By Frank Lessiter | Posted in Best Practices
In the farm equipment business, many managers often tell their sales crews to never mention the competition when making a product pitch to farmers. It’s a negative to bring up another dealer’s different colored highly competitive machines, service concerns, parts delays and other business practices.
Dealing with these negatives reminded me of a time back in the 1980s when our family-owned Rural Builder magazine. This publication was distributed to around 23,000 post-frame and metal-frame builders around the country.
At that time, we worked closely with Bill Uphoff, who had previously been the sales manager at Morton Buildings in Morton, Ill. This is a firm that today has a staff of 1,700 and does around $750 million in annual sales.
Bill was one of those types who demanded that the company’s sales force never mention a competitor with a prospective buyer. Over the years, he let them know that doing so could lead to parting ways with any salesmen who did this.
The importance of what he demanded was brought home during one of the company’s annual sales meetings. During the event, Bill asked 3 salesmen from different areas of the country to come up on stage. When asked whether they had made presentations in which they mentioned competitors, all three sheepishly admitted they had done so.
Right in front of several hundred Morton folks in attendance, Bill fired all three.
Not a Good Way to Sell
In a recent HubSpot blog, sales trainer Art Sobczak explained why he believes voluntarily discussing the competition is a bad idea. The following comments came from Art’s blog.
Degrading a dealer is certainly out of bounds. It only serves to bring attention to them, adds credibility to their business and gets the potential buyer thinking once again about them. By doing so, you may even reinforce the prospect’s reason for using them. And insulting the prospect’s vendor that they use slaps them smack in the face as well.