The sale is made. You won and dislodged your competitor. But sometimes you still have a battle on your hands because the competitor doesn’t always depart gracefully. In fact, sometimes he takes one last, desperate shot at keeping or winning the business. It’s called
competitive retaliation.
Normally the competitor’s tactic of choice is to call your new customer and offer to lower prices to keep the business, but other incentives could be offered as well. Unfortunately, there are times when this tactic is successful. You’ll get a call from your new “customer” saying, “I just got a call from XYZ Company and they’ve lowered their prices. It’s a significant savings and I’ll have to go with them unless you can match their price.” Now that’s a call we all love to get, isn’t it? Here’s how to deal with it. Head ‘em off at the pass, so to speak. In a highly competitive situation, after your prospect has committed his business to you, you should say,
“Thanks for giving us the business. I appreciate it. But, you know, I have one concern that I’d like to share with you if I might.”
Your customer will ask you what it is, of course. And you’ll reply,
“This has been a very competitive situation, as you know, and I’m wondering just what XYZ will do when they find out that you’re giving your business to us. What do you think they’ll do?”
A typical reply might be, “Well, they’ll probably come back in and offer us a better deal or some other incentive to stay with them.” Your response, simply, is,
“If they do that, what will you do?”
This tough question takes some guts because you’re testing for bad news.
If they say that they’d have to consider it, then you know that the sale is not made. But at least you’re there, face-to-face, to deal with the situation. That sure beats getting the voice mail (date and time stamped well before or after office hours so they don’t have to talk directly to you) saying, “Sorry, our current vendor offered us a better deal and we’re going to stay with them.” All your hard work down the drain. In reality, it’s usually not bad news when you ask that tough question. If you’ve done a competent job qualifying, found lots of pain, and positioned yourself as a valued resource and not just a product pusher, you’ll feel great when they tell you that they have no intention of changing their mind because you are the best choice for them. Once they’ve made that commitment to you it’s more difficult for them to go back on their word.
Self-Study Assignment:
How often do your competitors retaliate when you have won the business? How often are they successful? Regardless of their success, get used to using this tactic whenever you’re in a tight competitive situation where this problem might occur.