There are several advantages to targeting your competitors' customers. But there are principles to respect for the strategy to be effective.
This approach can give you access to an already educated customer base, rapid growth and competitive data.
So, seeking to win business against your competitors can be a good idea. But before moving on to approach tactics, you need to ask yourself what might push these businesses that use your competitor's service or tool to choose yours .
Indeed, it can be interesting if there is a very good reason for the company to turn to you.
For example, does your business offer:
- better service?
- better support?
- better pricing?
- the possibility of saving more time than your competitors?
You must have something significantly better than your competitors.
Otherwise, it will be a waste of time, because the costs of changing supplier will be dissuasive.
So if the answer is YES, the next step is to build your prospecting list.
To do this, you need to look for specific trends.
1 – Only target easy wins
Try to find out if there are users who are constantly switching between competitors and have commonalities between them. Also, ask yourself what are the reasons for this change .
For example, if many of your customers previously used the same CRM tool and now they're switching to yours, ask them why.
You might ask your sales team to ask these questions when onboarding new customers:
- Did they use a CRM tool before?
- What tool did he use?
- Why did they choose to switch to yours?
- What do they prefer about your tool compared to the old one?
Don't go after all competitors or all users.
To maximize your results, determine which prospects will lead you to easy wins .
If you know you're going to win the case, just go after them.
These decisions should be based on data and trends already observed in your business.
2 – Look for certain signals
Besides easy wins, you can also observe other signals that will help you determine which competitors to target.
For example, if you know a competitor is going out of business , you can send a cold email or contact all of their current users on LinkedIn.
In this type of email, mention the user's pain points and set up a meeting with a CTA.
Mention an advantage of using your service/tool over that of a competitor.
3 – Is your business filling a gap in the market?
If your business fills a specific gap in the market, attack competitors who don't have a solution to that problem.
Attract their audience to get the best results.
This may not work every time. For example, if it's a minor feature, don't waste your time. It all depends on how important the issue is to your target audience.
4 – Look for “untapped users”
So, you can use your competitors' data to determine the ideal customer profile of the B2B prospect who is most likely to not have your or your competitors' solution.
Then identify all the players in this market, analyze each of them and find those who do not yet have a solution .
If someone is still using spreadsheets like CRM , for example, you can determine if they don't have a solution yet and if it meets all the other suitability criteria.
This is then an easy opportunity to seize for an effective commercial approach.
READ ALSO: 5 best practices in B2B commercial prospecting used by experts
5 – Take a different approach from your competitors
It could be that all of your competitors offer a technical solution for individuals and your tool offers a solution for individuals and teams at the same time. In this case, you can use this benefit to incentivize users who prefer a team solution to use your service.
If you manage to position yourself differently in your market , this will have more impact. This is also a good strategy to explore.
You just need to make users realize that you offer a unique angle compared to your competitors.
You can now develop your strategy according to your commercial objectives from this guide .
If necessary, here is how to write prospecting messages for emailing and LinkedIn .
Tip: Mention only one good thing about your product at a time in each follow-up message. For example, if your technology is faster, more affordable, and has a better dashboard, mention each positive point in a follow-up message.
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