Ryan Dohrn argues salespeople must know their competitors as well as their own product. He outlines a simple research process: check their website, watch videos, read materials, and request brochures. Three reasons matter: outsell them, counter false claims they make, and recognize when they're actually better.
What's going on, friends and fans? Ryan Dohrn here, your friendly neighborhood sales coach. This week we're really focused in on how well do you know your competition. One of the things that I share with my coaching clients all the time is, if I asked you to give me a sales pitch about your nearest and closest competitor, could you actually do it? Meaning, could you go to your competition tomorrow and actually sell for them? Do you know them well enough To be able to sell their product for them. Now, some of you, heck, you don't even know your own product well enough to sell your own products. You got to get really caught up on that, right? But the other thing is the art of war. And when you're competing against others, it's a little bit of a sales battle out there, is knowing your enemy, knowing your competition, if you will, knowing them better than they might even know themselves. So remember, friends, a lot of times your competition will get all caught up in the sales process, and very rarely do they actually spend a whole lot of time learning your intimacy. The things that make you bigger, badder, and better. So the way that we do this is actually pretty straightforward. First, I'm gonna go to their website. I'm gonna watch all their videos. I'm gonna read all their materials. And then sometimes what I'll do is I'll have a friend or my brother or somebody, you know, reach out to them to get more information, whether it's a brochure or media kit or whatever the circumstance is. I truly believe the art of sales is also you knowing your competition as well as you know yourself, and maybe even sometimes There's a lot of things that are great that come from this process. It helps you better understand what they're doing to differentiate themselves, because what if there's something they're saying online, in their brochures, maybe on a sales call, that's really good? Like, wow, I didn't know that they were doing that. Or on the flip side, what if they're doing something really bad? What if they're saying something about you? or your company that's just not true, then you've gotta be able to formulate a plan to be able to address that. It's important to know your competition for one of 3 reasons. The first reason is because you may just need to outsell 'em. The second might be because they're saying something that's not true. Or the third might be they just have a better product. What? I can't believe Ryan is saying that they might be better than you. Well, there are circumstances and situations that have been in my life in the past where I've realized I'm kinda number 3. For example, when I first started my sales career, I was working at a CBS affiliate that was the number 3 television station in the market. It was very difficult to sell around the news. Well, I had to learn what the others were saying about us so that I could go out and be really honest, really ethical, but create differentiating factors that even though we weren't the most watched in the market, here were the 3 or 4 main things that we still did better. Than everybody else. Friends, I hope the takeaway for you today will be how well do you know your competition? Could you actually go over to their office and sell their stuff to the public? Now, I'm not suggesting you do that. Don't leave your company. But recognize, friends, when you know your competition, you will always take your sales life to a place you only dreamed possible. Never forget, friends, if sales was easy, Everybody be doing it, and they're not. We're not crazy. We're the chosen few. Sales will feed your family for a lifetime. Embrace it and get out there and make us all proud. Sell some stuff. I look forward to training your sales teams. I look forward to speaking at your national sales conference. Reach out to me over at ryandohrn.com.
