Dealing Effectively with the Competition

“This would be a great business if it weren’t for the competition!”

Unfortunately, the existence of the competition impacts every industry, every business and every sales position.?What the competition does or does not do can make a dramatic impact upon a company and a sales person.?That impact can range from squeezing you to the point where you go out of business on one extreme, to creating tremendous opportunities for growth and profits on the other.?The competition and their potential impact on your business is a fact of life.?No matter how hard you wish, you are not going to be able to make the competition go away.

While we can’t change the competition, we certainly are responsible for our attitudes and behaviors toward the competition.?What we say and how we act about the competition can have a daily bearing on our bottom lines.?An appropriate attitude and set of practices for dealing with the competition should be an essential part of every sales person’s repertoire.

This article is an attempt to describe some of the salient parts of that mindset.

1. Respect the competition.

Speaking badly about the competition, looking down on them, finding fault with them and generally disparaging them are all common behaviors that I see frequently among the companies with whom I work.

It is easy enough to understand why.?In sales meetings we are constantly told... CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE