How well do you know your competitors? Most sales people claim to know them well but either struggle to give any detailed information or know a lot of facts but fail to apply them to real world situations. Knowing a competitor is prioritizing and accounting for them in specific selling scenarios. That means conducting a truly effective, and customized, competitive analysis. Unfortunately, most research that sales teams do in this area falls far short of the mark.
This principle is well illustrated in Lone Star Analysis’s inclusion in a large military contract. After winning the deal, their Vice President of Corporate Development, Matthew Bowers, shows that he’s already gauging the competition by focusing on the percentage of the contract that Lone Star can acquire. The landscape has been significantly reduced down to fourteen suppliers, so getting a firm understanding on the unique strengths that Lone Star can provide in contrast to the other companies becomes key in differentiating themselves to maximize their share of the contract.
It’s uncommon to find a sales team with a keen sense of their competition. This is because competitive analysis usually comes in one of only two options.
First, there’s the broad-horizon competitive outlook undertaken in the business planning stage, typically to validate a strategic initiative’s viability. This information is interesting but quite general, and not helpful regarding a particular competitor in a specific deal.
The other common analysis theme involves extensive investigation and the collection of mounds of data. This yields a deep and wide view but lacks the focus to provide the ammunition we need for specific situations. Even if we have the time, energy and resources for such deep competitive dives, much of what we uncover will go unused. And if you conduct a deep dive on every potential competitor, you won’t be leaving yourself much time to do anything else!
Fortunately, there is a third option. Start with a targeted framework, identifying these ten critical competitive focus areas:
- Facts Relevant to This Pursuit
- Products/Services
- Performance
- Markets
- People
- Positioning
- Value Proposition/Pricing
- Accounts
- Strengths/Weaknesses
- Plans
With this approach, we focus on only the information that is particularly relevant regarding our connection to a specific competitor in a specific situation. Information that is, in a word, impactful. With large scale sales, you have to be laser-focused. Sales teams can’t afford to waste time on unnecessary education. They need to focus on the information that helps win deals.
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Having personally tested and proved the Sandler Method to be effective, Tina is passionate about assisting clients in reaching their full potential through the Sandler sales methodology.
