Competition is the reason salespeople and many other employees strive so much. If it weren't for competition, businesses would lack the strongest incentive for change - in new products, new processes, new market ventures, new strategies and organizational development.

This competitive impetus is more than self-serving in that it drives companies to introduce innovation in products and services that benefit customers. And internally, these changes often mean new roles and growth opportunities for employees. Gaining information about competition makes it possible for a company to measure their own performance in the marketplace. By comparing a company's performance with the competition, they can assess relative strengths and weaknesses of a sales program or a product and services bundle as a basis for making improvements.

Know Competition
If a firm has a process and strategy for gathering and analyzing competitive information, competition can motivate the sales force. Customers can be an excellent source of feedback and intelligence about the competition, if salespeople know how to dig for it.

Knowing the competition enables a sales team to focus their effort and be better prepared to approach prospects and customers. Without information on competitors, salespeople have blind spots that make competing guesswork. Too often companies tend to avoid the topic of competition with prospects and customers for fear of introducing alternatives the prospect may not have considered otherwise.

SWOT Competition

Assessing and rank ordering the competition is a key to the success of a sales program. This can be done as a group effort through pooling intelligence and ranking the competition from strongest to weakest, and plotting out a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis of each. It’s often easier to analyze and understand the behavior of competitors in the same market since they are subject to many of the same external factors.

A firm should pay special attention to the strongest competitors - who present the biggest retaliatory threat - and the newest entries, who may make significant inroads before market leaders have a chance to notice; and counter their measures.

Probe Competition
A firm’s salespeople should regularly probe prospects about their competitors in a market, instead of pretending they don’t exist. One way for them to ask is, "Are you talking to anyone else about this project?" or "Who else is bidding on this job?" Of course the best case is they have no other vendor in mind, and it helps to know this. But most likely they will share the other suitors, and a firm can position their offering to best differentiate against that particular competitor.

If the salesperson discovers they are competing with several companies in a bidding situation, competitive positioning may not be so clear-cut. One effective strategy is to ask the prospect: “If we were out of the running on this project, and you had to make a decision from among the other bidders, which one would you likely choose?” Then follow with: “Really? Why would you pick them?”

And with these answers, a firm will have more information to position their offering to best differentiate against their strongest competition in a multiple-bidder situation. And if the selling company asks these questions of several contacts in the prospect’s company, they can compare notes from the different sources and form an even clearer picture of the situation.

Competition makes everyone who deserves to survive in a market better and is the reason strong companies continuously improve products, services and operations. Whether a company is planning for a presentation to a major prospect or the introduction of a new product, they need to know who and what they are up against in order to best position themselves for success.

Joe Marr is a public speaker, sales and management consultant and trainer, and runs Sandler Training at 501 Avis Drive in Ann Arbor. To get more information on Selling Smart training sessions being conducted this season, call 734-821-4830 or visit his Web site at www.sandlerannarbor.com.