Methods of engaging your customers
Jerry Stapleton
For SBT
Last month, we talked about "positioning" and how it brings value to customers by allowing you – and them – to cut to the chase. In an era of information overload, the importance of a clear, simple message can’t be overstated.
We also discussed competitive engagement, the science of developing and communicating your message – your simple message – based on your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. In other words: Go where they ain’t.
Easier said than done? I’m not so sure about that: Sun Tzu had it figured out some 2,500 years ago.
Let Sun set
you straight
Sun Tzu was a Chinese general whose philosophies of engagement are set out in the book, The Art of War. His principles continue to influence modern warfare and competitive engagements in other walks of life as well, like politics and marketing.
Sun Tzu says, "In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack, the direct and the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers."
I promise I won’t discuss an endless series of maneuvers. Instead, I’ll simply illustrate a few practical applications of Sun Tzu’s direct and indirect methods of attack as they relate to engaging competition in sales situations.
Sun Tzu’s first method of attack: Direct
"It is the rule in war if our forces are five to the enemy’s one, to attack him."
– Sun Tzu
As a salesperson, you’ll use a direct method when you have clear superiority over the competition, that is, when you dominate the competition.
One of my clients is a financial software company whose product was generally positioned as an enterprise solution for smaller companies ($50 million to $200 million in revenues). They had made it to the finals in a competitive battle to win the business of a $50 million prospect. The other software company in the finals offered a business version of a highly popular personal financial software package.
In this case, the appropriate method of engagement for our client was direct, illustrating its sheer dominance by comparing its product feature by feature with the competition’s.
My client was able to draw its competitor into this arena and slay the competitor with something of a "death from a thousand features."
Oh, yeah – who says so?
Remember, your clear superiority over your competition must be in the mind of your customer, not in yours. It’s not uncommon for salespeople to become so enamored of their own products that they mistakenly assume their prospective customers view their offerings through those same rose-colored glasses.
Consider a scene from the comic adventure movie "Crocodile Dundee," the story of a fellow from the Australian Outback who visits New York City:
As Dundee and the film’s leading lady walk arm-in-arm along a city street, a thug jumps out from behind a pillar, brandishing a dagger. The woman cautions Dundee to be careful, since the mugger has a knife. Sneers Dundee, "That ain’t no knife. This is a knife," and he pulls from his boot a weapon with an 18-inch blade. Of course, the thug throws down his own puny little knife and flees.
Now that’s direct.
Carving out your own niche
You would also use a form of a direct method of engagement when you face a competitor who has a longstanding relationship with the target company or your goal is to pursue a particular application in which your company is strong but your competitor has either no interest in providing or no ability to do so.
Here’s an example from the world of marketing. A print ad placed by Canon appeared in numerous publications in 1998. It read:
Imagine for a minute if Canon had attempted to position itself as the dominant player in the entire copier market. Its ad would have exhibited some form of this assertion: "Canon copiers are better than Xerox copiers," a message not likely to carry much credibility. On the other hand, when Canon carves out the networked digital niche of the copier market, the company is able to credibly show clear superiority.
David and Goliath:
A love story
One of my clients, a firm that provides CRM (customer relationship management) software, was competing with one of the biggest players in its market space to win the business of a large brokerage house. Only these two competitors remained on the prospect’s final shortlist, something of a David-and-Goliath battle. Eventually, the "David" company had the objectivity and courage to acknowledge to itself that it was outgunned.
Rather than "go down fighting" – an outcome it knew to be inevitable if it continued – the company chose to concede the lion’s share of the business to the Goliath. However, the David company brought into sharp focus the prospect’s urgent need for a Web-based customer service solution, which, of course, it offered but which its competitor was at least another year away from being able to deliver. My client’s execution of the direct method of engagement worked, and David and Goliath are coexisting at the same account.
But what if …
I know, I know – what if your company or product doesn’t have clear superiority over the competition for all or part of a customer’s need? Then what? Then you use the indirect method of attack. More on that next month.
Jerry Stapleton is president of Mequon-based Stapleton Resources, LLC, and author of From Vendor to Business Resource: Transforming the Sales Force for the New Era of Selling. For more than 10 years, he has been showing companies of all sizes, from start-ups to Fortune 500, how to sell to large accounts. E-mail: jstapleton@stapletonresources.com; Web site: www.stapletonresources.com
March 15, 2002 Small Business Times, Milwaukee
