Study Your Competition

No salesperson or company is too good

to ignore competition

To sell into a crowded market, you must study your competition.  All competition. Even those competitors who seem too distant to ever become a real threat.

In sales training sessions, I promote the idea that both a company and each individual salesperson must keep an eye on their competition.  Most agree, but once in a while, this concept touches a nerve.

There is normally one or more people in the workshop who disagree.  They claim that they just go out and do their best to serve customers and let the customer decide who to buy from.  Untethered to what competitors are doing, these folks think their products, services, and technical knowledge will be enough to keep customers.  And maybe they are right.  Maybe that’s good enough for their sales goals.

However, the problem with this thought process is that it’s thinking like a salesperson and not like their customer.  Every customer is exposed to the entire market of products.  Social media, AI, and standard marketing approaches allow pinpoint accuracy that puts competitor information into your customer’s hands.  So, you may not want to burden yourself with competition, but your customers will.  Farmers will see your competitor’s ads, watch their YouTube videos, listen to their informative podcasts, attend their meetings, and be called on by their salespeople. 

It’s better to be in front of that information if a customer brings it up than to say, “I don’t know anything about them.  Let me get back to you.” It’s better to be on a sales call with your customer when they are trying to figure out who to buy from:  you or your competition.

Think about your own purchases.  Think about large purchases like a home, a car, or a new roof.  You probably Googled around online.  Maybe plugged in an AI search.  You are now trying to make sense of all the conflicting information.  You are looking for someone who can sort through all the online info, all the biased advertisements, and all the over-promising salespeople.  Someone who can take all that and help you, as a buyer, make the best choice for you.  In sales, we call that a trusted advisor.

Becoming a trusted advisor is a key role to grow into with your customers.  It allows you to have a seat at the boardroom when your customer is trying to make a decision. 

Ignore the competition, and you lose that boardroom seat.

How to study your competition?

• The basics:  Go online, look in major publications they advertise in, observe them at trade shows, shop their products in a retail setting if possible, and observe their dealer/distribution network.
• A bit more advanced:  Go see their products in action.  Go to the farms or livestock operations that use their products.  Observe how their brand promise in advertising compares to the actual on-farm results.  Do the end users believe your competition is the biggest, best, fastest, most efficient, or whatever else is promised?  Do customers feel their products live up to their promise?  If not, why are they still using them?  What got them to consider and then buy these products?
• And a bit more advanced:  talk with their distributors.  Once you understand why an end user buys your competitor’s products, it’s time to find out why their dealers or distributors are buying them.  Typically, this is a different set of reasons from the end user’s reasons.  The reasons that a dealer carries a product may be due to wholesale margins, market share, uniqueness of product, customer desire, cash flow dynamics, manufacturer programs, etc.
• Very Advanced:  Do a SWOT analysis on your most threatening competitor.  SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats.  If you are the market leader, then you want to focus your SWOT on your strongest competitor and your most important products.  If you are the small guy in the market, then do a SWOT on your biggest competitor you are selling against, or the competitor that you want to compete against.

This topic becomes especially helpful for the individual local salesperson.  You not only have to compete against a competing dealer/distributor, but you have to consider the salespeople they employ.  If you cover a big area, you might have two or three of them to compete against. 

Being the small guy in a market, my competition had seven salespeople in the same area that I covered.  When I made a farm call on one of their accounts, I had to take into consideration which one of these seven salespeople I was selling against. 

As a local salesperson, you have to also consider the various brands your competing dealer carries.  This is why we can’t stick our heads in the sand and ignore the competition.   History is littered with examples of the big guy ignoring competition:  Wal-Mart vs Amazon, Blockbuster vs Netflix, Kodak vs digital.  Ignored until it was too late. 

As you can see, it becomes very intertwined and involved when a local salesperson begins to track their competition.  It does take some time to accomplish this on a week-to-week basis.  It does take mental energy to be aware of what is going on in your market.  Afterall, there is plenty to do just staying up to date on what’s going on in our own company versus trying to watch the competition.

However, as mentioned, your customer is being recruited by them every day.  When they are deciding to buying from you, they are taking your competition into that decision.  Stay aware of what is going on so you can stay in that conversation with your customer.