Sales POP - Purveyors of Propserity
How Sales Can Turn The Tables On The Competition
Blog / For Sales Pros / Feb 3, 2019 / Posted by Roy Osing / 5562

How Sales Can Turn The Tables On The Competition

0 comments

If you don’t know your nearest enemy, you should.

And you should give them special attention. You may have several competitors in your space but it is essential to focus on the one that is nipping at your heels; you are extremely vulnerable if they decide to grow at your expense.

Here are some simple and proven ways to turn the tables on them.

Know them like your BFF

Know your competitor better than you know your own company; put together a fat dossier on them. You need to be close to the ones closest to you so you can either keep them at bay or attack them to gain position. Analyze them extensively and in as much granularity as you can. Construct their strategic game plan and the priorities that you see them pursuing.

Which customer groups are they focusing on? What sales tactics do they use? What successes have they had? Why do people buy from them — what is their value proposition?

Monitor social media

Stay alert for any market conversations affecting their brand. Analyze the comments and opinions that are posted on the products and services they are providing, and look at WHO are publishing the posts. Look for comments on sales.

Try and categorize the commentary for your purposes. Does it expose sales weaknesses, pricing problems or product reliability issues?

Strike a competitive action team — CAT

Put together a small team of sales and marketing people to act like your competitor — include service people on the team as well. Have them develop a strategy to attack you; develop countermeasures and prepare to launch at the appropriate moment. The team should try and exploit every vulnerability you have — assume the enemy knows your weaknesses; you can only benefit if they don’t.

As president of a data and internet organization, I would stage mock battle workshops with the CAT team and our sales team leaders. CAT would lead with an offensive move and sales (with marketing) would have to respond and counterpunch as appropriate. Both sides would critique marketing’s moves, the winner would be decided and we would collectively discuss what we learned from the exercise. Then we would continue with CAT making another move.

The workshops worked extremely well on two fronts: they yielded high-quality sales tactics which turned out to be useful in the field when the competitor acted out their role — with uncanny accuracy they behaved the way the CAT had predicted — and they developed a highly engaged marketing and sales team which were rarely surprised by any competitive move.

ID who’s vulnerable

Your competitor will not go after everyone, they will likely target your customers they see as highly profitable and who have shown a tendency to use more than a single supplier. Or they may be organizations who already use one or more of your competitor’s offerings.

Create a list of these accounts and rank order them in terms of their strategic importance to you along with a “penetration assessment” — how easy it would likely be for the competitor to make inroads to the account.

Prepare tactical plans

Develop a customized tactical plan for each customer on your “who’s vulnerable” list. Adopt an “attack don’t defend” mantra. Look for opportunities to provide more product and service solutions as well as service support that gives them special treatment.

In my experience, the tactical mix I always leaned toward was skewed in favour of selling more relevant solutions — as a result of thoughtful analysis and understanding of their wants and desires — as opposed to merely laying on more TLC retention activity aimed at keeping them from leaving.

Go into their camp

Engage with “the bad guys” customers; walk among them and search for opportunities to strike. Determine who their “A” customers are and talk to them in terms of how well they are being served. What are they happy/unhappy about?

My approach was to call my C-Suite counterpart in an organization “held” by my competitor and ask to take them to lunch to discuss potential opportunities we could offer them. I didn’t delegate this task. The stakes were high enough to warrant it being a critical priority for our organization and it demanded my personal time.

Rarely was my invitation turned down, but not always did it yield the fruit we were looking for in terms of selling more solutions or gaining a deep insight into an exposure that the competitor had. But it ALWAYS kept them honest and wary that we were prepared to take all possible measures to attack them.

Hire their best

If you’re really serious about attacking, go out and hire demonstrated achievers in their organization not for just their skills and experience, but for what they know.

I would always look to marketing and sales people as prime targets as they the main participants in strategy formulation and can provide the insight needed to create offensive initiatives or countermeasures. Service leaders in the competitor’s organization are also good targets as they are the mainstay of strategy execution and should be able to provide intelligence on how effective their operations is.

Turning the tables on your closest competitor can’t be achieved by business as usual methods. It requires treating them as one of your most prized customers, only with a twist.

Your intentions are not to delight them but to challenge, frustrate, annoy and dominate them.

And to teach them that messing with you is bad business for them.

About Author

Roy Osing is a former president, CMO and entrepreneur with over 40 years of successful and unmatched executive leadership experience in every aspect of business. As President of a major data and internet company, his leadership and audacious ‘unheard-of ways’ took the company from its early stage to $1 Billion in annual sales. He is a resolute blogger, keen content marketer, dedicated teacher and mentor to young professionals. As an accomplished business advisor, he is the author of the no-nonsense book series ‘BE DiFFERENT or be dead.’ He is devoted to inspiring leaders, entrepreneurs and organizations to stand apart from the average boring crowd and achieve their true potential.

Author's Publications on Amazon

Leaders require context for what they do and how they spend their time. A philosophy that guides their behavior and the things they treat as a priority. Without context, leaders tend not to lead. They flit. They simply follow their nose and spend their time…
Buy on Amazon
It's getting tougher to develop a winning formula in today's business world. Competition is fierce. Customers are demanding, fickle and unpredictable and employees are looking for insightful and caring leadership. In response, extreme energy in most organizations is spent on trying to develop the "perfect"…
Buy on Amazon
Marketing 101 is in serious trouble. Its effectiveness is extremely limited. If you are practising traditional text book marketing, this book is your wake-up call. You are subjecting your organization to extreme risk.
Buy on Amazon
The challenge facing a leader in today's highly volatile economy is formidable. It is to create an organization to Stand-Out NOT Fit-In. Companies that fail to break away from The Competitive Herd and establish themselves as Unique, Distinctive and Remarkable to their Fans fade away…
Buy on Amazon
BE DiFFERENT or be dead: The Audacious ‘Unheard-of Ways’ I Took a Startup TO A BILLION IN SALES provides practical and proven ways for organizations and professionals to be unique, stand out from their competition in a compelling, relevant way and achieve staggering success.
Buy on Amazon
Selected by Soundview Executive Book Summaries as one of the top business books in the USA. The Challenge for any Business Leader is to harness the energy from all parts of their organization to work in unison to win in their market. In practical and…
Buy on Amazon
Want to take your career to another level? Achieve greater success in a world where the competition for a fast track route to success is fierce? Roy Osing’s 30+ years in business taught him one simple truth: if you are not DiFFERENT, if you are…
Buy on Amazon
Comments

..
..
..
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. For information on cookies and how you can disable them, visit our privacy and cookie policy.