"Bashing" the Competition

Shamus Brown is a California-based sales coach who's background is in the highly-competitive business-to-business technology sales world. Recently, he discussed whether or not salespeople should "slam" the competition in a war of words. This is certainly a topic worthy of discussion.

In the first place, I have long held the view that "slamming" the competition was the third rail of selling techniques, i.e. You touch it...you die. However, I have come to re-think this viewpoint, and Mr. Brown lays out a convincing argument for using this direct, competitive approach.

As a point of reference to how 'competitor-bashing' is used in the business world, Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems calls Microsoft the "evil empire." In return, Microsoft CEO says that Sun's technology "has absolutely no probability of mattering to the world." Ouch! Them's fightin' words. However, the operative question is how these words are viewed by potential prospects. Are they informative? Or obnoxious?

Fact: Competition is a way of life in our business. Some of your competitors are decent, honest advisors. Others are less than decent, and less than honest. How do you "trash-talk" the competition, and retain your own personal credibility?

1. Be prepared, accurate and honest. Know your competition. Know their strengths and weaknesses vis-a-vis your own. Most importantly, be completely accurate and truthful. Your personal credibility with prospects is "gold". If you lose your "gold", you become a pauper.
2. Find their pain, and position the issues. Find out the prospect's pain, and where their 'gaps' are with persuasive questioning techniques. Sell positively first by discovering the pains and showing how you can solve them. Justify to the prospect that you should be given serious consideration, regardless of the competition.  Frame your sales discussion as being about how your strengths solve, or eliminate, the prospect's pain. One method of achieving this is to use a pattern of questions that would lead the prospect to create a checklist such that when they compare you against the competition...it biases the competition in your favor.
3. Link the issue to the competition with facts. Once you have gained the prospect's confidence that you are a good potential solution to their problems, you are in a position to make linkage. You might consider putting together a document as outlined above that compares you to your competitor(s) issue by issue. (The risk in doing this is that you do NOT want this to fall into your competitor's hands.) If you have been professional up to this point, and have kept the prospect's needs/concerns in the forefront, you will have permission to proceed. By delivering accurate information about your competitor's weaknesses at the appropriate time in the sales process, you can gain a competitive edge without diminishing your credibility.

The key to aggressively highlighting your competitor's weaknesses is your own personal credibility. To establish a long-term relationship with a prospect and client referrals from them, this relationship must be grounded in your reputation as a highly honest, informed, and credible...and a belief that solving the prospect's problems is the only thing that matters.