Capturing the Impenetrable Account

by Dave Kahle

How do I sell to an account that is firmly in the hands of a competitor – an impenetrable account?

In one form or another, I hear that question at almost every sales seminar I teach.  It’s a great question, reflecting one of the most perplexing and frustrating situations every sales person faces.  If you haven’t yet been faced with this problem, be patient, you will soon be.

          Here’s how this usually develops:  You’ve called on a high-potential account a number of times, but can’t seem to get anywhere.  The more time you spend in the account, the more apparent it is that one or more of your competitors are deeply ingrained as suppliers to that account.  You may even have had someone say to you, “We do all our business with XYZ competitor.”

          And that leaves you on the outside looking in.  If the account has some real potential, you want to be seriously considered as a supplier.  But if looks like this account is not really interested in you – not because of you or your company, but because of a previously established strong relationship with a competitor.

          So, how do you manage this account?  What should you do?

Let’s start with what not to do.

Don’t vent your frustration by speaking poorly about the competition.  And don’t attack the competitor’s products, company, practices or sales people. Someone who works for this customer – or more likely, several people who work there – chose to do business with that competitor.  They have chosen to buy the competitor’s products, have developed a close working relationship, and may be good friends outside of work.  When you speak badly about the competition, you insult all those decisions made by the customer to work with that particular competitor.  Trying to penetrate an account by insulting your customer’s judgment is not a particularly effective technique.

          Realize, also, that you have only a tiny glimpse of what your competitor is really like.  You may have found some evidence in another account of their ineptness, or what you perceive as unethical behavior.  And on the basis of this tiny experience, you’re ready to launch a holy crusade to reveal their deep flaws and expose the risks of doing business with them.

          That is almost never the truth.  Almost always, your competitor is a company with the products, ethics, business systems, people and goals that are very similar to yours.  Very few companies survive in this highly competitive market place if they have shoddy products, lax business morals, incompetent people, and poor operating systems.  When you criticize these things in your competitor, you show yourself to be ignorant and inexperienced.

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But what should you do?

Here are two proven techniques to penetrate these kinds of accounts.

Go around the competition, not through them.

This customer is probably not buying everything from your primary competitor.  There likely is a handful of other suppliers selling items that you could supply.  Focus on those.  Find items that are being purchased from someone other than the main vendor, and present your company’s options on those.  Often these could be small quantities of relatively inconspicuous items that don’t appear on the radar screen of your competitor.

          When you put together attractive programs and proposals for those kinds of items, you don’t threaten your customer’s relationship with your competitor, and you begin to show them the value of a relationship with you.

          Be careful to keep a relatively low profile in the account.  You don’t want to draw your competitor’s attention.  At first, as you try to pick off some of these miscellaneous items, you are very vulnerable to your primary competitor finding and squashing you.  As time goes by and you’re successful at becoming the supplier of a number of miscellaneous items, you’ll gain power and position within the account, and in so doing, build some defenses against the ire of your competitor.  You’re always safer if your competitor underestimates your activity and success within an account.  So, at least until you’re well established, be as discreet and inconspicuous as possible.

Here’s a number of ways to implement this strategy of “going around the competition.”

1. Find some area within the customer’s business where the competition is very weak. For example, when I was selling hospital supplies, I discovered that one of my major competitors was very strong in the operating room.  The competitor had a wide range of products, well-respected lines, a history of being active and interested in that area of the hospital, and significant expertise in operating room procedures and problems... READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE