Breaking a Competitor’s Lock
Yesterday, an executive recruiter and I wrestled with how he could break the lock a competitor has on a client he wants. I suspect that others may be interested in this subject, too.
My first reaction to this question is, why bother? Breaking a competitor’s lock is time consuming and risky. In other words, it’s expensive and there is a fair chance you won’t succeed for a long time.
Entrenched competitors sometimes make huge profits off accounts that hire them exclusively and will go to great lengths to protect their position.
On three occasions strategy consulting clients of our firm have developed opportunities at accounts that employ a world-famous strategy consulting firm to do most of their work. They found buyers in the companies not wedded to the competitor, won their trust, and identified and developed an opportunity. In the eleventh hour, the competitor became aware of the opportunities and won the work by offering to do the projects for free. For free. Just to keep a competitor from gaining a toehold.
(If I were the CEO of one of the companies receiving such a gift, I would wonder where the money came from to pay the costs of these “free” projects.)
Instead of attacking such a fortified castle, it’s often wiser to go after a client more open to hiring you. But sometimes there are extenuating circumstances. The account may be strategically important. It might be a local account, offering work close to home, if you can win it. Whatever the reason for going after it, here are some things you can try:
Niching strategies:
There are several hit-it-where-they-ain’t approaches.
- Find a service niche: In their classic book, Strategic Selling (available in a revised edition called The New Strategic Selling by Heiman and Sanchez), Miller and Heiman recommend breaking into an account dominated by a competitor by pursuing a niche that the competitor doesn’t serve or doesn’t serve well. This is good advice, if there is a niche service that a) you serve, b) the competitor doesn’t, and c) the clients wants. If the competitor is much larger than you are, there may be no such niche.
- Find a disenchanted buyer: If the competitors have been working the account for a long time, there is a good chance they have made enemies. Seek out and sell to someone who wants to give work to someone other than the entrenched competitor.
- Find a location: Focus your initial approach on a geographic area where you have an office, but the competitor doesn’t. Demonstrate as often as you can the responsiveness that your greater proximity permits. If there is a cultural or linguistic difference that creates barriers for your competitor, so much the better.
Wait for the competitor to make a mistake:
You want to be at the front of the line should the client become disenchanted with the firm it is using. You get there by finding ways to meet the buyers at the client, staying in front of them by being helpful, reminding them of your interest . . .and waiting.
Wait for a change in the players:
The relationship the client has with the competitor may be largely with one person in the competing firm. If that is so, it will be greatly weakened should that person leave the firm. Similarly, a senior executive joining the company from outside may feel no loyalty to the competitor and give you a shot at the work. Companies are notoriously loyal to their actuarial advisors. A rainmaker I know at such a firm focuses primarily on migrating executives to win work at new clients and is one of the most effective client-getters at the firm.
Lose now to win later:
Clients will sometimes solicit bids on projects to ensure they get a fair price from the firm they expect to hire anyway. Losing a couple of projects this way puts you in a position to meet with a senior person at the company and say,
We have lost three projects we have competed on, all of which you awarded to XYZ. You have a long history with XYZ and they are a good firm. We can understand why you might feel loyal to them. At the same time, it is expensive for us to go after projects like the ones you asked us to bid on. We accept that as a cost of business, if we really have a chance to win, but we can’t afford to go after work repeatedly at a company that has no intent to actually hire us. So, I am here to ask you if we really have a shot at working for this company and what we have to do to win that we aren’t currently doing.
Some clients will spread work around as a matter of fairness, when approached in such a forthright manner. If you don’t like the answer you get, reduce the time and effort you spend pursuing this account.
Do something nice:
Do something that will capture the client’s attention. One accounting firm started to win work at a company after it invited the CFO to share a podium with them at an industry event. They spent a day with the client, split between preparing and playing golf. Soon afterwards, they were awarded a project. That was about five years ago. Today, it is a major account.