Mastering Competitive Sales: A Comprehensive Guide to Winning Over Your Competitor's Clients

Discover innovative strategies for competitive displacement in sales and learn how to secure the largest clients in your territory.

The salesperson asked me why we would call on prospective clients who were already working with one of our competitors. He suggested that we should call on companies that didn't already have a firm like ours. The answer: We don't call on companies that don't use what we sell because they don't buy what we sell.

The nature of competitive displacement (the nice way of saying "stealing your competitor's clients") is that you are trying to take your competitor's clients while they are trying to take yours. Each of you playing this game knows who the other’s clients are. There are no secrets.

Targeting Big Clients in Competitive Sales

The largest client in your territory has a contract with your competitor. They are spending a fortune on what you sell—but not with you. You have no need to qualify the client, as they are more than qualified. The second-largest client in your territory is also working with another competitor. Naturally, they too are qualified. Because you are pursuing the largest clients in your sales territory, you need only to find a way in.

Strategies for Infiltration in Sales Displacement

In the displacement game, a lot of the advice about starting at the top turns out not to be helpful. The last thing you want to do is expose yourself to the powers that be. Because they chose your competitor, they are likely to prevent you from meeting with their stakeholders because they fear you may start something, which is exactly your plan.

You are better off finding a person who isn't happy with their existing supplier. Oftentimes, these are the stakeholders who must rely on their current supplier every day. When one of them isn’t satisfied, they will have already complained about your competitor, but senior leadership has failed to act on their complaints.

The strategy here is something like fifth-generation warfare, winning hearts and minds. It’s a sort of insurgency. It is almost always best to start with a person who is unhappy with the status quo. These contacts will confess your competitors' sins, giving you an understanding of their problems and how they harm the client’s results.

Advanced Tactics for Upward Movement in Sales

There are a number of ways to move up to a level where someone is able to do something. To gain an entrance to a person that can make a change, you must first share with your dissatisfied contacts what you do differently and how you will ensure they get what they want. Knowing what is possible, your contacts will complain to influential colleagues that they are not allowed to have what they need to succeed.

Over time, as the complaints mount, one of your contacts will find a chink in the armor by identifying someone who needs their team to be able to do their work effectively. This person is in a role that allows them to push for change. At first no one listens, as they have chosen their provider. But as problems continue, it becomes increasingly certain that something will need to change.

At some point, your contact will introduce you to the person who can influence the decision to change providers. To be honest, there will be a counter-insurgency, with the powers that be pushing back on any attempt to remove their current supplier.

Understanding Competitive Displacement in Sales

Sales leaders and sales managers often believe in two things: 1) velocity and 2) 4X pipeline coverage. It takes time to displace a competitor and win your dream client. In Eat Their Lunch, you will find a strategy to manage 60 large, dream clients, by reaching out to three each day. This leaves plenty of time for pursuing leads and other potential deals.

Overprioritizing sales velocity can discourage salespeople from working to win the best clients in your industry. Why? It can take years to win a dream client away from your competitor. But once you displace them, you may keep that client for decades. You shouldn’t worry about how long it could take to win over your competitor’s client because the time is going to pass anyway. You should worry more about acquiring the biggest and best clients in your territory.

Hyperfocus on pipeline coverage can also work against you because your dream clients may not show up in your pipeline. When you prioritize the pipeline, you make it difficult for your sales team to pursue clients that may not end up there for some time. Failing to pursue your most important strategic targets is a mistake, regardless of the impact on your pipeline. You will never win a client without consistently pursuing them.

Ensuring Victory in Sales Battles

Given a long enough timeline, all of your competitor’s clients will replace them. It won’t happen today, tomorrow, or next week, but as time passes, something will happen to cause your dream client to change partners. You need to be prepared because you can only win a deal if you are already calling on these large clients when they start looking for alternatives. If you give up on dream clients, you will not be considered when they decide to explore potential partners.

You know how your company loses clients after taking care of them for many years. The same is true for your competitors.

Strategizing for Major Sales Targets

It is important you have a strategy to pursue and win the largest clients in your territory by displacing your competitors. Most sales teams up too soon, frustrated by not being able to acquire a meeting. Instead, they go downstream and work on clients that are not nearly as important as the large clients that already spend heavily on what you sell.

Leaving this, you may want to pick up Eat Their Lunch and Elite Sales Strategies, which will help prepare you to steal your competitor’s clients while protecting your clients from being poached.