Published by Niall Devitt, Btb Business Training
Competitor related objections often prove to be some of the more difficult objections that salespeople have to deal with. This is borne out by the fact that a lot of sales trainers continue to preach wishy-washy sales advice that merely skims the surface, rather than deal with the issues involved.
The first rule of selling is knowledge, so much so that:
Our own level of knowledge often merely mirrors our selling ability.
Most of us know our own products.
Some of us know our products and our customers.
And a very few of us know our own products, our customers and our competitors
So let me start by saying that to be truly effective when dealing with competitor objections, the more knowledge a salesperson processes particularly in terms of that very same competitor, the better the chance that they can effectively handle the objection and get the sale.
A second important consideration is that salesperson can usually easily categorise the objection in terms of the price.
A competitor that is offering a lower priced product
This is the more common of the two and actually the easier of the two objections to deal with. The first thing to remember is prospects are value sensitive rather than price sensitive, So here the salesperson needs to reassure the prospect in terms of the perceived value of the product, see my post on "Dealing with Sales Objections: Price" on how to do this.
A competitor that is offering a higher priced product
Provided this is a genuine objection on behalf of the prospect, it is often more difficult to overcome, in effect it's the first one flipped on its head, you now are the one offering the more competitively priced product.
There are two reasons why this is more difficult, to consider paying extra in the first place means that he presently attaches a lot perceived value to the competitor product, meaning that you are also probably going up against a skilled salesperson.
So here you will need to, and in this order
- Increasing the prospect's perceived value of your product (again see, "Dealing with Sales Objections: Price") and
- Lowering the perceived value of the competitors offering.
Going on the attack
There is little doubt that attacking your competitor's offering has risks and most sales training and sales trainers will advise against doing it. However, one of the reasons that I got into sales training business in the first place is that a lot of sales training I attended during my early sales career proved to me that many sales trainers don't really know what they are talking about.
This happens to be a case in point, because attacking your competitors is both a healthy and necessary sales skill, in no way comes across negative, provided of course you have the tools to do it effectively. Unfortunately, most salespeople who attempt it don't and this is what leads to the bad press.
Taking the prospect through your product and demonstrating its benefits remains the most important piece in terms of leading and time spent during the dialogue , reducing the overall perceived value of the competitor's offering is also sound strategy when it comes to dealing with the objection.
As I said at the start, a salesperson needs to have in debt knowledge of the competitor and products and this is truly critical if the seller is going to attempt to critique their offering.
Start by talking about competitor strengths and then highlight any weaknesses using hard facts; third party evidence, speaking in non-emotional type language.
It's important that the prospect hears you constructively criticise rather than be personal so always attack the relevance of the solution to the prospects needs, rather than the person, the company or their reputation.
