Honesty is the Only Policy - When Competitors Lie

It’s a sad truth in business that competitors sometimes spread lies about you. Unfortunately, I’ve had this experience first-hand and found it to be terribly frustrating. “Why would they do that? How can I get them to stop? What should I tell my prospect? This seems like it’s going to hurt my sale. This must be a bad thing for me and my company”. As hard as this might be to believe, this isn’t a bad thing at all and in fact this can easily be used to help you.

Imagine you find yourself working through the sales process with a prospective new customer. Things are going well and then suddenly you hear them say “your competitor said XYZ” about you/your company. “WHAT???  BUT THAT’S NOT TRUE???” This scenario can often unnerve even the most veteran sales pro, throwing you off your game and stammering for a response. If you are unprepared for this type of discussion it can quickly unravel the conversation and take the entire process off the rails. But it doesn’t have to be a bad thing at all.

Let’s go through what is happening here by asking several questions:

• Why is the prospect bringing this up?
• Why would the competition say something un true about me/my company?
• How can you respond to this type of ad-hominem attack?
• How can you use this attack to your benefit?

Let’s start out with WHY? (as Simon Senik would suggest)

Why is the prospect bringing this up to you in the first place?

• What they are seeing/hearing doesn’t jive with what the competitor told them?
• CONGRATULATIONS you’ve built trust with the customer and they are confiding in you. They are on YOUR side!!!

The prospect clearly feels that they can trust you and they are likely looking for confirmation about what they already suspect, that the information they were told is untrue.

“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you” – Friedrich Nietzsche

What is the competition trying to do here? Why would they spread lies?

There are two possible options here:

• They don’t know the truth in the first place - This can get complicated though – for instance, is management intentionally misinforming the staff or is your company shrouded in secrecy, thus resulting in the misinformation being out there?
• They know they are lying but they just don’t care – this is what I call ‘malicious intent’ - Their motivations here are likely varied but at the end of the day they are intentionally spreading misinformation in an attempt to gain an advantage.

Now they both end up with the same result and while it is important to consider motivation, it doesn’t really have any effect on the possible ways to handle this issue.

How can you respond to this type of attack?

It’s natural for you to immediately respond in anger when this happens. It’s a natural response to feel hurt (even personally) and angry when you feel attacked. I can tell you I have found myself dialing the VP of sales at a competitor to read him the riot act when this happened to me (luckily, I calmed down before I finished dialing and hung up the phone).

So how do you respond to this attack… DO NOTHING. Don’t call the competition, don’t ask them to stop, don’t do anything. They are doing you a favor (we’ll talk about that in a minute) so let them keep helping you out. Put your ego down and avoid the temptation of “being right” and just let it go.

I had a coworker once who caught a prospect in a big time lie and he was doing the right thing and just making a point to call it out for what it was with a piece of un-refutable evidence (the truth is easy to show – lies are harder to prove). He did this for some time to his benefit. But he just couldn’t avoid having to “be right”. The first chance he had to confront the competitor in person, at a conference, he pointed out the lie. So, you know what happened? The competitor took down the website that highlighted the incorrect data. I ask you, how did that help my coworker? He was doing GREAT just pointing this out and moving on with the sale. But his ego got in the way and in the end, it hurt him. I ask you – Would you rather be RIGHT or WIN?

So, ‘do nothing to the competitor’ but what do you tell the prospect? That’s easy! Tell them the TRUTH. Which, if you’ve been doing that through the entire process, they will believe.

• Is this an obvious lie? Just show them the truth.
• Is this a personal attack? Just tell them you don’t engage in name calling and move on.
• Is this something that no one could actually prove? Tell them that it isn’t true, point out that you don’t really want to discuss the competition when untrue statements come into play and move on.

How can you use this attack to your benefit?

?So how does this really help ME?

• If the competition will lie about this what else are they lying about? Their willingness to spread misinformation puts their entire value proposition into question?
• You can point this out to the prospect while you remind them that you have been honest 100% of the time through the process.
• Building trust with the customer is one of the pillars of consultive sales processes. When you point out a lie you have broken the competitions entire consultive approach.

So, you see, this is going to help you in the end as long as you take the opportunity for what it is – a chance to show your own trustworthiness and build a bridge to you customer. Let the competition spread lies, at the end of the day they say more about them then they could every honestly say about you.