“The real competitor is yourself and always focus on how can we constantly look at ways to get better.” – Darren Mitchell in today’s Tip 1156
Who really is your competition?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Darren Mitchell and comes with my apologies, because apparently he originally sent this to me quite some time ago. Darren is the host of The Exceptional Sales Leader Podcast, he’s committed to developing exceptional sales leaders & teams, who drive consistent, sustainable & replicable results. He mentors & coaches Sales Leaders 1:1 and facilitates engaging and interactive workshops to unleash the potential of sales leaders & their teams. Here he is:
Darren Mitchell: In Today’s Daily Sales Tip, let’s talk about who really is your competition. Now, I love the Olympic Games. We just had Tokyo 2020 play out in 2021, and many people point to gold medalists or those finishing on the podium as an example of excellence. But we can’t ignore the athletes who have delivered personal best performances in their chosen sport and not necessarily reach the level of gold, silver, or bronze medalists.
Now, is it true that these athletes ideally would love to be sitting on a podium with one of those medals around their neck? Absolutely. But the Olympics is not necessarily about simply winning. It is about pursuit of excellence. And so it is in sales. Too many salespeople, too many sales leaders, and certainly too many organizations focus far too much attention on the competition. And they compare themselves to them. And this is where the best practice comes in or the best product comes in. Best service. And often they try to actually elevate themselves against other people. And companies do this when they elevate themselves against different organizations to try and convince customers as to why they should do business with them. They often look at not being in a competition as equaling failure. They don’t necessarily understand that the real competition is actually themselves.
Now, what do exceptional sales teams, exceptional sales leaders, and exceptional sales organizations do? They focus on what they have control over. So they live from an internal locus of control. They don’t concern themselves with their competition. Yes, they’re aware of their competition, and they might look at their competition as benchmarks and take their strategies and understand where they’re placed in the marketplace. But they don’t measure themselves against their competition and have a win-loss ratio. They focus on how can we get better. They challenge themselves and their team to set brand new benchmarks every single day. And they look at objectives to focus on constant and never-ending improvement. It’s about how do I get better today than I was yesterday? How do I get better tomorrow than I was today? And how can I look at others in terms of a benchmark of where we’re placed in the marketplace? But I’m not going to play the comparison games, and I’m not certainly going to focus on my competition in terms of what they’re doing. I’m going to be focusing on me in terms of what we’re doing and how we’re setting new benchmarks and let the other companies and let the other sales teams focus and worry about us.
If we set the new benchmarks and if we’re constantly looking at how we can improve and how we can get better, then we will never be concerned about the competition because we’re always setting new benchmarks.
So the key message in today’s daily sales tip is this understand that your real competition is not your key competitor in your marketplace. The real competitor is yourself and always focus on how can we constantly look at ways to get better. You do that, you’ll set new benchmarks not only for your own organization, you’ll set new benchmarks for your own industry and let the other competitors chase you do that and you guys become unstoppable. That is today’s Daily Sales Tip.
Scott Ingram: For links to connect with Darren on LinkedIn and to his website, podcast, and more, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1156.
Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!