Fear of Comparison

If your prospect wants to know how you compare to leading competitors should you help?

DEFINITION: “Competitive advertising is an effort by at least one company to create a contrast between its product and the same or similar product offerings by competitors. By establishing a contrast for the consumer and trying to influence the consumer's buying choice, this company hopes to obtain a larger market share.”

Let's say you have a new product offering. An offering that is also a ‘first and only’. Prospects don’t know where it fits in the existing market will attempt to find out ‘what it's like’. They look for similar offerings that already exist as a comparison. That's normal human behavior. 

Should you help them compare?

I have been leading product companies in ‘go to market ‘ roles for close to 40 years. And for the past 17 years,' I have taught B2B Marketing at the MBA level. I teach my class that marketing is ‘reducing barriers to transactions’. Why? There is a lot of friction and barriers to consummating a sale. If you want to help your prospect to make a decision, you reduce the barriers and make it easy to purchase from you. You provide the information that helps them make that decision and makes it easier to buy. 

What happens if you don't? What happens if you ignore reality? 

People ---and prospects---are smart. If you don't address the issue they will fill in the void. And the answer they fill in the void may not make it easy to buy from you. You can't pretend the issue doesn't exist in the market and avoid addressing it. Well, you can if you want to fail in the market. 

As a young product manager in the late 1980s, we were losing deals for my product. And as a result, my sales team was losing confidence. They could sell other products and make their numbers. Why compete with a product that was difficult to sell? And the competition had all the ‘best stuff;’ anyways. So, what did we do? We went on the attack. We did direct competitive advertising. We compared key capabilities in advertising of our product versus the primary competitor. The result? We won deals. We educated the market of potential buyers and built confidence in the sales team. We ended up going from ‘zero to hero’ in the company and the market. 

Unfortunately, the leadership of the company stopped the ads after a period of time despite their success. Why? ‘We don't engage in competitive advertising’ was what the leadership stated. What’s interesting is the ads, all these years later, are still well regarded and remembered. There were effective. They worked. But internal philosophies blunted a successful campaign regardless of the outcomes. 

As Jeff Lash of VP of Product Management Research at Forrester recently posted "We have no competitors" is a lame excuse. You're always competing against something -- even if you have a revolutionary innovation, you're competing against the status quo, which is sometimes the toughest competitor.

I couldn’t agree more. I have written and taught the same as a product manager and an entrepreneur. There is always competition. There is the way we do things today or the status quo as Jeff points out. And of course, even apathy is a competitor. To think you have none however is na?ve. 

So, if you know it, and the prospect knows it, and the prospect brings it up, let's say as their #1 question about your offering, should you address it?

Ultimately, to be successful, you need to be seen as a resource and a trusted partner for a prospect. You don't need to disparage your competition; that degrades your value and diminishes your reputation. By listening and understanding each individual prospect and fitting your offering into their goals is still the best way to satisfy a market need. 

But the bottom line is that you shouldn’t shy away from the competition conversation -- you should expect it. Prospects will ask and you should arm yourself with the specifics. And if they ask it often enough, you can head it off at the pass by adding it to FAQs on your website, in digital advertising, and other materials. By having it in writing it shows you are prepared. From a selling perspective, the key is knowing how to address your prospect’s needs in a way that aligns your solution with their goals and ensures your competitors fall outside of it.

Be direct. Be honest. Be knowledgeable. Be the trusted advisor.

Don't let the prospect fill in the blanks. Don't hide from reality. Because you will fall out. 

So by all means, help your prospect compare.