How transparent can you be?
The Internet, and more recently the explosion of the Web 2.0 phenomenon, has inverted the social physics of information. Power comes not from your Rolodex anymore, but from how many bloggers link to you...and the paradigm shift is expanding....The new breed of naked companies also discovers that once people are interested in you, they're interested in helping you out - by offering ideas, critiques, and extra brain cycles. Customers have become working partners.
In a recent sales meeting, one of our business development reps raised the concern that in our online survey at iperceptions.com, we ask visitors how familiar they are with our competitors, and we ask them to rank some of the obvious similarities and differences in both the companies as well as the comparing online experiences.
To a marketing guy like me, this is valuable for two reasons; one, the competitive information is priceless. I am able to gauge market awareness of competing solutions as well as improve the areas of weaknesses, and emphasize the areas of strengths when it comes to recognition of brand values and value propositions. The second, is that it helps iPerceptions spread the message that we are an ‘open’ company.
Winning business is important, and in the end, points on the board are everything, but perhaps almost as important is to build awareness. I just want companies to be aware of what tools are available to them, and I want them to be listening to the voice of customer. I am less concerned about with whom they get involved from a vendor perspective. I believe prospects will do their own due diligence and choose the vendor that fits their objectives, culture, needs, etc…in the end, the better solution will rise to the top of a quickly maturing market.
I tried to explain to the team that we want the business that wants us. We want to encourage prospects to look at the competition. We want to be forthcoming, honest, and sincere, and we want to win the business on the merits of our solution, service and value.
To a sales guy, this is an extremely threatening concept. How can you point potential clients to the competition? Isn’t that just stupid?
We were recently in a competitive situation with a fairly large prospect (now client). After an intensive selection process, we were awarded the business, and our VP Sales placed the usual call to the decision maker to find out why (we always want to know why we were or were not given business when it comes to a competitive bid).
The gist of his response was this: “Both solutions met our needs. They were close in price and the decision was not an easy one to make…at first. But your competitors spent 20% of the time pitching the value of their own solution, and 80% of the time putting yours down. It was a turn off, and spoke to their integrity…”
Clearly, the open and honest approach works. Be nice, have integrity and be forthcoming, and may the most transparent company win.
