If and when they do enter into the game, they're going to try to
change the game in their favor, so I want to get what separates me
from them on the customer's top of mind. You're listening to the Audible Ready
Podcast, the show that helps you and your teams sell more faster. We'll
feature sales leaders sharing their best insights on how to create a sales engine that
helps you fuel repeatable revenue growth, presented by the team at Force Management,
a leader in B to B sales effectiveness. Let's get started. Hello,
and welcome to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. I'm Rachel Klep Miller. Today
we are going to be talking about the competition going against competitors. Enjoining me
for the conversation is our own Patrick McLoughlin, Patti Mack. How you doing
today? I'm good, Rachel, how are you good? I love your
passion around this topic. Patti mac you may not remember, but we have
spoken about this several times over our times working together, and you're always really
passionate when you talk about this topic. So I'm excited for the listeners to
hear from you today. Let's sort of like just level set here on the
topic we know there's going to be competitors in our deals as a salesperson,
and I'd love to hear from your own experience how much do you anticipate the
competition and how much do you prepare for them. I prepare for them like
they're going to show up ready to do battle with me. Okay, it's
funny you sent me the email. If you think about this. And yesterday
I was in the store with Evely, right, and everyone wants to buy
these protein bars and I'm like, okay, how much is that? And
she looks at it and she's like, well, there's four bars and it's
ten dollars. And next thing you know, I'm on my phone and I'm
an Amazon and I can get eight bars for fifteen dollars. And I'm like,
well and they'll deliver today, so let's buy that one. And she's
like, Daddy, you're always measuring money. I'm like, yeah, I
am. So you're asking, well, what does buying protein bars have to
do with B to B sales? Here's what it has to do. Economic
buyers, people who spend money to solve problems, measure the money they have
a fight doutiary responsibility to measure their company's money and how expend and the return
on investment. Okay, so think about it this way. The economic buyer
is holding the champion accountable to delivering the solution internally, and the economic buyers
probably saying to the champion, hey who or the O, the coach,
or the technical buyer, Hey who else did you evaluate? What other options
are there? Because think about it, at the end of a sales cycle,
the EB comes in to mitigate risks and the questions they're asking, They're
going to ask the technical buyer, who else did you validate? So think
about it. I've passed the do nothing, do it yourself, your two
biggest competitors. This is the third party competition. But you got to expect
they're going to be there. Yeah, I've heard you also say that expected
that they're going to be there, Like do you prepare for them even before
you know there exists? Right, and that's what you're talking about. Expect
that they're going to be there. So how do you do that? Like
what does that entail? How are you mapping that out? So I look
at it this way. I learned this lesson from Tim Cato, So cops
to Timmy, think about it this way, if the customer doesn't buyer's solution,
what do they miss out on? Right? So think about whatever to
your company A, and you know your solution has these benefits over say company
B. Well, what the difference is between your company and other company?
That's got to be your sales strategy. So for friends who commanded the message
out there, that's track setting questions. How do you get your differentiation into
the customer's decision criteria. So I'm thinking about them right away because if and
when they do enter into the game, they're going to try to change the
game in their favor. So I want to get what separates me from them
on the customer's top of mind, top of their list. Yeah, great
points. I've been having some conversations with some small teams who have signed up
for a sender platform and they are at the beginning stages of trying to find
patterns in their customers buying process. You know, they're just a round kind
of building that sales discipline in their organization and a lot of them only have
one REP, two reps, three reps. And this is a type of
preparation that they can do as an organization, like as an organization when you
look at your competition, ask those questions that Tim told you that you just
went through, because you want to have a point of view not only on
the value that your solution provides a marketplace, but also a point of view
on how it's different than the competition. Right, those essential questions we talk
about, what problems do you solve, how do you solve the problems,
how do you do differently in the competition, and of course what's your proof?
And that's good things you can do before you're even in an opportunity is
have a point of view of that. You said that so much better than
I did. I think that's it. I mean, think about it.
If it's like in his pure essence, if the customer does not choose you,
what do they miss out? And that's got to be your sales strategy,
And that's how you solve the problem. That's your point of view,
that's how you solve the problem. That's how you solve it different than the
competition and the value the customer will get. And then you also need to,
you know, back those claims up with proof. So that was probably
you took my answer and said it one hundred percent better than I did.
Well, let's shift now, Patty mac too. You're in an opportunity,
right, You're starting to have those conversations. How do you get intel about
what the competition is doing in the account? You know what? All right,
to make everybody laugh. So here's what I used to do back in
the day when we used to go cold calling, right physically go into accounts.
You would look in the registration book on the in the in the signing
seat. You would go flip through the pages to see, well at salespeople
from what companies show up. When I saw this question, I started thinking.
You know, I'd always say to the client, hey, can I
get the gass of water a cup of coffee, and we'd go in the
kitchen. I had to look for competitive coffee monks right sitting in there.
But you know, good question. I mean what I would say, is
this how to get intel about what the competition is doing in the account?
That comes down to one the level of intimacy that you have with the client.
I think intimacy is developed over a period of time where you establish trust
right when you provide the customer information, and then you start asking questions like
who else is calling on them? Are they talking to other people. Who
do they use as a reference from a third party perspective to understand best of
bed practices in their industry. So a lot of times customers say, hey,
we subscribe to Gardner. Okay, great, Well, you know in
the Gardener Magic quadrant you're going to have X number of vendors. Have you
looked at any of those vendors? Right? I think if you establish a
level of intimacy with your clients, which is basically the depth of your relationships,
let them know that you're not there just to sell them something, but
to generate outcomes for them. You can be very upfront and ask them,
you know, who do they use to gather information? Who do they use
as subject matter experts? Because think about it, for all the sellers out
there, you're the professional in your specific industry. Your customers are not professional
buyers and they're not doing this every day. So you need to ask them
who are they relying on for guidance from a third party perspective that a lot
of times lends itself to them. Are you uncovering who they may be talking
to from a competitive perspective? I love the point about you know, you
just don't want to go in and you want to be intimate with the customer.
You want it should be natural progression of you asking for information. But
were there any specific discovery questions that you used to use that would lead you
down that path? Yeah, So a lot of times I would ask the
customer of the question, why did you choose the solution that you currently have?
So think about it. If it was a new logo. For me,
that was a question, Hey, I see this that you invested in
an XYZ platform? What was the decision criteria? What led you to come
to that conclusion. I'd also ask questions, did you evaluate my solution?
Where did you see a difference between my solution and the competitive solution? So
from a new logo perspective, to me, it was really easy, right
because I would be upfront, did you evaluate us? What criteria did you
use? And why did you make the choice to invest? And then also
wanted to know was the person I'm talking to did they make that decision?
Because a lot of times decision makers, you know this turnout. So if
I was talking to you Rachel and said, oh you bought this platform,
great, why did you buy this platform? What criteria did you use?
Did you evaluate my company. Was there a salesperson from my company engaged at
the time, If so, what reasons did you feel our platform fell short?
If you did not, well, why did you exclude us? I
want to sort of know. That gives me some mindset. So that's from
a new logo perspective. From an existing client perspective, I think you got
to get the head of the process. I think you need to get ahead
of the process, and you need to ask the customer the question, how
do they look at renewals? Right? They say the renewal process starts the
day after the customer signs the initial contract. Well, I think as a
salesperson with an existing account, you need to uncover what is the customer's decision
process around renewals? Are they required to get two or three bids? And
then I would suggest to everyone you need to treat the renewal as if it
was the first sale. Don't skip the process. Has that all the negative
consequence has been addressed, Have the business outcome has been achieved? What has
changed in their business since the original solution? And I also think you should
ask the customer about the process and if they tell you no, we're just
going to do a renewal and relayship with another po Oh great, but the
customers say, hey, we need to go back out to formal bid because
of the size of the renewal. Yeah. Great points. So really,
what we're kind of skirting around here is this idea of comparative differentiation, which
if you've had commanded the message, you know that concept. We always say
deals are one and loss. On the comparative differentiation, how you do it
differently or better than the competition in a way that satisfies the customer's requirements for
success. And I don't want to talk about the competition without talking about aligning
your differentiation into the required capabilities solution requirements. I will say for everyone listening,
we have podcasts where we just talk about that, and I'm going to
link that in the show notes, but I just wanted to get Patty Max's
brief perspective here. Talk a little bit about how you make sure that differentiation
is embedded into those required capabilities, so put a metric around them. I
think every time you put a required capability in a opportunity, or you in
into the decision criteria, or the customer tells you what the required capability or
decision criteria is you need to educate the customer or come to an agreement on
what the metric the customer is going to use to measure that required capability.
For example, no competitor is going to walk in and say to the client,
we're not committed to your success. We don't have the level of it
which easy, we won't enable this solution fast, we're not very productive,
and once you sign the contract, you'll never hear from us again. Right.
So they're going to walk in and they're going to promise the productivity.
They're going to promise their liability, they're going to promise the ease of use,
they're going to promise the commitment the customer satisfaction. Right, that's great.
What are the decision criteria? What inside the platform are you going to
need and how are you going to measure it? So for every decision criteria
that's in there, especially comparative decision criteria, like I have a blue button,
well, great, I have a blue button too, Well, the
metric could be like how blue is it? Ocean blue, sky blue?
Right? I think every decision criteria or slash required capability needs to have a
metric and that's how the customer is going to be able to say, yes,
Vendor A does it better than Vendor B. It's not through the name
of the differentiator. It's the metric assigned the differentiator. So I think that's
the question you're asking me, is like, it's getting our differentiators into the
decision criteria, but though and also assigning a metric to them, because think
about it, comparative differentiation. We do it, the competition does it,
but the way we do it is slightly better or different that has value for
the customer, and that's usually measured through a metric. Right, it's going
to impact you in this specific way. If I was also to sum up
what you're saying, Patti mac and I've heard Anne Gary talk about this too,
it's the specificity and how you're measuring it that really provides the value for
the buyer. Correct. So when we're looking at those solution requirements required capabilities,
as a salesperson, as somebody quarterback in the deal, what do you
do if you see something on that list or you've heard something from the customer
that you know your competition is better at than you. What's your tactics?
How do you handle that what do you do? Oh? Okay, So
the way to handle it from a tactics perspective is this, I'm going to
understand what the outcome is that the customer is trying to achieve, that is
making them say they need to have that required capability. Okay, So I
need to know what the outcome is the customer wants to achieve. And then,
if you're a commanded the message graduate, you're going to use trap setting
questions to covertly influence the decision criteria to lessen or to lower the rank of
that required capability down lower right and get your strengths up on top. And
then so you do that through trap setting a covertly you do that through trap
setting. What you can also do is overtly influenced the decision criteria by talking
about proof points or references where you've generated a business outcome, and then you
can overt the influenced decision right here. So what I'm trying to do is
get the customer to tell me is this a got to have or a nice
to have? And then I'm trying to reorder the decision criteria in my favor.
If I can't do that, I'm gonna be honest with the customer.
Yeah, and we'll tell them I can't do that, and I'm going to
thank them from the opportunity. I'm going to walk away. And to me,
the only way to actually do that is to have a healthy pipeline right
to walk away. But to me, when I did that, it brought
the client back to the table. Okay. So I looked at the client
and said, hey, based upon this decision criteria, there are a number
of vendors that can do this, and a lot of them are going to
be significantly cheaper than what I would charge you. And then the client says,
well, what do you need to have in the decision right here?
And then I would tell them why my solution was better or different and if
that worked. And sometimes that did work a lot of times. When I
told the clients that I was going to walk away because I wasn't able to
compete based upon the evaluation criteria that they had pre selected, they basically said,
well, what do you need to have in there that you'd be willing
to compete. But it's remember this, folks. As much as the customer
has a right to qualify you to solve their business problem, you have a
right to qualify the customer. Is this opportunity worth your time? Please remember
this, You would never play a game you cannot win. There you go,
You only have so many hours in a day, so many it's time
to actively sell and you want to make sure you're spending that time with the
customers that you're going to be successful with. Right Yeah, absolutely, Okay,
great conversation here in competition, Patty mac, I love your perspective.
Some good things for us to think about as we go into these competitive opportunities
or we send off competitors in our current ones, particularly at the renewals.
Give us a bottom line for the listeners to take with them as they tackle
their week. So think about it this way. You're sitting in your office
in whatever town or city or home you're working out of, and think about
who your competitors are and ask yourself, are they sitting in their office their
home and are they looking at the same patch that you have, the same
opportunities that you have, and what is their strategy? They're not walking away
because you're in the account, right or you're calling on the account. So
what I would ask you to think about is this or here's two things that
I would ask you to take away. If you really think you have a
deal one and you're not worried about the competition, go write the obituary on
the deal, meaning how did you lose it? Okay, and then do
everything you can not to let that happen. And the second thing to think
about is we sometimes know our biggest issues as vendors, right, so if
you had to compete against your self, how would you do it? And
then that should enable your sales strategy to minimize the competition's ability to impact your
value proposition. I love it. I love it. Get your game planned
together. Thank you so much, Fidi Mac, enjoy it, Tel Yes,
Yes, and thank you to all of you who continue to listen to
the Audible Ready Sales podcast. Make it a great week. At Force Management,
we're focused on transforming sales organizations into elite teams. Our proven methodologies deliver
programs that build company alignment and fuel repeatable revenue growth. Give your teams the
ability to execute the growth strategy at the point of sale. Our strength is
our experience. The proof is in our results. Let's get started. Visit
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