Never Speak Down On Your Competitors

[rifat28dddd]

It’s been my observation that many of those customers who are reporting on the flaws in the competition to you, are also reporting on your flaws to them.

Take everything you hear with a grain of salt.

Disparaging the competition, speaking badly about the company or the individual salespeople, using little innuendos and side comments— all of this says more about us to our customers than it does about the competitors to whom we are referring.

It reveals us as small-minded, petty, smug, and far more interested in ourselves than we are in our customers.

This is something I learned the hard way, in one of the usa telegram data most embarrassing incidents in my tenure as a salesperson.

I was selling a piece of capital equipment, representing a product line that was 35% more expensive than the competition. However, the additional cost was justified in a far superior product.

The competition had been experiencing a problem with one component of their system— the batteries easily came loose and disconnected.

They solved that problem by using a rubber band to provide additional tension on the battery and keep it from jiggling loose.

I pointed that out to my potential customer, asking them how comfortable they felt with a product that was held together with a rubber band.

Negativity Towards Them, Only Hurts You
“Do you know what I don’t like about you?” she asked. I was floored and speechless. “You are so negative about your competitors.”