Your Biggest Competitor
May 12th, 2009Your biggest competitor doesn’t have a brochure, a web site or a business card. It’s never taken a sales training seminar, never goes on road trips and never makes PowerPoint presentations. It doesn’t even attempt to overcome objections, close the sale or ask for referrals.
And it will outsell you every day it you let it.
Because your biggest competitor is not another company, an alternative solution or a different salesperson.
Your biggest competitor is doing nothing.
Prospects have lots of choices. In fact, more today than ever before. But one of their choices is simply doing nothing. And in this uncertain economic climate, that’s a very attractive option for a lot of prospects.
To sell against this insidious competitor, help your prospect understand the true costs of doing nothing. What will they miss out on? What will they risk? How will their existing problems worsen?
You don’t want to come across as a fear monger. But you do owe it to your prospects to educate them thoroughly, so they can make the best decision possible.
Your biggest competitor has a lot of natural advantages: it’s omnipresent, it’s persuasive and it’s a lot cheaper than you. But you can often outsell it if you tackle it head-on and treat it like any other competitor.
November 11th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Couldn’t agree more. Salespeople seem to have “happy ears” and are inclined to chase anything that moves. CSO Insights research indicates that 24% of proposals go to “no decision.” An to make matters worse, some companies measure salespeople by the number of proposals they have on the street. That simply exacerbates the situation. We tell our clients that problems fall into either the “fix it” or “forget it” category, and the salesperson’s job is to qualify the opportunity well enough to determine which category it’s in. If it’s the latter, it’s probably time to walk away.
November 11th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
yes you can get in your own way and when the prospect is excited you have to at least ask for the sale.
November 17th, 2009 at 7:02 am
As they say, “The status-quo is a formidable opponent!” I first heard this phrase from a colleague Jack Falvey, founder of http://www.makingthenumbers.com. It and your article are right on!