Eat Their Lunch by Anthony Iannarino

Author:Anthony Iannarino
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

A FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND

It isn’t easy to fire people with whom you have had long relationships. Your competitor has long-standing relationships with your dream client’s company. They have a history of working together over time, and they have produced results in the past. They also likely have personal friendships, having spent time together, and having dealt with issues and challenges together. Your competitor knows the client’s business in a way that makes it easier for the client to communicate with them, their history providing an understanding as to how things work.

The decision to replace these long-standing partners with you comes with switching costs. First, your dream client has to teach you their business. Even if you work with similar companies and in the same vertical, you know that every client has their own idiosyncrasies. Second, they have their own culture, their own way of communicating, their own preferences. They also have their own internal politics, people attempting to influence decision making—including decisions about who their partners are—in order to enhance their standing. Third, you are an unknown. You may or may not be able to produce the results you say you can. Others have tried and failed before you, and you sound a lot like those people, many of whom struggled greatly because they didn’t understand how to work with their company.

Occasionally, you are lucky enough to come across a dream client that is so dissatisfied that they are ready and willing to remove their current partner. More often, however, they will extend that partner the same courtesy they would want from one of their clients should they struggle to get results—namely, a chance to make improvements. This makes competitive displacements a long game. It is one of professional, patient persistence. Make no mistake, it is difficult to fire people you have worked with for a long time, especially when you personally like them very much.

You make this more difficult when you speak poorly of your competitor, which can cause your client to feel the need to defend them. Remember, they chose your competitor, and at one point they did a good job. You must be careful about overplaying your hand when it comes to discussing your competitor’s failings. In fact, it can be useful to give your client the rationale for letting them go by describing how much things have changed, how difficult the business is, how tough their business model is when it comes to producing the same result, and how you have a lot of respect for your competitor and the work they do. Someone has to do the difficult job of calling your competitor and letting them go, and you can make that easier by providing insights as to why they are not producing the result they need to—without saying a bad word about them.

Much of sales is made up of competitive displacements. The activity that begins that process is the creation of an opportunity, whether it be a small opportunity or a full displacement.

DO THIS NOW

Make a list of opportunities you are presently pursuing.

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