{"id":1053,"date":"2023-08-01T07:27:13","date_gmt":"2023-08-01T11:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/?p=1053"},"modified":"2023-08-01T07:27:13","modified_gmt":"2023-08-01T11:27:13","slug":"should-you-ask-a-company-about-their-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/?p=1053","title":{"rendered":"Should You Ask a Company About Their Competition?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"animals<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Over the years, I’ve been asked how one of our products compares to a competitor.\u00a0 For years, I politely deflected answering the question.\u00a0 I’ve never felt I was qualified to answer because I’ve never used their product.\u00a0 My only knowledge was from competitive research via their online marketing materials and resources.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve always focused on promoting the benefits of our products and how they help.\u00a0 I try not to spend much time thinking about the competition; obsessing about a competitor seems like driving down a road with your eyes on the rearview mirror.\u00a0 I remember being at COMDEX ( a computer trade show) in the 1980s and being handed a sheet of paper listing every problem with a competitor’s product. If your marketing strategy is to attack the competition, you speak volumes about who you are as a company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My typical response was usually a gentle admonition about it being an unwise question, like: “I wouldn’t trust what any software vendor has to say about their competitor.”\u00a0 I would follow that with a confident invitation to compare the products head to head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As marketing and sales have become a larger part of my day-to-day activities, I’ve had a change of heart about this question.\u00a0 I still won’t speak to specific product deficiencies their customers have shared with us.\u00a0 But now I view it as a selling opportunity and say something combining humor and truth, like: “They’re great people, actually better than us in every way except technology, service, and value.”\u00a0 And then: “Seriously, though, we offer a free trial so you can compare them head to head, and we want you to do that because we’re fairly positive you’ll choose us.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I no longer mind being asked those types of questions.\u00a0 Every customer has different needs, and the question opens up an opportunity to learn more about them and better understand those needs.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So if you have a need for schedule analysis software (schedule health, causes of delays, schedule comparison, etc.), let’s talk!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the years, I’ve been asked how one of our products compares to a competitor.\u00a0 For years, I politely deflected answering the question.\u00a0 I’ve never felt I was qualified to answer because I’ve never used their product.\u00a0 My only knowledge was from competitive research via their online marketing materials and resources.\u00a0 I’ve always focused on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1053"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1055,"href":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions\/1055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}