By Paul Reilly
Would you stay on an elevator that was only kind of working?
On a recent work trip, I noticed the hotel elevator was temperamental. I stepped in, pushed the button, and watched the doors slowly close. Halfway through, they began opening again. I wondered whether someone had hit the call button as the doors were closing—I can’t stand those people—but no one entered. The doors closed halfway, then opened again. Against my better judgment, I stayed on. Thankfully, I made it to my floor.
I was at the hotel for several days, which meant I rode that elevator another dozen times. The strangest thing happened after a few more trips: I stopped worrying about it. The doors would hesitate. The elevator would act a little strange. But eventually, I stopped asking, “Am I going to get stuck in here?” Instead, I thought, “That’s just how it works.” The minor inconvenience wasn’t as painful as walking up the stairs, so I didn’t change.
Your prospects may be doing the same thing with your competition.
Customers accept late deliveries as normal. Slow response times become the standard. They justify quality issues as the cost of doing business. Poor communication becomes routine. Like the elevator, they grow accustomed to the problem. Eventually, they stop questioning what’s broken and start working around it. The workaround is less painful than changing suppliers.
Dislodging the competition is challenging. The incumbent doesn’t have to be great; it just has to be tolerable. Prospects know that change can be painful, and the pain of tolerance is easier to bear than the pain of switching. To dislodge the competitor, we must create a gap between the prospect’s painful present and a pain-free future. Use these techniques to guide your effort.
Make the Invisible Pain Visible
Customers frequently become numb to recurring problems. Don’t pitch a solution. Instead, help prospects examine their current situation. A thorough needs analysis reveals the buyer’s underlying dissatisfaction with the status quo. The right questions can help customers recognize frustrations they’ve stopped noticing:
“Where do you experience the most frustration with your current process?”
“In day-to-day operations, what problems have you simply learned to work around?”
Notice that neither question mentions the competitor by name. Both focus on the process. There’s no need to bad-mouth the incumbent; you’re simply helping the buyer rediscover pain they’ve stopped registering.
Ask Why
One of the most dangerous phrases in business is “That’s how we’ve always done it.” Value-added salespeople are comfortable challenging the status quo. Our research shows that top performers are customer-focused, which means part of their value is helping customers get out of their own way. The key is to challenge through curiosity, not confrontation. Try asking these questions to guide the conversation:
“I’m curious…Why does your company handle it that way?”
“I’m curious…Why does your company continue partnering with that supplier?”
Thoughtful “why” questions challenge the status quo while letting customers arrive at their own conclusions. Notice that each question opens with “I’m curious.” This disarming phrase invites open dialogue instead of defensiveness.
Expand the Definition of the Problem
Consider how many touchpoints exist between the incumbent supplier and the prospect you’re pursuing. Your competitor likely interacts with operations, engineering, purchasing, inventory, and accounts payable. What if that supplier supports operations well but neglects everyone else?
Broaden the conversation. In Value-Added Selling, 4th ed. (McGraw-Hill, 2018), we introduce the Critical Buying Path®. This process encourages buyers to examine the entire journey from the moment a need exists through acquisition, implementation, usage, service, and support. The wider the lens, the more opportunities you create to expose unmet needs.
Quantify the Cost of Tolerance
Minor frustrations compound into major problems. One late delivery might seem insignificant; fifty late deliveries are a different story. Ten minutes spent resolving an order problem sounds small until it’s multiplied across hundreds of transactions.
Help prospects calculate the cumulative impact of what they’ve been tolerating: lost productivity, downtime, expedited freight, excess inventory, lost revenue, or customer dissatisfaction. The goal isn’t to manufacture pain; it’s to reveal the economic impact of pain that already exists. Quantifying and dollarizing that pain also quantifies the value of solving it.
Help Prospects Envision a Problem-Free Future
Finally, move the customer from pain to possibility. As you focus the prospect’s attention on a better future, they catch a glimpse of what’s possible. The gap between that promising future and the problematic present creates tension. Your solution becomes the bridge. Take them on that journey with future-oriented questions:
“Imagine it’s twelve months from now and the challenges we discussed are behind you. What would you do with that extra time and those extra resources?”
“Ideally, where would you like to be twelve months from now? What needs to change now to get you there?”
“Long-term, what would the ideal supplier relationship look like?”
These questions encourage buyers to think differently, imagine better outcomes, and help create the solution themselves. When buyers envision the future, they focus on outcomes. Consequently, they’re no longer focused on the pain of changing in the present.
Your job isn’t to convince the customer their current supplier is inadequate. Your job is to help them discover there is a better way. Sometimes your biggest competitor isn’t another salesperson. It’s the prospect saying, “That’s just how it works, and it’s good enough for now.”
P.S. Your competition is reading this article too, hoping to target your best customers. Make sure you’re more than just the tolerable option.