“If you’re willing to look at things a little different, something beautiful can come out of it, but only if you’re willing to change your mind about how you approach it.” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 1208
Do you rethink your competition?
Join the conversation below and check out the links!
Donate to Chosen Vision
SalesCoin.co/ChosenVision
If you contribute, Jeff will follow up with instructions on how to claim your additional 100 $SALES coins. Thanks for supporting such a great cause!
Have feedback? Want to share a sales tip? Call or text the Sales Success Hotline: 512-777-1442 or Email: [email protected]
Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today I’ve got a super solid tip for you from Jeff Bajorek and it includes a pretty special offer at the end. Here’s Jeff!
Jeff Bajorek: Rethink Your Competition. A lot of sales reps really don’t think much of their competitors if they think anything at all. And it’s just easier to keep a really healthy boundary between you and that other rep who’s going after the same business with a similar solution and only one of you is going to win. But throughout my career, it has paid dividends to me to not necessarily befriend these people, but to treat them with a great deal of respect. And the way I would define that boundary personally was, look, if they came into a bar, I’d buy them a drink, but wouldn’t have it with them. I wouldn’t sit there with them to watch it finish or watch them finish it. I would just, hey, great wave, and then make my way out the other door. But I just wanted them to know that there was a mutual level of respect because that in just about every case ensured that that respect was returned.
I can think of one situation in particular where our competitive rep came up to me and said, “Jeff, I appreciate the way you are going about selling. I appreciate the way you’re not dragging my company through the mud with old news, and I’ll never do that to you.” This is a guy who I was taking a lot of business from at the time. But when I saw him at a trade show, he walked over and said that to me, and I knew that meant something. There was another time where a competitive rep was actually spreading rumors about my company and rumors that I knew to be false and I could prove that they were false. I called his boss. I said, “We need to meet for coffee.” We had a brief conversation. I said, “Here’s the deal. I can appreciate your reps are out there scrapping. I can appreciate the fact they want the business that I have, and I invite that competition, but do it the right way. You’re not going to win it by telling lies, and this is a lie.” And he looked me right in the eye and he said, “Jeff, I appreciate that. Thank you for calling me. We won’t let this happen again.” A little side note. That guy, when I left the field, hired me to work with this company. That’s the kind of respect I had with my competitors when I was in the field.
Later in my coaching and consulting career. Actually, much more recently, I had a colleague of mine, reach out to me and say, “Jeff, I made a mistake. I had this deal wrapped up, and I fumbled right at the goal line. It’s not going to work out for me, but I wanted to pass you this lead because I know you’ll do good work with them, and I’d rather see it go to anybody else. Then you know who’s going to get it.” Right. There’s another competitor in our market. And he said, “Jeff, I’d rather see you get it than somebody else.” That’s the kind of relationship, that’s the kind of environment you can curate. And let me tell you, that is going to make your selling environment much better. That is going to make your results much more fulfilling. That’s going to make it easier for you to do your very, very best work.
So now I want to talk about something I get to do with a couple of my quote competitors thinking about this train of thought here. There are a lot of people out there who consult with companies and help their salespeople perform better. I’m one of several. Well, lots. Let’s just say it that way. But because I’ve gone far out of my way to reach out to people who have similar passions, similar interests, and because I treat them with respect, and because quite frankly, in the industry I’m in right now, there is more than enough business for all of us. Sometimes those, ‘competitors’ become colleagues, they become collaborators. And I have never had more fun than when I get to collaborate with some of my friends. Yes, my friends, on deals with clients and on projects like this one that I do every year for Chosen Vision. Jason Bay, Samantha McKenna, David Priemer, Todd Caponi. They’ve all chipped in, donated their time, their talents to help me put on a month-long group coaching program that only costs $100. And that $100 goes to charity. You get four-hour-long sessions with five world-class experts in an arena where you will be able to not only invest in yourself, not only make a contribution to a great charitable organization, but also have a lot of fun and meet some other cool people along the way.
So I want you to rethink what competition means to you. I want to rethink who those competitive reps are because if you’re willing to look at things a little different, something beautiful can come out of it, but only if you’re willing to change your mind about how you approach it.
Scott Ingram: This is such a great cause that Jeff works to raise money for each year and I always try to find some way that I can help support his efforts. If you’ll go to DailySales.Tips/1208 you’ll find a link to the page on Jeff’s website with the details about the opportunity to contribute and take advantage of his insanely good coaching offer with Jason, Todd, Samantha, and David. This will be on the honor system, but if you just look at that page, I’ll send you 25 $SALES coins. Again, the link is at DailySales.Tips/1208.
Then anyone and everyone who contributes $100, I’m going to give each of them 100 more $SALES coins. As it says in our coin image itself: “Win and Help Win.” That’s what Jeff does every year and we’re all about it. Do yourself a favor and check it out: DailySales.Tips/1208. Thanks for listening and be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip!