Brian LaManna argues that salespeople should welcome competitors in deals. When prospects mention rivals, win rates often increase because it signals serious buying intent. Instead of attacking competitors, focus on the buyer's priorities and speak positively about other vendors.
I freaking love competitors. And I'll take a step back. I did not always have that stance. I think when I was first in ae, hearing that the deal was competitive or that they're looking for other solutions, it invoked panic, right? Because people naturally just human bias have loss aversion and they don't want to lose, especially to a competitor that your company talks through. You know why you're better as a company and what you do better. You just want to live up to being able to beat your competition. Right. So I think newer sellers often shy away from it in terms of like not wanting it and not necessarily seeking out risk within your deals. What I learned, and partially thanks to GONG as well, is we're able to track our data pretty easily on hey, when a competitor gets mentioned, what does your win rate actually look like? And something I've learned is that win rates typically skyrocket across not just Gong, but other companies as well. When a competitor gets brought up in conversation and it begs the question of well, how could every company's win rate actually increase when competitors get discussed? But the reason for that is most companies biggest competitors actually status quo. It's that organization deciding to do nothing or deciding not to change their current process versus actually upgrading to your solution and using a software or technology to drive some, some form of productivity and efficiency gain. So knowing that mindset, to me, a competitor is a buying signal. It means the evaluation is serious. It means they are more likely than not committed to actually making a change. And now it's me or my competitor, right? If you believe in your product and how you can differentiate it, that should light you up that this is gonna result in some form of outcome, hopefully a closed one or you're not gonna win them all, but, but just really continuing to position everything in terms of their biggest challenges, their biggest needs. I never get in the weeds whatsoever on oh we can do this feature, they can't do that. I stay completely away from that for a reason. I just try to learn Trent Dressel's number one priority, what that's actually worth and how GONG directly solves for that. And I just continue to speak highly about all the other competitors. I'll say, hey XYZ company, they're a really, really good tool. I've heard nothing but great things about them and I think that, you know, they could be a good fit depending on a couple different factors. Do you mind if I ask a couple questions today? So just continuing to speak about them in a positive light and just continuing to solution sell versus kind of getting, like, caught up in the. In the mudslinging has been successful for me.
"We're happy with our current vendor" #saas #sales #techsales #objectionhandling
