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Against The Odds

Written by: Corey Poirier

Article Overview: Winning a competitive deal is not always easy.

Against The Odds

A while back I was fortunate enough to secure a very competitive order. How competitive you might ask?

For starters, one competitor was quoting the same product at a lower price.

Second, the prospect was personal friends with one of my competitors.

Finally, an associate of the prospect was telling him not to do business with our company due to a bad experience this associate had with a product sold to him by a competitor selling the same brand as me; even though the competitor had no real affiliation with our company.

Tough deal to win? I kind of thought so. Impossible; one former co-worker noted.

When I heard that, I welcomed the challenge. The following is how I dealt with each of the prospects three concerns.

1) Higher Price. To deal with the issue of being priced higher than a dealership carrying the exact same product, I talked to the prospect about the value of dealing directly with the manufacturer (who I represented in this circumstance). Of note, I started this value discussion during the initial meeting and carried it throughout the entire process.

I did this by explaining to the prospect that my quote would not be the lowest price due to the extra value he would receive (ie. stronger warranty program, high level end-user product training, no middle-man to go through for support, etc.).

When I presented my proposal to the customer I went through the value proposition I had prepared to show him that even though my price might be higher, he would be receiving a higher overall value with my offering.

My proposal also included references of clients that had paid more to deal with me (and my company) in the past; complete with notes about how happy these clients were with the choice they made. I did this because I realized that this prospect was going to be quite fixated on price.

Furthermore, my proposal included a list of our key staff members and highlighted the product trainers' level of experience, experience of the corporate management team, as well as my level of experience; to demonstrate to the prospect that he was evaluating at a team that really knew their stuff.

I wanted this customer to know that he was buying a team, not just a product. I guess I could go on and on about the different things I included in my proposal to demonstrate the value to this customer, but your time is valuable, so let's just say I worked hard to prove to this customer that it wasn't just about buying the lowest price, and instead it was about the true "Total Cost of Ownership".

This was how I handled the pricing issue, since I was not only against one of my own resellers, but also five other vendors; and my price was the second highest.

2) Competing against the prospects personal friend. In dealing with the issue of competing against the prospects friend, I walked on egg shells with this one, but essentially I complimented the organization his friend was working for and even talked about their strengths, including the fact that their product had an extremely respectable market share. However, I also talked about the fact that this same vendor had just opened the branch locally and the fact that it would take them a while to build up their presence in our city, the way they had in other regions.

I explained that choosing them wouldn't necessarily be a bad decision but I suggested that he visit their facility and than mine to compare the two infrastructures. I continued that maybe he should even ride along with one of the members of our service staff and one of the members of their service staff to further compare our two companies. I also suggested that he ask them for reference letters as well.

I wasn't trying to say anything negative about this competitor, I just wanted the prospect to know locally that this vendor was still in the building phase, by comparison.

When this vendor couldn't respond to some of his requests, I think the prospect started question whether signing with them would be in his best interest.

In fact, they ultimately admitted to only having 6 clients in a region where we had 4,500 clients.

3) Getting a poor referral from the prospects associate. In handling the situation of the prospect being told by an associate not to choose our company because of something one of our resellers did, I simply explained the difference between the manufacturer and dealership network, and also explained (with empathy) that I understood his concern. I then encouraged him to speak to a wide variety of our current clients, to tour our facility, and try to the product at our office, etc.

At the end of the day, he ultimately decided to sign an order with us, and I'm forever grateful, for as we all know, on any given hour on any given day, anything can happen in the wonderful world of "selling".

Yours in Success

CP

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