The Discreet Distributor

As a young, wet-behind-the-ears salesman, Terry Barr admits that he made his share of mistakes. The one that still sticks in his mind is the day he compared his competitor’s salesman to a stubborn mule. That mule turned out to be a relative of the customer to whom he was speaking. Oops.

“That was my first lesson in not bringing the competition to the table,” says Barr, now sales manager for Dade Paper Co.’s Atlanta division.

That day, Barr learned a valuable lesson (one that teachers and parents love to preach): if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. That’s especially true in the world of business, where trashing the competition can leave you with a black eye and lost sales.

Eliminate the Negative
You may know all about your competitor’s penchant for bait-and-switch tactics and the behind-the-scenes scoop about how he treats his employees. But as tempting as it may be to share that information with a customer, don’t do it.

“That negative stuff will come back to haunt you,” says Mike Richards, regional sales manager of Acme Wholesale Supply in Tulsa, Okla. “It costs you when you go around badmouthing your competition.”

Like Barr, Richards paid the price for speaking negatively about competitors early in his career. It cost him sales. “It was a learning curve,” he says.

What Richards has since learned is that the downside of bashing a competitor far outweighs any perceived benefits. For one thing, your customers may be offended by your negativity (even if you aren’t mocking their relatives).

“Remember that the decision maker may be buying from your competitor and if you make one remark that is condescending of the competitor, you have turned on the red lights because you have just insulted the decision maker’s ability to buy,” Barr says.

Another pitfall is sounding ignorant. You may think you know every detail about your competitors, but you don’t. Your business is constantly evolving and so is theirs. Unless you receive their internal memos and get a preview of their product line, you could be spewing outdated and incorrect information, which may sound like lies to a customer.

What may seem like a smart business tactic — highlighting the competition’s weaknesses to showcase your company’s strengths — is likely to turn off customers. “It sounds like sour grapes,” says Chuck West, program director of sales for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s executive education programs.

The experts and distributors interviewed for this story agree that salespeople today rarely use tough talk about competition as a sales strategy. It’s a tactic that has lost steam in the new millennium.

“Going head to head is a real struggle on a sales call,” West says. “You’re trying to prove you are a little better here or there. Don’t try to compare with what the competitor is offering, try to figure out if you can help them get where they are trying to go. I don’t think customers want to buy the best product anymore, they want to buy the one that helps them get to their financial goals the best. That’s where we’re headed more than a me-vs.-you fight.”

He Started It
You may know better than to bring up your competition on a sales call, but your customer may not. The distributors SM interviewed say they are often faced with inquisitive customers who want them to spill the beans. This is where things get tricky. Ideally, it’s best to never mention the competitor to your customer. In the real world, however, it is sometimes unavoidable.

“I try to stay away from talk about the competition as much as possible,” says Barr, “but when your decision-maker is a shopper, then he will undoubtedly bring your competitor into the conversation.”

So what do you do in this situation? Focus on the product and process, not the people, says Chuck Holmes, vice president of sales and marketing for Fastco Threaded Products. Until recently, Holmes ran Corporate Strategies, which trains leaders in the distribution industry.

“There’s a difference between selling and gossiping,” Holmes says. “If the customer thinks the other salespeople are rude, that’s fine. I won’t turn around and say they are trustworthy, but I won’t get involved in that discussion. Comparative selling is a perfectly legitimate thing, but gossiping about the competition is not legitimate.”

What is comparative selling? It’s discussing the competition only in terms that are factual and provable, not a matter of opinion. That means focusing on quantifiable differences such as product price or quality, delivery capabilities, or warehousing options.

When a customer asks you to compare yourself with a competitor — and they will — qualify your response by saying, “This is what I understand to be true.” Don’t give customers any excuse to mistrust you.

“After the caveat, I would share factual information,” West says. “You can say they have 27 registered business complaints every year while you average three. Those are known statistics. If you get into quality or service or something ambiguous, you are on weak ground.”

The safest bet, however, is to compare your business to an industry average instead of a specific competitor, West says. If the industry norm is a five-day turnaround between order and delivery and you can do it in three, that’s a fact worth sharing.

What customers care about most, of course, is how you can save them money. When comparative selling, frame it in terms of quantifiable savings.

“Most of us think we are better than the other guy; if we don’t, we have a problem,” Holmes says. “If you can’t turn what you are saying into quantified dollars, it’s probably not going to be well received anyway. If I have a value I should be able to express it in terms of dollars.”

Arm Yourself
The best way to avoid getting entrenched in all-too-easy competitor attacks is to come to each sales presentation prepared with positives about your own company and its products.

“The more facts we have, the less we have to depend on dealing with the various opinions,” Holmes says. “I make sure my salespeople are loaded with facts. If they can’t back it up with facts, they aren’t going to talk about anything.”

Keep detailed records of everything you do. Track your on-time delivery rate, warehouse error rate, customer complaints, cost per unit, and more. Share this information with your sales force and be sure they use it.

“Good salespeople know how to sell the benefit of what they have,” says West. “They are focused on that and not focused on why you are better than the competition.”

Lessons learned? Don’t offer up criticism of your competition — ever. But if a customer presses the issue, you can’t ignore it. Just be sure to focus on your positives, not their negatives and always bring the discussion back to how you can save the customer money.

“Burning bridges is not a healthy thing to do in this business,” says Richard Renert, vice president and co-owner, Eastern Paper of New England, Hamden, Conn. “We operate in a very small industry. Everyone knows each other and word can get around quickly.”