6 Strategies to Competitor Proof Your Offering

Several people have asked me recently, “How do I prevent a competitor from undercutting me, or otherwise influencing my customer to go with the competition?”

The scenario typically goes something like this:

“I just had a great visit with a prospect, and he really seems excited about the project we discussed.  I think he’s going to go with it, but what if  a competitor convinces him that their solution is better?”

My question to them is, “Which of the following 6 key strategies have you implemented to competitor proof yourself?”

1. Create a commitment to proceed from your prospect. (Note use of the term ‘create’ and not ‘get’);
   • Implement a joint written action plan before the end of each sales call, and follow through with it. Engaging your prospect in the sales process is a very powerful technique for protecting you against the competition.
   • This is one of several simple techniques for converting your prospect into part of your sales team.
2. Create an emotional attitude in your prospect that causes him to defend your offering;
   • Use a specific and targeted questioning approach during your sales call to transform your prospect’s belief of your services into an emotional attitude that causes him to want to defend you.
   • This attitude will play a powerful role in defending you against competitors and naysayers after you are gone.
3. Create an emotional connection with your prospect that causes him to defend you personally;
   • Build customer rapport and trust early. This is very important. But to competitor proof yourself, a long-term customer rapport strategy is a must.
4. Give your prospect the tools and training to arm him with the ammunition to defend your offering; 
   • Converting your prospect to an emotional supporter is only half the game. You must also provide the subjective evidence for your product or service so that your prospect can justify his emotional position to defend you.
   • Many sales “experts” refer to this as the ‘value proposition’, which is too big of a concept to be implemented. I will share practical techniques for creating an objective and quantifiable defense of your offering in future posts. 
5. Get your prospect to put some skin in the game;
   • Stop giving away free trials. Free trials are ’scared money’. Why would you want to commoditize yourself right out of the gate?
   •  Nobody cares about the performance of a free trial, and your prospect won’t be held accountable by his peers to report positive results.
6. Create peer accountability for your prospect;
   • Work with your prospect to internally publish the objectives and goals of the action plan and/or trial (note the absense of the word ‘free’ here)

In the spirit of short posts, I have intentionally left out a great deal of tactical details for these six strategies. I will share my detailed tactics for each of these strategies in future individual posts. If you would like to learn more about a specific strategy before it is posted, email me at STrunkett@SalesRaceHorses.com or call me at (502) 310-1207.

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Cheers and Happy Hunting!

Scott