Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Your Biggest Competitor

May 12th, 2009

Don Cooper, The Sales Heritic.

Your biggest competitor doesn’t have a brochure, a web site or a business card. It’s never taken a sales training seminar, never goes on road trips and never makes PowerPoint presentations. It doesn’t even attempt to overcome objections, close the sale or ask for referrals.


And it will outsell you every day if you let it.

Because your biggest competitor is not another company, an alternative solution or a different salesperson.

Your biggest competitor is doing nothing.

Prospects have lots of choices. In fact, more today than ever before. But one of their choices is simply doing nothing. And in this uncertain economic climate, that’s a very attractive option for a lot of prospects.

To sell against this insidious competitor, help your prospect understand the true costs of doing nothing. What will they miss out on? What will they risk? How will their existing problems worsen?

You don’t want to come across as a fear monger. But you do owe it to your prospects to educate them thoroughly, so they can make the best decision possible.

Your biggest competitor has a lot of natural advantages: it’s omnipresent, it’s persuasive and it’s a lot cheaper than you. But you can often outsell it if you tackle it head-on and treat it like any other competitor.