How to Position Against a Competitor Who Lies

Welcome to the positioning show where we discussed topics related to the practical application of positioning for marketing, sales, and product teams. I'm April Dunford, a consultant, author, and the world's leading expert on positioning for BAB technology companies. Hey, welcome everybody to another edition of the positioning show with me, April Dunford. Hey, we've been off for a couple of months. You know, it's a holiday break. I often take a break during the holidays, but now we're back at it. So I guess you could call this season three. Welcome to season three. Who knew we'd ever make it this long? I certainly didn't. A lot of you listen to this podcast. I find that surprising. It's kind of a nichey thing when I started out. I thought, I'll just record a bunch and then I'll just leave it on the website because nobody's going to listen to this. But it turns out a lot of you do. So hey, that's cool. Thanks for doing that. I got a few things I want to talk about today. I've been really busy. The end of the year, the beginning of the year is very, very busy with positioning projects. A lot of people like to do this stuff at the beginning of the year. It's like a gym membership. You know, it's all new year, new me. So I've been really busy. And you know, like most of the time when I get really busy, you start seeing some interesting patterns. And so there's a pattern I want to talk about. So first I want to talk about a misconception that I think some people have. I don't even know how many people have this misconception. But it's one of these things that, you know, if you spent all your time on social media, reading what people had to say on, I don't know, blue sky or it's threads or Twitter, LinkedIn or whatever the kids do these days, you would maybe think this is a truth. But when you talk to any experienced people, no experience person would ever say such a thing. But I want to start here. A thing that I hear a lot online. I never, I never hear it from experienced folks in the field. But online, I hear this line of thinking that says, if we build product that's differentiated, it won't be differentiated for long because your competitors will just copy your feature, whatever it is. And because it's just technology, man, it's just easy to copy. So why bother anchoring your positioning on something that, you know, the competitors are just going to do it anyways and they're just going to catch up? This is wrong thinking in my opinion, in a lot of ways. I'm surprised that people that work in tech would say such a thing. It's generally marketers that say that and I'm a bit depressed to say that because I consider myself a marketer too. And it's generally folks that haven't had a lot of experience in building product. And often it's people that the only experience they've had in building product is very, very new products. So products where I would say there's no history, there's no big investment in the platform already. There isn't technical debt. In fact, most of these folks, I'm not sure if you said technical debt, they'd even know what the heck you were talking about. And so there's this idea that, oh man, it's just easy to copy features. Now, sometimes it is. Sometimes we've got a little thing, like a competitor does a little thing and we'll look at it and say, hey, that's a good idea. We should put that on a roadmap. Maybe we'll do that little thing too. But most of the time, you know, stuff is actually really difficult to copy. I mean, every product has its own architecture and its own starting point. And so some things that you build are really easy to build, but a lot of things are really difficult to build. The other thing is, you know, you go to build that thing. It breaks a lot of other things that you have in your product. Plus, you know, we're not all going after the same customers in the same market. So these things have different priorities. We've already got a roadmap. And then never mind that, you know, all the resources and all the people and everything have been committed to that roadmap already. So for you to just sort of call time on that and say, oh, hey, competitor did this thing. So now we need to copy it. You know, one, you'd have to make the business case for why it's worth doing that instead of all the other things you already have in your roadmap. And two, it might take you a lot more effort to build it than somebody else. So I never see this, you know, maybe even really early stage products that are just emerging. You see a lot like this. But I mean, it's kind of a nonsense argument. Like if you actually believe that, then why don't we have a thousand CRMs that look exactly like Salesforce and do everything that Salesforce does. And obviously we don't have that. And it would mean that investment in new technology or technological differentiation would just be stupid. Like why would we bother? So anyways, I find it a little puzzling when I see that occasionally it pops into my feet and I'm like, why would you say that? That doesn't make any sense at all. But sometimes I ask myself, why is that? Why do marketers think that the competitors are copying our stuff? And you know what? I think I have the answer to this. I think the answer is that it looks like the competitors are copying our stuff. Because you know what's really easy to do way easier than building product? It's really easy to just say you did a thing when you didn't. Yeah, that's called lying. But you know what? Often, you know, I've been involved in discussions inside companies where we see a competitor bacon acclaim and we look at it and we say, well, yeah, I mean, we do that more or less. We do that more or less. Yes, we could do that. Product can be configured to do that. We could do that with some professional services. We could do that if these conditions were true. And so we might, in a conversation with a customer, depending on what's going on, we might say, yeah, we actually do that too. We might even go so far as to say it in our marketing. Now are we lying? Often, we don't think we're lying. Are we stretching the truth? Oh, yeah, yeah, we are stretching the truth. This is very frustrating when your competitor does this to you because often you know where they're stretching the truth. And so you've got this thing that's really differentiated. And the competitor says, oh, yeah, us two, same thing. Now recently, this has come up in a couple of positioning workshops I've done with clients where we talk about the competitive alternatives. We talk about the differentiated capabilities and then we get all the way down to, okay, we're going to translate the capabilities to value. We get this value theme in the marketers in the room going, oh, no, no, it's not differentiated. And we'll say, well, why not? And they'll say, because the competitors just say they do it too. And at this point, the product people look like they're about to blow a gasket and they start pounding on the table and jumping up and down and going, it's not true. They don't do it. They don't do it. They don't do it. So how frustrating. Now the marketers often feel like they can't say it because it's not differentiating so we can't talk about it. And I just really disagree with that point of view. I think that you are going to have competitors that stretch the truth and say they do things that you do, that they actually do not do because they're stretching the truth on it. And I think it's actually a tremendous opportunity for you to do the right thing by customers to point out where they are stretching the truth or where they're out right line. So I want to talk about today, what do you do when you've got a competitor that's just a dirty liar and they're doing their line, line thing and you want to talk about your differentiated thing and the competitors out there saying they do the same thing. So let's talk about this. So I think there's three ways we can combat this. There's probably a dozen ways, but there's three ways that I've seen companies do it quite commonly. So the first thing is the competitor will say they have the same feature. Now if you're just talking about features and you're not talking about the value that those features deliver, then it gets easier and easier to kind of copy your stuff if the competitor has something that sort of kind of looks like you. So I'll give you an example. I worked with a company and they had, we're in a market where most of the competition was actually a set of loosely coupled tools. So if you went into an account, generally what they were replacing was a set of disparate tools that didn't really play that well together. They were the only one that was a real platform, meaning it's all the same code base. It all shared the same data you logged in with one set of login credentials and that was it. You get access to everything. There was this nice shared metadata later across. They had nice reporting across everything. They had nice analytics across everything. So there was a lot of value to be derived from that, but they weren't necessarily doing a good job of communicating the value. So they just came in and said, this thing is a platform where the only one that's nice integrated platform with the idea that the customer would know, oh, that means everything all works nice together and shares data and blah, blah, blah. Now what happened was they got a competitor come into the market and the competitor had grown through acquisition. So they had a couple of things that were their own, but then they bought a thing and then they bought another thing and then they bought another thing and they just named it all the same and they called it a platform. So when they would get in a sales situation, they would go in. We would say, oh, we've got this beautiful integrated platform and they come in and say, yeah, us too. And that in fact is a dirty lie. What they have is what we in technology would call a swan. [laughs] Now, is there value in getting everything from one vendor? Yes, yes, I only have to do one contract probably. If something goes wrong, I don't have a bunch of vendors' point and fingers at each other. So there's value in having a bunch of things together. But does this suite of tools deliver on the value that a true platform could well know? It doesn't because it doesn't have the shared metadata, doesn't have shared data, doesn't you, you can't do analytics on the data. Like the data is living in five different places and if you want to do something with it, you're going to have to bring it all together on your own. So this was very frustrating for my client. So one of the things they did crucially was they shifted from just trying to make this word platform mean the same for customers as it does for us in tech. In tech, we know what a platform is, we know the value of a platform. Their customers not necessarily. And so when the other guys said they were a platform, they kind of looked like they were the same. So they made the switch to instead of just saying this thing's a platform and trust us, that's good. They made the switch to talking about the value of the platform. So they talked about the value of shared context across the different piece parts. They talked about the value of having shared data so that if you did something over here on one part, the other part instantly knew and was automatically updated in real time. They talked about the ability to see the entire process end to end and then run analytics on that to see where the bottlenecks were, and you'll be able to do process improvements. And there were all these things that the competitor could not deliver on because they simply were not a platform. So I think that's the first thing we can do to combat this kind of, you know, lying liar in the space is let's get really specific on the value that the capability delivers and maybe get a little way, a little bit away from just assuming that the customer knows what the value of the capability is because, you know, generally we've got this thing that we can deliver, but the other guys can't. If they can't, we should point that out and educate the customer on it. The second way I think we can fight back against a competitor that lies, and this is very common. It's where the competitor, it's not really a lie, but there's stretching the truth like a lot. So it's like, we say we do a thing and they come and say, yeah, we do that too, but there's almost like a little asterix on it that says some conditions may apply. And so in these cases, what we can do is educate the buyer on the difference between what's actually true versus this kind of stretched truth that the competitor is coming in and talking about. So I'll give you an example of this. I worked with a company and one of the cool things they did was they had a way of doing this very deep, deep integration into a bunch of key systems that allowed them to deliver real time insight onto what was going on. And then in this particular business process, that was really important for customers to be able to see the instant something was going wrong, that they could get an alert about that or find out exactly what was happening exactly when. They had a competitor showed up and the competitor said, yes, we do real time as well. Now it was funny because at the time my client was winning a lot of business from this competitor on precisely that feature. And in fact, they had had a couple of customers that switched over from the other competitor and said, no, it doesn't do real time involved. In fact, it's a batch process. It's, you won't see it until the next day. It's actually not possible to do. And so we started scratching at it and examining the way that the feature was implemented with our competitor. And it turned out that was it possible to do this real time thing? Yes. But the customer was only going to be able to do it if they invested an incredible amount into some very custom code that they could only get if they hired a professional services team to come in and basically build it. So was it technically possible for them to do this real time thing? Yes. Practically wasn't possible? No. In fact, no customer actually did it because it was so expensive to implement the thing that customers were just like, I forget it. But they would often in a sales conversation if a customer asks about it, they'd say, yeah, yeah, yeah, we did it. And then they closed the deal and then it was too late. Now the customer's in the door and the customer's like, wait, what? You said you could do this thing and now they're trying to make do without it. So again, in this situation, once the company discovered the difference between what the competitor was seeing versus the actual reality of the situation, they trained their sales reps to come in and specifically when they talked about that feature, the reps would say, look, there are other companies out there that say they do this. But be very careful when you're having conversations with them. If this is important to you, ask how they do it and ask them for references that have done it before. Because what we've seen is there are other folks out there, they say they can do it, but it actually takes amount of professional services and it's so expensive to do it. They don't actually have customers getting it done. So the interesting thing about this is once my client started talking about that in their sales conversations, the other competitor quickly stopped talking about it because customers were catching them in this lie essentially, saying they could do a thing that for practical purposes, they could not. So that's the second thing. The last thing is a little bit related to that, but it relates to being able to prove that you can do a thing. So obviously, if we have a competitor that's telling a lie, one of the coolest things we can do is just teach the customer about the lie. So here's how we do that. I'll give you the example. This is a very frustrating one for some companies. So I was working with a client. They were by far the number one vendor in the space by any way that you would measure it. So they had literally 10 times the number of deployments as their closest number two competitor. In fact, you could add up all the competitors combined and these folks still had more deployments. So more deployments, more users, they had been in business longer, they were transacting more data. There was a way you could measure this thing. They were number one in the space. They always said they were number one in the space because they were number one in the space. Now it was one of the main reasons that people would pick them. They were the most trusted provider in the space. It was kind of the low risk option to choose. Now what happened was they get this little upstart company moved into the space and they had been in business for a year or two. And they had some customers, not so many, but they had some customers. And the other thing they had was just a mountain of VC money. So they raised this really big raise. And I think they were under a lot of pressure to kind of come in and fight with my client head to head. So they showed up and they started telling this lie in the market and the lie was we're number one in the space. Now that's just not true. It's just not true in any way. Like unless you just waved your hands, like I don't even know what they were number one. What they could claim they were number one, and there was no qualifier on it. It was just like we're the number one provider of this thing that clearly my client is the number one provider. And so my client got so mad about this. They were like, oh my gosh, this is terrible. And you know, clients are just going to believe them. They said it and it's just going to be he said, she said and what are you going to do? And so we talked a lot about how to compete against that. Now this one's pretty easy because you can just come with the receipts. So here's the proof. So they would come in with, so first of all, they counted up every single deployment they had. And they started seeing the numbers. So instead of saying we're number one, they'd say, we have more deployments than all of the other guys combined. And the number is 12,976. So when you go in and talk to a different vendor, and if they claim they're number one, you should ask them how many deployments exactly is that? Number one, according to what? [LAUGHS] And so-- and they did it in a really kind of classy way, in my opinion. So they never called out the competitor directly, but they knew the competitor was out there saying that. And what their sales reps would say is they just kind of joke about it and say, look, you'll see some other folks out there that will claim they're bigger than us or do more stuff than us or have more clients than us or transact more transactions than us. But you know, what we've seen is like, so those guys are just bad at math. And so you should question their math. And then the other thing they did was they came with a lot of other proof points. So not just our word on how many clients we had, because the worry was that the competitor would just lie about their number of clients, too. And then we're really in a, he said, she said. But there were lots of other data points on it as well. If you looked on any of the review sites, the client had 10 times the number of reviews, not surprising, because they had more deployments more customers to choose from. If you look at things like analyst There had been a lot more analyst coverage about this company than any other company in the space. They had a lot of things in terms of they actually took their customer list and then broke it down by industry and showed, well, this is how many we have in financial services and this is how many we haven't been manufacturing this, how many we haven't insurance. And so they break it all down like that and say, go ahead and ask the other guys, how many they have. And then maybe ask them how many they have in financial services and then maybe ask them, you know, which companies, because oh, by the way, we have 100% of the fortune 100 and we have 100% of the top 30 accounts in financial services. Oh, look, we happen to have 100% of the top 30 in manufacturing too. So they arm their reps with all of this data and receipts to kind of come in and, you know, make this competitor look like the dirty lying liars that they were. So in summary, there's a, these are a few different things you can try. So the first one is you keep your focus on the value, not necessarily the feature because the feature itself may not deliver the same value in different products or in different contexts. So what's the value that you can deliver that the other guys can't keep the focus on that? The second thing is, you know, if the, if the competitor is stretching the truth, then you want to be able to educate the buyer on exactly where that truth stretching is happening and give them a way to be able to ask the right questions when they're in front of the competitor to expose the lie as the thing that it is. And then lastly, you can come with the receipts or the proof that you can do what you say you can do. Um, dump on a bunch of data and then challenge your prospects to then go back to the competitor and question them deeply and say, okay, but you know, the other vendor said they did this. What are your numbers and see what numbers the other company comes up with? In my opinion, when you have a competitor lying, like when it first starts happening, marketing in particular often gets really depressed and says, oh man, this sucks. They're out there saying the same thing is us. But I don't think we should see it that way. I think we should see it as a real opportunity to do the right thing for customers because I'll tell you there is nothing that absolutely destroys the credibility of a vendor in a market then getting caught in a lie. And if you get caught in a lie frequently enough, then the vendor starts to develop a reputation as being a vendor that can't really be trusted a vendor that kind of says anything to get the sale. And this is a terrible terrible way to run a business. Now it worked both ways. So you in fact might be the dirty liars. And so you may want to be careful about this because if you are out there stretching the truth a little bit more than maybe you should be or you know your catch in your reps maybe seeing some stuff that isn't 100% true out there because they really want to get that deal and it's into the quarter. You might want to keep your eye on that and be careful because if your competitor then puts one of these tactics into practice against you then you're going to have a reputational hit to deal with and it's going to be your reputation on the line. So you might want to think about other ways to beat the competition that it may be more truthful. And it was that's it. I got nothing else for you folks today. Hey, I appreciate you. You know what I would love. I would love if you would rate this podcast. I've been doing this for a while and you know it's really hard for people to tell whether or not a podcast has been around for a while or as good or is not good unless people actually leave some ratings. And so I appreciate you folks for listening. I would love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. If you gave me a rating, that would be awesome. Anyways, thanks so much. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time. [Music] Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you're listening to this podcast and you're thinking to yourself, hey, my company could you some help with positioning. Maybe we should talk. So as a consultant, I work with tech companies, but very specifically B2B tech companies that have a sales team. I don't really have a size requirement. I work with very, very large businesses, but I also work with growth stage companies. They're as small as 10, 20, 30 million revenue. The work I do with companies is focused on getting a very tight definition of how you win in the market and then taking that and translating it into a really compelling story. That clearly answers the question, why pick you over the other guys? If you're interested in learning about how we might work together, you can visit aperdonefor.com/consulting. Thanks again for listening.