As I was writing Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away from Your Competition, I realized something about salespeople and their view on competition.
First, some make far too much about their competition, spending too much time worrying about their competitor’s irrational pricing, their dirty tricks, and the lies they tell their clients and prospects. The truth of the matter is that there is nothing you can do about how your competitor plays the game. Even if you ask them nicely to play fair and have a sense of honor and decency about the game, there are those who believe that “whatever it takes” is the right way to compete.
Second, some people make too little of competition. They focus on their company, their products, their value proposition, believing it is necessary to lean on external factors to win deals without focusing on the value they create for the client as the primary source of competitive advantage. How does the smaller, seemingly weaker company beat their larger, stronger competitor?
My experience in sales tells me this is not true. When I started to sell, I took the largest companies in my territory from the largest competitors in my space, even when my company measured our revenue in millions while my competitors measured theirs in billions. At some point, I recognized that sales is not situational; it’s individual. I was not competing with the billion-dollar company, I was competing with the salespeople in my territory. I didn’t need to beat the billion-dollar company, I just needed to beat their salespeople by creating greater value.
All three of the books I have published have been around providing the mindset, skill sets, and toolkits necessary to compete and win, even when faced with competitors who seem to have every advantage. The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need is the competency model necessary to develop into someone worth buying from in the first place. The Lost Art of Closing: Winning the 10 Commitments That Drive Sales was a framework for gaining the commitments necessary to sell effectively and in a way that makes you consultative. Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away from Your Competition builds on these by providing you the strategies necessary to take your dream clients away from your competition, no matter how big.
What you need to know is that better salesperson wins deals, not the bigger or better company. The team that creates greater value wins—and retains—their clients when they continue to help them drive new and better results.
Eat Their Lunch is available on November 6th, 2018, but you can preorder it now. There are bonuses available for bulk purchases at eattheirlunchbook.com, including keynotes and workshops.
