Monthly Archives: February 2012

How to Steal Your Competitors’ Best Customers

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Most of the time, when you steal customers from your competitors, they are one of two types: extremely unhappy with the product or service (which could also mean they’re high-maintenance), or loss leaders that your competitors don’t really want. The customers you really want to steal are the ones that are profitable and low maintenance. Impossible, you say? Your competitors’ loyal clients may be less secure than you think. They may have problems they don’t even realize, or may be missing opportunities they are unaware of, but in either case, their desired outcomes may be at risk if they continue to take a “status quo approach.”   What they don’t know can hurt them!

If your competitors’ salespeople are like most, their intuition tells them that their job is to always keep the client happy. They think a successful client relationship is one in which everyone is always smiling. They spend a lot of time and energy trying to maintain a positive equilibrium, as if the client relationship, and whether they are liked, is the endgame.

Incumbents also don’t like to introduce change for fear that it may open up the customer to consider alternatives. When you are the status quo, maintaining it is job #1. It’s a dangerous belief—and a little naïve.  It also makes for a great opportunity for you to steal some business.

What the competitors’ customers don’t know can hurt them. And as the outsider, it’s your job to break the “bad news.”

You need to get their senior executives’ attention by telling them something they don’t know, about a risk or missed opportunity they don’t know they have.  You need to challenge their status quo approach (which includes your competitor).

Here’s what you need to do:

  • You must be willing to push your competitors’ customers out of their comfort zone.
  • You need to help your competitors’ customers see their challenges in a new light.
  • You have to highlight specific, painful situations and make them unmistakably urgent.
  • You need to create constructive tension and use it to your advantage.

This is counterintuitive to many companies and salespeople who are afraid that the customer will shoot the messenger… but it’s what it takes to make an impact. You need to deliver a distinct point of view that adds value to these prospects by getting them to consider why their status quo is no longer safe, and see the opportunity in doing something different.

To learn more, watch our on-demand webinar: Distinct Point of View: Bring Them the Bad News.

Are you relying on Union Rules for your sales messaging?

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Then you’re killing deals.  

Recently one of our consultants, Scott Weinhold, was on a tram while connecting flights between client events, and he couldn’t resist sneaking a photo of an airline pilot’s luggage. What caught his eye was the bag tag promoting the pilot’s union. Here was the union’s attempt to create value for themselves:

In case the image is too fuzzy for you to read (this was a “stealth” snap on a phone while the tram was in motion) the tag says, “WE ARE WORTH IT!”

This union message reminded me of the same theme in thousands of marketing and sales pitches happening this very moment. Sales reps rely on “union rules” for delivering messages to communicate the value of their solution. For example:  “We have the best technology!” “We have the best people!” “We have the best service!”

In other words, “WE ARE WORTH IT!”

What happens to your prospect or customer when you start telling them why your solutions and your company are “worth it?”  Do they grab for their checkbook and say, “How much will that be? We’ve been waiting for someone to come in and tell us how ‘worth it’ they are…”

Charlie Sheen Effect

This type of “union rules” sales messaging approach triggers what I call the “Charlie Sheen Effect.”

Several months ago, Charlie Sheen hosted a webcast of his own (“Sheen’s Korner”). During the first few seconds, over 100,000 attendees logged in. Within four minutes, less than 5,000 remained.

Why over a 95% reduction in attention? Because no one wants to hear boring and irrelevant bragging.

When your prospects and customers see a salesperson present slide after slide of why your company and products are so wonderful, they tune out. Your sales rep’s effort to create value in the mind of your prospect comes across as boring and irrelevant bragging.

Based on our work with hundreds of the largest sales forces, these “WE ARE WORTH IT” sales conversations spread across your organization with no effort at all. They are like a virus. If you do nothing to stop them, these boring and irrelevant sales messages will replicate all on their own.

In fact, unless you’re laser-focused and intentional about equipping your sales force with the right messages, tools, and skills, you can assume at least 80% of your reps will follow “union rules” in their next sales conversation.

Why do “Union Rules Messages” Happen?

It may seem obvious to you. You’ve been told for years you need to be customer centric. So, why do companies continue to create and deliver “union rules” type messaging?

Because it makes companies and salespeople feel good about themselves, the product they are selling and the company they work for. The biggest enemy to great sales messaging is the natural drift of companies to create messaging that fires them up. That gets them jazzed. That rallies the troops.

Have you ever been in a message development session? How do messages get chosen? It’s usually the phrases that get everyone, especially the executives, inside the company excited when they see it on posters, advertisements, billboards, buttons and t-shirts.

But, none of that has anything to do with getting your customers to care. Your prized prospects don’t care about what fires you up. Don’t force them to love your “union rules story.” Save the internal cheerleading for inside the company.

Click here to watch an instant webinar on how you can put an end to boring, irrelevant sales messaging.