Sales and Marketing Training | How to Analyse your Competitors?
You will almost always face tough competition. It is your job to know your competitors and create a competitive strategy. Regardless of how much market intelligence you have about the competitors from your research or your marketing team (and often it’s not as much as you would like), it is equally critical to understand how your customer feels about the competitors, so that you can effectively position against them—and do it in a way that neither bad mouth nor promotes them.
As a part of your preparation, learn as much as possible about your competitors using the Internet, files, colleagues, literature, trade shows, annual reports, competitors, and advertisements.
One source of competitive information often not tapped is customers. Most customers will answer questions like “Who else are you speaking with?” “How do you feel about them?” “What has been your experience?” “What do you like about working with them?” “What would you change?” “What is their approach?” “Who do you work with there?” “How do we compare?” As you listen, don’t become defensive. Don’t bad mouth the competition. Directly criticizing a competitor reflects badly on you. You might even be insulting the customer who selected the competitor. Instead, ask targeted questions and help the customer make comparisons.
Find out what your competitors are offering, what the relationship history is, and who your competitors have access to. Find out how your customers feel about your competitors and ask how you stack up. Determine how your level of access to the customer and other members of the customer’s decision-making team compares.
Asking questions about the competition saves time—and deals. When one salesperson asked how his proposal stacked up, he was told he was number two. Why? Because of the software package. With this information, he teamed up with a software firm and submitted a revised proposal that won.
With competitive data, you can create a competitive strategy, bolster how and what you sell, and better position yourself against the competition. You will also gain competitive feedback that you can funnel to your organization to spur new products, product improvements, and more effective competitive strategies.
By knowing your competitors, you will be able to diffuse any “mines” again you that your competitors plant.
