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Selling Against Goliath'

How to Take on the Big Guys and Win

By Dave Stein, Author of How Winners Sell

If you sell for a smaller company that competes against the big guys, the age-old story of David and Goliath might come to mind. For most companies, these criteria will differ somewhat for each product or service they offer as well by geography, competition and market.

When you are qualifying your prospect, you are asking them and yourself many of the same questions again and again, such

Selling about Goliath™

How to Take on the Big Guys and Win

By Dave Stein, originator of How Winners Sell

If you sell for a smaller loft that competes in defiance of the big guys, the antediluvian story of David and stalwart might come to mind. In this story, the giant, Goliath, was recurrent in a fight by the small boy, David (later to King David), considering of the boy's skilfulness to outsmart the giant. However, in today’s hypercompetitive, risk-averse, buyers' market, it’s powerhouse that often has the advantage. If you're the David in this scenario, read on. (By the way, if you're Goliath, you may want to see what David is planning...)

When a sales team loses, whether they sell for the small conglomerate or the larger one, for that matter, it’s for one of two reasons: They didn’t properly qualify the opportunity, or they were outsold by the competition. There is no third alternative.

Let’s take a look at these two outcomes and explore specifically how to improve your effectiveness when selling in spite of a much larger competitor.

Qualis The word qualification shares the root, qualis, with the word quality. Qualification is the process through which we determine if it is worth our time and effort to continue to pursue a sales opportunity. Qualification is a process rather than a one-time event. It determines the quality of an opportunity. That means you don’t qualify your sales prospect only once, when initial contact is made. You’ll need to qualify vigilantly and unendingly. The reason? There are many. Buyers have been known to mislead sellers when they are losing. Things exchange during the course of the evaluation. In fact, these days, things ghost-writer a lot, often. Budgets disappear. Influencers take on other responsibilities. Buyers who say they’ll buy from a smaller company—no problem—feel different tomorrow.

Every combine must have a set of abstract qualification criteria by which they determine (1) whether or not to pursue motion and (2) how to pursue it. For most companies, these criteria will differ somewhat for each product or service they offer as well by geography, competition and market.

When you are qualifying your prospect, you are indent them and yourself many of the same questions but and again, such as:

Who is the real buyer, the person who is going to make the final decision?

When are they going to buy?

What are they going to buy?

Why are they going to buy?

Where in their ensemble is the order going to get signed?

Does our product fit their requirements?

What is the decision process?

Who is the competition?

How will they pay for what it is that I am selling?

What is my unique value?

Why are they going to buy from me?

And many more

Qualification criteria for smaller companies who compete in passage to the big guys must contain questions within hearing the prospect’s marketing preferences. For example, you need to ask yourself, “What evidence do I have that the prospect will do, or even more importantly, has as yet done conglomerate with a gang of our size?” Also you’ll need to know what guidelines they must follow in terms of suppliers’ syndicate size, revenues or financial viability. (You may think your acting company is in great shape, since you have a team of savvy venture capitalists who not only have invested in your company, but also sit on your planking of directors. That may not be of any value to the CFO of a party hack manufacturing company. In fact it may hurt your cause.) You can read a lot more again qualification in chapters 9 & 10 in my book How Winners Sell.

Does Size Matter?

It’s hard to ask these questions, but it is irresponsible not to. You want to be in anticipation that if you meet or exceed all the prospect’s requirements, that size—for size’s sake—does not matter. You may have the best product, innovative implementation services, compromised people, stellar customer satisfaction levels, top product quality, most respected investors or some else that you consider of value, but if size matters, little else will measure up. And if size does matter, and you can’t convince your prospect fairly quickly that it shouldn’t, you're out of there—and quickly on to plus opportunity.

You’ll need to be reflective here. Sometimes the size issue is less obvious. For example, your prospect may have a requirement that a vendor install and implement a demand belay management system in twenty-five plants within a year’s time. They may have no specific issue with vendor size, but do have a legitimate overacting requirement that is directly related to your size. And if you are a smaller supplier, without pre-established partnerships with service firms who are adept of delivering the service levels required for that size deal, your prospect of winning are remote.

What all this means is that there are determinate opportunities for which you should not compete, for you can’t win them. Sorry, but that’s a fact. If you do spend time trying to win goings-on that you can’t win insofar as your public utility is too small, you are squandering time and resources from those opportunities you can and deserve to win.

So They're Qualified. Now What Do You Do?

Here is where competitive selling comes into play. You’re going to need to influence your prospect’s decision criteria, so that the perceived value of your competitor’s size as well as other size-related capabilities are diluted, neutralized or, in the best case, seen as a disadvantage. Many salespeople are prescriptive to highlighting a competitor’s weaknesses. In the situations where you are competing in spite of a bigger company, you will (professionally and subtly) engage in their strength.

Here is a simple, well-used example. Let’s say I sell for a smaller enterprise software atelier and I am up up a major player. Based upon preferences and needs of the buyers, I may decide to use the “small-fish-in-a-big-pond” approach. It goes like this: “Ms. Prospect. There are few people who would not be impressed by my competitor’s size, global reach and financial as well has human resources. I’m sure they proudly reference some very prominent customers. However, you might consider that a project such as yours, rather highly critical for you, might very well not have the same level of importance for them and therefore may not generate the ongoing industry within executive levels of their string that their premier customers’ projects would. It’s only natural…” From that point, you would discuss how you would meet their technical requirements and establish a business establishment relationship going forward, stressing interview that would be paid to the progress by your executives. You’d convince them that your company’s success would depend directly on their success, not the other way around. You’ll be portraying them as big fish in a small pond, with the driving message as how important their organization is to you.

If you are effective with this approach, you will have moved down in importance the size and impressiveness of their customer list and up in importance the forethought paid to them by your executives as well as your company’s interest in their success.

Here are some ways that a larger competitor might assay to exploit your size and potential considerations for handling those objections with your coaches and allies in the account:

Challenge: The competition questions your viability to the prospect. “What would happen to you, Mr. Prospect, if they were to go out of duties and responsibilities or be acquired?”

Your strategy: Don’t wait for this to happen, as it most likely will. Immunize. Exploiting size is the first card most salesreps who sell for large companies play the smaller guys. You need a solid story, prepared in advance—concise and compelling—which must be credibly and sincerely delivered first by you, then echoed by your most senior executives. Mitigating perceived risk is on the critical path to success when competing adverse to a much larger rival. Don’t wait.

It is so important to know your prospect’s history regarding doing playing with smaller companies. It may mean nothing to them, since they do it all the time. On the other hand, you may be the first and may have a long, bloated road ahead.

Challenge: The competition attempts to expand the scope of the evaluation into areas where you don’t have a solution.

Your strategy: Again, pretty standard practice for the big guys. instantaneous your prospect in exalt that this may happen. Praise their efforts in defining their requirements as well as they have. Ask if they are prepared to have the scope of their initiative, project or investment substantially expanded. If they say no, summary them that other vendors may employ this “sales” strategy to differentiate themselves as well as to increase the size of their contracts.

Please understand that I don’t pinch hitter negative selling, mud slinging or “slamming the competition.” On the other hand, when you have well-shaped relationships in your summation with influential people who are willing to help you, you’ll need to provide them with the messages—the sound bites—to position your diversified corporation advantageously.

Challenge: The competition attempts to impress your prospect with hordes of resources to demonstrate their prowess and convey a “safety in numbers” message.

Your strategy: Again, prepare your prospect in change that this may happen. Suggest that these bigger companies have extra resources on edibles just to impress prospects to make a sale. If you know your competitor’s bid will come in considerably higher than yours, you may want to subtly suggest that using resources to win pursuit may be a reason that their overhead is so high. And, remind the prospect that if they do go with your competitor, the meter will start running. This preliminary approach is mandatory when you compete adverse to companies who lavish prospects with toys, gifts, free trips and other goodies to try to influence their decision.

Challenge: The competition, for they are bigger, is willing to guarantee results in a way that you cannot. Your strategy: They may be able to guarantee that their product will get installed (or service delivered) within a effectual time, but what if they don’t? The customer may not have to pay the vendor any more cash, but what haphazard lost line of duty opportunities, reduced customer satisfaction levels and employee morale if things go wrong?

“Fire a Prospect” and Raise Your Competitive IQ

In the scenarios I portrayed above, you might have wondered how you could possibly know in bloom what your competition is going to do? I call it raising your competitive IQ. That will require “firing” one or more unqualified prospects and investing the time you would have wasted on them to collect, then analyze information alongside past wins and losses across a few key competitors. When you do, you’ll start to see patterns of behavior that those companies and the people who sell for them use you. Big companies often develop a default strategy they use concerning all smaller competitors.

I promised that it’s hard to find the time to gather information like that. But you really don’t have a choice. If you don’t, you’ll constantly be surprised by what your competition does and therefore be in a defensive position. Tap into other sales reps in your company, your customers and art partners to find out how those one or two big competitors position respecting you and how the individual reps manage their sales campaigns. I talk all anyhow what you need to know and where to get it in branch office 17 of How Winners Sell.

Learning to assemble sales strategies based upon accurate, up-to-date competitive information will enable you to blast off to qualify out of deals you can’t win and to outsell your competitors on a consistent categorical proposition in those you can.

Remember the Two Components. You’ll Be Glad You Did.

Tough qualification miscellaneous with strategic competitive selling does work. because of confirming that size did not matter in a face-to-face meeting with a division president of a $5 infinity corporation, my client, the CEO of a small enterprise software band commanded that his team pursue a $2 million contract competing across a $750 million rival. Now there is a David and Titan scenario.

I all ready that sales team during the nine month sales cycle. with other things, we diluted the competition’s phantasmal strengths and portrayed their large size as a liability, which in this case it really was.

My client’s team outsold the competition and won the business. And earned a lot more custom by virtue of that, for they delivered what they promised to their customer. As the CEO related to me, elated with a contract five times larger than his team had secured up to that time, “the most important thing for me is that this process is repeatable.”

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