How Businesses Get Details About The Competition

A key part of your sales managers position is ensuring the business & the selling team has up to date data concerning the competitors. To remain one step ahead of one's competitors, you have to be aware of their strengths & their weaknesses, their plans and objectives. 8 approaches that are used by organizations to attain info about their competitors are described in this sales training write-up.

1. Building up a few regular customers who will inform the company promptly about the competitors plans.

A real life instance illustrates the use of this method for gaining important competitor information. Quite a time ago, Gillette notified their main American clients of the launch date for a new disposable razor. A confidential customer of the rival corporation BIC telephoned BIC at once and informed his contact of this launch date. BIC right away got a crash programme underway & so were able to launch a razer of their own on the market shortly after Gillette.

2. Making use of Sales people, customer service employees, sales engineers & technicians from the business to occasionally work as advisers for key customers.

The advisors placed in the customer business are essentially there to help the key client to solve their development, production & marketing difficulties. Nevertheless, these loaned sales people or loaned engineers are also briefed to ask their clients personnel what they understand about new products or strategies being planned by the competition. This info is then relayed back to the company management.

3. Sending the technical staff to conventions, conferences & trade fairs to speak with the competition.

Most conversations at trade fairs between competitors technical staff have a tendency to start off innocuously, as pleasant talks between industry experts. If the competitors technical experts have their ambition awakened, they could possibly reveal critical information (about technical breakthroughs, about planned innovations and so on). This information is then fed back to your company management who feed it into the sales team at their next sales training event. Of course, the danger is that information flows both ways!

4. Careful examination of publications developed by the competition

Organizations can review the obvious publications, for instance official paperwork, annual reports, house journals, marketing information etc. They can also keep an eye on the seemingly unimportant publications, which often present valuable information on your competitors. Eg, the sort of people that are being sought through ads can say something about competitors growth plans.

5. Testing & analyzing your competitors goods.

Your competitors items are purchased and then taken apart & analysed. This allows the company to learn about the possible production processes utilized by the competitors & estimate the manufacturing costs.

Some businesses frequently test their competitors articles in customer surveys. Others obtain scientific reports. Some even go so far as to purchase the competitors waste products as they feel an analysis of this waste will produce useful data.

6. Cultivating a few good business journalists.

Some organizations keep in regular contact with a number of good business journalists, who work for daily papers or business journals, radio or television. They use their contacts to discover what is going on - pressmen see & hear a whole lot.

7. Turning into an actual customer.

Some organizations contact the competition directly to obtain information on their offers and get price quotations. They also register as a customer to be able to get hold of the competitions emails, brochures and also other customer publications.

In some situations the company hides the actual fact that they are a direct competitor by requesting all info through a cover address.

8. Counting up the numbers to assess the competitors figures.

Some businesses have their administrative employees routinely reviewing and counting the number of adverts, TV spots, promotions & press reports which competitors are creating. Some collect information on the number of their competitors advisers, salespeople, customer support staff, sales engineers, agents, dealers and key accounts. Others record the number of lorries, customer service vehicles, marketing events, trade fairs, market shares, machines the competition possesses. All these numbers allow them to understand what resources the competition has and also to monitor changes to these resources.

Access to current competitor data can be an important resource for your sales person. Sales training specialists advise sales people to be careful in their use of this information. They should, as an example, never directly knock the competitors in front of your client.