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I’ll never forget the day one of my competitors began copying and imitating our products and services! At first it was “flattering” or at least I told myself that, in order to not get flaming mad. I kept telling myself, “it’s competition that makes the world go-round”.
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I’ll never forget the day one of my competitors began copying and imitating our products and services! At first it was “flattering” or at least I told myself that, in order to not get flaming mad. I kept telling myself, “it’s competition that makes the world go-round”.
After several months of seeing similar ads, same size, same publications, same frequency and then showing up at the same tradeshows, I decided to do something about it. I did so in an up front, aggressive, in your face, humiliating, embarrassing, and however legit way, that ended my competitions tradeshow appearances once and forever!!
I knew our product was far more superior and much more stable than that of our competitors. It was irritating to see them capitalize on our advertising efforts and “piggy back” on our success by having a “me too” product. Reading and hearing their claims of how our product was trash and nothing but garbage caused me to take action. My company used their negative comments and turned them into an advertising campaign, that led to the demise of their product and we enjoyed every minute of it.
Due to such similarity in our product and our competition, we often received bitter phone calls about their product. So many calls came in each month that we got smart and started offering a discount on our product if they wanted to “switch”! All they had to do was send us their non-working competing product and we discounted our product (usually 30%, sometimes more if needed) and shipped it to them with a full warranty guarantee and support.
By offering the “switch” it was doing several things for us.
1 – It made us look good, better than our competition. Customers couldn’t believe we would actually take a “dead” trade-in for our superior working product! Knowing that we didn’t manufacture the inferior product astounded them.
2 – It increased our sales. By fielding the “unhappy camper” calls that were coming into our office by mistake, we turned them into positive “happy campers”.
3 – Our reputation as “the good guys” became even more pronounced. Customers throughout our industry were singing praises about our customer service and our product popularity.
4 – Customers began to advertise our product for us. Many of our customers supplied us with personal written testimonies that were then used in trade magazine publications and displayed at industry tradeshows.
As if this wasn’t enough, we then began to publicize our offer while attending national and international tradeshows. This was by far the most effective and best “kill your competition” move; we’ve ever done in our entire 21 years of business.
Remember, they were claiming our product was trash, nothing but garbage. If you listen closely enough to your competitions rhetoric, you can glean some pretty nifty ideas. Especially if you’re inclined to fire back with some “in your face” type claims and back them up with sound action and documentation. It’s been reported that “documentation” beats “conversation” and we had hard-core proof that our competitions product was, well … TRASH!
The best “in your face” action … we hung an acrylic (see through) trash can from the top of our booth at all tradeshow appearances that said, “CAN THE LINK”! (The Link was the name of their product). Stuffed inside the trashcan were gobs of their product!! Jammed in the can, hanging over the edges and dangling 10 feet in the air for all to see. It was so effective that customers were taking pictures of it and giving us “high fives” as a way of support and encouragement. At one particular show it was becoming such an attraction that the Executive Director of the tradeshow asked me to take it down. I asked him if we were violating any tradeshow policies, he said no. So, I politely refused and informed him of the nasty tactics of the competition and let the director know it was our intention to increase the pressure at upcoming shows. We would do this by hanging more trashcans and get larger ones if needed.
To add to the humility some customers had decided (all on their own doing) to wear bright pink t-shirts to the tradeshow that said negative things about the Link. Even worse than just walking around displaying the shirts, they stood outside their booth until the owner of the competing company wrote them a refund check!
That my friends, is the way to kill your competitors product and get a great big laugh while doing it!