople attack the competition all the time – but they do it in a way that does not reflect negatively on their own organisation. How Major Sales are Really Made:
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Many companies believe that you shouldn't even mention the competition, in the belief that any negative talk boomerangs and damages the seller. This used to be a policy at IBM - no sales rep was allowed to mention any competitor or competing product by name at any point in the sales cycle. But Huthwaite’s research shows that top performing salespeople do talk about the competition... if the customer wants them to. Although they would not normally volunteer information about a competitor, if the customer asks them how their offering compares to a rival’s, they do not dodge the question.