How to Trash Talk Your Competition

The last presidential debate was by far the best.  In the first thirty minutes McCain was on his game while Obama looked a little flat.  Then McCain, in the midst of responding to a question on attack ads, got flustered, his emotions took over and the tide changed.

The more I learn about John McCain, the more I admire him.  For example, HBO recently aired a documentary on the use of torture in Iraq by U.S. forces, it was pretty damn disturbing.  McCain was shown leading the congressional hearings into the practices depicted in the photos from Abu Ghraib and the efforts to restrict the use of these types of tactics.  Watching him grill and admonish the U.S. military brass you couldn’t help but think “Thank God”.

So what happened?  Why is this political veteran with a great track record not wiping the floor with a relatively untested, inexperienced Obama?  For starters, a series of campaign gaffes, inconsistent financial strategies, and, quite frankly, good ole fashioned bad sales practices have resulted in his current standings.

Inspired by McCain’s attempts to make “Bill Ayers” relevant, for this post, we will talk about the right way to go negative on your competitor.

Whether you are trying to convince people to vote for you or buy from you, throwing out negative information about your competition should be done with planning, credibility, and precision.

There are two common scenarios in which you should be prepared to go on the offensive against your competitors:

• When the prospect asks “So why are you better than _________”

• When your solution offers a specific, verifiable advantage over your competitors in a relevant area.

I used to compete against Microsoft in the Content Management space and so often I would get the

“So, why should I buy your solution over one of the biggest, most famous companies in the world?”

Start off your response by complementing your competitor.  (Read that again if you have to)

“To be honest, I love Microsoft.  I own stock in Microsoft.   As soon as my wife lets me, Im getting an Xbox.”

The reason you do this is to keep the prospect comfortable and position you as a non-moron, I mean who doesn’t want an Xbox?

If you get up there and say something close to “Weeeelllll Microsoft is not as great as people think……and Linux is starting to kick their butt….I expect Google to buy them out any day now…….”. You will be immediately elected mayor of Idiotville.

When talking about your competitor never should your personal emotions come into play (see John McCain).

Another response

“Have you seen Microsoft’s customer list?  Its huge.  They have done quite well and I know of projects where companies have bought their solution site unseen. (Jokingly) Any chance you guys want to buy my stuff without looking at it? “

But then talk about the project at hand.

“As I have talked with your team, understood the requirements of your project, and appreciate its mission-critical aspects, I think we can all agree that the success of this project will not be measured by the size of the vendor, it will be measured how quickly and effectively your teams can disperse information to your clients, internal staff, and syndication feeds, as well as accommodating changes in the business environment.

We will show (or have shown) and provide details on how our solution aligns with these critical measures.

Then the subtle jab

“The reason you want to do business with us is that we are NOT big and famous.

We don’t do video games or anything else, we spend our time, effort, and money on building and providing the best content management system we can.

In addition, we have to earn every one of clients everyday. As a testament to this, our clients enjoy the ability to communicate with our company President, or any other member of our executive team, in one phone call or email.

In addition, we purposely keep the org chart for our support teams very shallow, which enables our people to quickly address or escalate issues to the appropriate resources on the first phone call.

I think we can all agree Its extremely difficult for a larger company to offer that level of service.”

When you have a feature that is superior to your competitors, be careful.

Remember if you sell on feature/function you will lose far more than those that sell on value and benefits.

If you have beat your competitors to market on some widget remember the following:

• Your advantage is temporary.  If its a good widget, then your competitors will copy it and have it out in usually a quarter or two.

• Make sure the widget is relevant to your prospect.  You: “We now support the latest Java-based thingy”,  Prospect: “Uhh, we only use Microsoft-based thingies”

• Tie the widget to a value proposition – “our new widget saves 20% in deployment time compared to our competitors”

• Phrase your advantage generically “Unlike some of our competitors, we offer………”

The reason that you do not go attack your competitor directly is you run the risk of losing credability

You:  “We’ll unlike Microsoft, we offer a wide array of user interfaces”

Prospect:  “Microsoft has multiple interfaces, they just showed them to us an hour before your presentation”

You: “Uhhhhh, where’s the restroom?”

Your competition is not going to inform you when they add a new feature.  Your knowledge of what they offer will be become stale when you least need it to.  The safest route to take is to talk about your competitors as a group, keep the direct attacks to a minimum, and keep your focus on how you can better serve the prospect.

Good Luck.

Sasser