In a competitive RFP, use discovery questions to expose what your champion cares about most, then ask competitors to prove they can deliver the same things. When one vendor refused to demo those capabilities and tried to discredit the evaluation instead, they withdrew from the deal.
The most competitive deal I've ever been involved in had the most ideal outcome I could imagine. We were working a highly competitive rfp, a request for proposal, and our champion called us after the competitor's final demo and said, guys, it was a disaster. They quit. Today I'm going to walk through the story of how we convinced our biggest competitor to withdraw from the evaluation and how you can do similar to disqualify your competition in your competitive deals to set the stage. The customer is one of the fastest growing tech companies in the world. We'd done a pretty good job building champions, driving value, and earning executive buy in. But because this was such an attractive logo, very well known in the space, our competitor was desperate to win and they were trying to buy the business. So they had gone to the executive team, the finance team and others and offered everything they could at a shockingly low price. I think it was probably 10, maybe 20% of our proposal. Their approach was so aggressive that the prospect had to consider their offer just from the finance pressure alone of, hey, even if this isn't as good as the solution that Kyle's team is ringing, it is so much cheaper, we'd have to actually consider it. And so my team was aware that they were trying to buy the business with the severe discounts, but we did not want to go try to match their price because we wouldn't make any money from the deal. So we were trying to figure out how we could disqualify their proposal so that the buyer wouldn't even consider it despite the low cost. Now, as we got through the RFP process, we eventually got to the Q and A portion with the evaluation team. And for the first time in my career, and to my great delight, this call was scheduled with all of the vendors on the call simultaneously to ensure an even playing field. And so we would go pre submit our questions to have them validated. Then we'd go ask the questions live on the call, and then the buyers, the buying team, would answer the questions live with all the competitors listening in. Now, one of the fun parts of sales is the competitive nature. Even though it's a competitive field, you rarely get the chance to compete in the same place at the same time as a competition. So I was actually pretty excited for this, for this call with my team and the competitor's selling team. So our goal for the call was to try to convince the competitor that even with a crazy low price, they were wasting their time bidding on the deal so that we could disqualify them, accelerate our Win and preserve our value in negotiations by eliminating their low ball offer. And so we planned to stack the deck in our favor. The first thing we did as a team is we went through and thought all the ways that we are different compared to our main competitor. Now, some differences matter, some don't. So we wanted to highlight the differentiators that matter to our customer the most. So as we had our list of differentiators that we used based on our competitive intel, what our buyer was telling us they had seen from the competitor and from other evaluations we had been in, we went and we picked the differentiators that tied most closely to the outcomes the customer had prioritized. That goes back to our advantage of having a good champion, because we knew what they cared about, what their boss cared about, and what other teams cared about. So we could pick the differentiators that most closely aligned to those priorities. Essentially, what we were trying to do is come up with differentiators that showed how we were different, why it mattered to the buyer, and then how they would measure the success. Now, once we had that list, we, we met with our champion to confirm that those differentiators actually were critical to them. Because differentiators that are. That are not validated by your buyer are just differences. And differences alone can become expensive. And they're not reasons why people will choose you over the competition. So now we have our most critical differentiators that tie most closely to the outcomes our customer most cared about. And we had defensible ways to articulate the benefit they would bring. And so we came to the call with the buying team and our competitors ready to ask our questions. Now, as we asked those questions, we used a very simple format to try to set traps against the competition. We would ask, how important is x differentiator to ensure x outcome is successful? And we had prepped our champion ahead of time to make sure they were aligned with this plan. But for each of those questions, our champion would say, that's extremely important. Here's why. They were essentially not just validating to us what was important, but they were reminding their internal team, including finance and procurement, of how important these differentiators were for their program's success. So we just went through question after question of all these things that I knew we could do much better than the competition and the buyer was validating in front of them and in front of the broader evaluation team why those differentiators were essential for their program success. Then at the end of the call, I made a simple statement. And based on this conversation, we will prepare a demonstration to go deep into how we address. And then I just listed the five differentiators that we had covered in the call, and then I challenged the competitor on the spot. To ensure an apples to apples comparison, it would likely be helpful if competitor could prepare the same. The demo round was scheduled for the following week and we got a call as soon as the competitor's demo finished. Our champion told us, guys, it was a disaster. They quit. They had showed up to the call and rather than even do a demo, they just tried to convince the buyer that their evaluation criteria was stupid. And they basically said, look like if you want to get really serious about this program, you can give us a call. And they withdrew the proposal. They walked away. We had created such an unfair evaluation environment for our competitor that they literally refused to demonstrate their technology. They tried to bash us, they tried to bash the evaluation process process, but ultimately withdrew their bid. So our demo was next. Rather than a demo, it became an implementation call and contracts were signed shortly after. So the point of the story is, if you are doing a good job building champions, it gives you the opportunity to go set traps against the competition. When you combine champion building and trap setting, you may create such an advantage that your competitors might literally run away. Now, to be clear, I've run a lot of deals and very few of them have ended this favorably, right? Very rarely does this work so well that your competitor literally quits. However, I can guarantee that if you combine champion building and trap setting, your win rate will increase. And I hope this video helps a little bit as you try to implement these tactics. If you found this video helpful, let me know. I'm going the right direction by leaving a like on this video. Then, if there are any questions or topics you want to make sure I cover in a future video, leave me a comment. I read all comments and I love recommendations that will help me help you sell more. Finally, don't forget to subscribe. That way you won't miss any of my upcoming content that I'm creating to help you improve the way that you sell.
