Finding Your Competition’s Achilles Heel
by Peter Ebner
Unless you plan on hanging out in front of the company registration office and soliciting everyone who has just registered a new business– there are no virgin markets for you to conquer. Everyone you approach is already dealing with a printer and the vast majority – about 80% are happy with their supplier.
Print sales involves more than offering the prospective customer new and better solutions to their business problems; to be successful in sales you need to continuously steal accounts from your competitors and you can be certain that they’ll do everything in their power to stop you from chipping away at their client base, but even the largest, most entrenched, competitor has an Achilles Heel and once uncovered they are susceptible to a takedown.
Apparent weakness rarely present an opportunity
There’s no doubt that every one of your competitors has an apparent weakness; that is to say a weakness that is easily identified. For example, if your competitor is a large shop you could exploit the fact that large shops are usually preoccupied with their major accounts so they don’t have time to give their smaller clients the attention they deserve. On the other hand, if your competitor is a small family run printer you could attack their limited purchasing power and shortage of equipment. But the problem with attacking an apparent weakness is that it’s apparent. In other words, the competition knows that the weakness exists so they’ve most likely devised a strategy to address their weakness and thereby counter your attack. I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t exploit your competition’s apparent weakness but rather that this tactic is rarely effective because apparent weaknesses are usually too well defended.
The secret to bringing down the competition is to attack them at the point of least resistance. It is when your competitors believe that they are doing an excellent job and that their clients are unlikely to change allegiance that they are most vulnerable to an attack. All too often, when things are going well, salespeople will sit back and enjoy the rewards of their efforts and in doing so expose the company’s Achilles Heel.
Achilles Heel #1
Processing their client’s order
A mandate that with few exceptions, every one of your competitors has embraced is to provide their clients with fast efficient service. And although this mandate has been established with the best intention in mind, the all too common strict implementation of this directive overrules a much larger and more important mandate; ensuring that each and every one of their client’s jobs are being run in the best possible way.
Fortunately for you this more important mandate is rarely embraced. Most of your competitors are exposing their Achilles Heel by simply throwing their client’s jobs into the system and processing them as quickly as possible, thereby opening the door for an outside salesperson to steal the account by offering the client new ideas and better solutions to their business and marketing problems.
Achilles Heel #2
Low-level relationships
Here’s how the salesperson/client relationship usually evolves. Smart salespeople realize that when trying to land a new account they must prospect near the top of the corporate ladder. So initially they’ll contact the president or marketing manager and show these individuals how their services can help them solve their business and marketing problems. But once upper management has been sold most salespeople shift their attention to purchasing. Since the purchasing agent is the individual that will authorize most orders they believe that their time is well spent nursing this relationship.
Although, building strong rapport with the purchasing agent is a vital part of the sales process, in doing so most salespeople neglect the real decision makers. By focusing their attention on getting orders processed, instead of earning jobs by solving business problems they expose their company’s Achilles Heel. As their relationship with the decision maker begins to wane an opportunity arises for another printer to fill this void.
Achilles Heel #3
Taking their clients for granted
If I were to contact your expired clients; those that no longer give you their printing business and ask them about your company, most of them would say that they were satisfied with your service, price and quality. In fact they would be hard pressed to give a reason for leaving because 65% of your prospects left for no reason other than your indifference. Only 15% left because they were dissatisfied with your service.
The reason that indifference abounds lays in the psychological make-up of successful salespeople. Most top salespeople are success driven and they measure their success by their ability to close sales, but they quickly lose interest once the account becomes active. In other words, the best salespeople are usually the worst CSR’s. That’s not to say that they ignore their clients but rather that they don’t have the desire to nurse them. They perceive giving their clients the day-to-day attention that they require to be a tedious and non-productive use of their time, so more often than not, they expose the company’s Achilles Heel by treating, even their best clients, with indifference.
Achilles Heel #4
Thinking like a printer
Although the printing industry has undergone dramatic changes over the past 15 years, for the most part, sales and sales management has not. The vast majority of salespeople are exposing their company’s Achilles Heel by thinking like printers. They still believe that they can hold on to their accounts by providing outstanding service, great quality and a competitive price when in fact these are the minimum requirement for doing business not a reason for a client to remain loyal.
But there is a new breed of salespeople on the horizon who are stealing accounts at an unprecedented rate by positioning themselves as industry experts instead of printers. Instead of selling printing, which is a price sensitive commodity, they’re differentiating their services by offering their clients expert advice. Instead, of quoting a job they provide new ideas and instead of thinking like a printer they think like their clients and offer them what they really want, better solutions to their business problems.
Although identifying your competition’s Achilles Heel will open the door to opportunity there is a truism that says “Don’t throw stones if you live in a glass house” and this certainly holds true here. So before focusing your attention on exposing and attacking your competition’s Achilles Heel, ensure that your accounts are not susceptible to a similar attack.