Business Briefs |
Martial Arts And Marketing Part 3
In Parts One and Two of this three part series, we discussed how my Aikido master instructor revealed the secret to his amazing effectiveness when he said, “It’s not about being faster than my opponent, it’s about anticipating and getting where he is going first, so I can short circuit and re-direct the attack to create a positive outcome.” It’s better to be first than fast.
It's Better to Be First Than Fast
We said there was marketing wisdom to be found in this concept, and there are at least three specific aspects you can adapt to make your marketing more effective:
In Part One, we discussed the importance of Anticipation. In Part Two we looked at the concept of Being First with your marketing. In this article, let’s examine the final aspect - Creating Instead of Competing as it applies to the design of effective marketing strategies.
Three Out Of Four Reactions To An Attack
When attacked (and remember we are using “attack” as a metaphor to illustrate some marketing concepts) people can react in one of four ways:
1. Freeze. On the surface, this seems like a reaction that you’d not expect out of a business person. However, we saw this repeatedly in the economic melt down that occurred in Silicon Valley in 2001. There was a great deal of the “deer in the headlights” syndrome. Business owners simply froze – and it caused many to fail.
2. Flee. One reaction to attack is to run. In a street fight, this might be the smartest move sometimes. In business, it’s not always a viable option to actually “run away.” When you can’t run, the flight reaction is not helpful. If it persists, it produces a similar result as freezing does. There is also the problem of where do you run to? In the words of the noted business philosopher, the old cartoon character Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” The Zen saying, “Wherever you go, there you are,” also applies.
3. Fight. The way most salespeople, marketers and business owners are wired up, fighting is the likely response to most challenges. A competitor attacks and the tendency is to rise up in anger to do battle. A customer complains and the usual response is to defend and counter. The market changes and counterattacks are planned. In the marketplace, fighting produces better results than freezing or fleeing, of course. It does have some side effects, however:
People get hurt. In fact, we often hear people describe themselves as being “beat up” by their business or by the market.
Eventually, for most of us, it stops being fun to be constantly in a fight.
Fighting consumes energy and resources.
Fighting destroys relationships.
What If There Was An Alternative? The Fourth Option…
My Aikido Master has an alternative to freezing, fleeing and fighting (in the ordinary sense of “fighting”) that has interesting applications in business. The Aikido alternative has three essential elements:
1. Get Out Of The Way. He teaches us first to acknowledge and be aware of the impending blow and then to “get off the line of the attack” – in other words to “get out of the way.” This is notthe same as fleeing.
Think about a powerful blow coming down on the top of your head. You could Freeze…not a good plan.
You could try to Flee, but if the blow is descending, it’s a bit late to run.
You could throw an arm up and block the blow - ouch. Blocking beats freezing and fleeing, but it’s likely to hurt, and you are probably opened up to a follow up strike. You could of course counter punch and the Fight is on until only one of you is standing. As long as you are the one still standing, you survived and this is a good thing. However, there still are the downsides to the fight I described above.
As an alternative to a direct confrontation, however, what if you simply moved slightly to the side and got out of the way of the blow? What if you just let it fly by? If you picture this happening in your mind, you’ll see you are in good shape and well positioned, while the attacker is now off balance as his blow meets no resistance. In Aikido, this is called Blending.
2. Reshape The Situation. Once off the line, my Aikido Master can redirect the force of the attacker’s blow, and continue to keep him off balance…often with the most gentle of touches. If you picture an upside down pyramid teetering on its point, you’ll see that it would take little effort to cause it to fall over.
3. Create a Positive Outcome. So far this approach is not a lot different than a more aggressive martial art like judo. At this point, the judo master could slam the attacker to the ground and inflict great injury. So could my Aikido Master. Instead, he chooses to move his opponent into an immobilizing situation in which the attacker comes to “understand” the impracticality of continuing to fight. And all this is accomplished without causing serious injury to either party. If you’ve never seen this live, it’s pretty hard to visualize, so for now, please just accept that it is possible so we can consider the business applications. In the words of my Aikido Master, this is the process of Creating Instead of Competing.
Creating Instead of Competing - A Classic Business Application
Here at CrossPointe, we have many opportunities to create instead of compete in our mergers and acquisitions work, in negotiations, in selling and in helping clients reach their business development goals. Here’s a situation I’m sure you’ve experienced that can illustrate the point:
You get a chance to “bid” on a project for which two or three other competitors have already had a chance to present. Chances are, all the prospect is doing at this point is collecting another proposal and has already made up her mind. You could freeze, flee or fight. Most salespeople will try to fight, which leads almost inevitably to the same old quality, service, price arguments about why the prospect should select you versus your competitors. Sometimes, a superstar salesperson can win this fight, but it comes usually at the cost of profitability. In the “fight,” whether you win or lose the business, it’s likely that “blows” are traded between you and the other competitors that damage your relationship with them. Depending on how the fight goes, you can also end up with a damaged relationship with the prospect.
What if you did this instead?
1. Acknowledge The “Blow.” Have the prospect describe the situation and discuss the benefits they see doing business with the other vendors.
2. Get Off the Line. Instead of arguing and countering, just allow all that “competitive” stuff to pass and dissipate.
3. Reshape The Situation. Find the weak point in the prospect’s situation, their point of un-balance and nudge them a bit to take their balance.
4. Guide The Prospect To A Positive New Place. Instead of competing directly against the prospect and the other vendors, create a new discussion where you can design an outcome that is compelling to the prospect. Change the game. To quote Pogo again, “Go where they ain’t.”
Let’s take a very simple real world example. We have a client that sells and services industrial equipment. There are many competitors that are bigger and better capitalized. The competitors sell adequate, but somewhat lower quality equipment, often at a lower price. Customers have budget constraints in the current economy and are loathe to spend money on capital purchases, or even to commit to long term leases. Prospects are confused about who to buy from. Sales conversations tend to spiral downward into price negotiations. Sound familiar?
One large prospect needs to have a significant amount of work done by equipment of the type our client sells, and they do not have a good internal solution for the problem. But after several sales presentations the prospect still won’t commit to a purchase of our client’s equipment. Our client’s sales person is “sure” that he’ll eventually get the business. Wellllll…maybe…
My suggestion: change the game. Here’s one way:
Our client has excess re-conditioned used equipment in inventory, has people trained to operate the equipment and needs revenue. So…let’s invent a new “product” and offer the prospect a unique mobile processing service that my client will manage (at an attractive margin) on a month to month agreement. The prospect gets the work done on an outsourced basis, our client gets a relationship established, the prospect gets to see the quality of the equipment in actual use…and it’s a low risk venture for both parties.
When the prospect wants to buy the equipment, they can buy our client’s new gear with confidence, or they can buy the proven re-conditioned equipment that has been at work for them at a discount. Plus our client gets a profitable preventative maintenance agreement. The client gets their problem solved in an innovative way and everyone wins. If the prospect likes the service, guess what? Our client now has a new service offering (with a testimonial) to sell to other prospects.
Client objections we hear to this sort of creative approach are:
Granted, this is not a complex example, but if this simple new service offering were incorporated into our client’s business, it is a strategy that incorporates all that we have been discussing in these three articles on Marketing and Martial Arts. It anticipates the prospect’s objections, it gets there first, and allows our client to reshape the discussion and lead the prospect in an unexpected direction that opens up all sorts of positive possibilities. Our client gets the inside track to future business, without slamming other vendors, but the big, strong, well capitalized competitors will be mystified about how our little “nobody” client ended up with such a strong, impregnable relationship.
Martially Yours: Michael Sipe
It's Better to Be First Than Fast
We said there was marketing wisdom to be found in this concept, and there are at least three specific aspects you can adapt to make your marketing more effective:
- Anticipating Instead of Reacting
- Getting There First
- Creating Instead of Competing
In Part One, we discussed the importance of Anticipation. In Part Two we looked at the concept of Being First with your marketing. In this article, let’s examine the final aspect - Creating Instead of Competing as it applies to the design of effective marketing strategies.
Three Out Of Four Reactions To An Attack
When attacked (and remember we are using “attack” as a metaphor to illustrate some marketing concepts) people can react in one of four ways:
1. Freeze. On the surface, this seems like a reaction that you’d not expect out of a business person. However, we saw this repeatedly in the economic melt down that occurred in Silicon Valley in 2001. There was a great deal of the “deer in the headlights” syndrome. Business owners simply froze – and it caused many to fail.
2. Flee. One reaction to attack is to run. In a street fight, this might be the smartest move sometimes. In business, it’s not always a viable option to actually “run away.” When you can’t run, the flight reaction is not helpful. If it persists, it produces a similar result as freezing does. There is also the problem of where do you run to? In the words of the noted business philosopher, the old cartoon character Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” The Zen saying, “Wherever you go, there you are,” also applies.
3. Fight. The way most salespeople, marketers and business owners are wired up, fighting is the likely response to most challenges. A competitor attacks and the tendency is to rise up in anger to do battle. A customer complains and the usual response is to defend and counter. The market changes and counterattacks are planned. In the marketplace, fighting produces better results than freezing or fleeing, of course. It does have some side effects, however:
People get hurt. In fact, we often hear people describe themselves as being “beat up” by their business or by the market.
Eventually, for most of us, it stops being fun to be constantly in a fight.
Fighting consumes energy and resources.
Fighting destroys relationships.
What If There Was An Alternative? The Fourth Option…
My Aikido Master has an alternative to freezing, fleeing and fighting (in the ordinary sense of “fighting”) that has interesting applications in business. The Aikido alternative has three essential elements:
1. Get Out Of The Way. He teaches us first to acknowledge and be aware of the impending blow and then to “get off the line of the attack” – in other words to “get out of the way.” This is notthe same as fleeing.
Think about a powerful blow coming down on the top of your head. You could Freeze…not a good plan.
You could try to Flee, but if the blow is descending, it’s a bit late to run.
You could throw an arm up and block the blow - ouch. Blocking beats freezing and fleeing, but it’s likely to hurt, and you are probably opened up to a follow up strike. You could of course counter punch and the Fight is on until only one of you is standing. As long as you are the one still standing, you survived and this is a good thing. However, there still are the downsides to the fight I described above.
As an alternative to a direct confrontation, however, what if you simply moved slightly to the side and got out of the way of the blow? What if you just let it fly by? If you picture this happening in your mind, you’ll see you are in good shape and well positioned, while the attacker is now off balance as his blow meets no resistance. In Aikido, this is called Blending.
2. Reshape The Situation. Once off the line, my Aikido Master can redirect the force of the attacker’s blow, and continue to keep him off balance…often with the most gentle of touches. If you picture an upside down pyramid teetering on its point, you’ll see that it would take little effort to cause it to fall over.
3. Create a Positive Outcome. So far this approach is not a lot different than a more aggressive martial art like judo. At this point, the judo master could slam the attacker to the ground and inflict great injury. So could my Aikido Master. Instead, he chooses to move his opponent into an immobilizing situation in which the attacker comes to “understand” the impracticality of continuing to fight. And all this is accomplished without causing serious injury to either party. If you’ve never seen this live, it’s pretty hard to visualize, so for now, please just accept that it is possible so we can consider the business applications. In the words of my Aikido Master, this is the process of Creating Instead of Competing.
Creating Instead of Competing - A Classic Business Application
Here at CrossPointe, we have many opportunities to create instead of compete in our mergers and acquisitions work, in negotiations, in selling and in helping clients reach their business development goals. Here’s a situation I’m sure you’ve experienced that can illustrate the point:
You get a chance to “bid” on a project for which two or three other competitors have already had a chance to present. Chances are, all the prospect is doing at this point is collecting another proposal and has already made up her mind. You could freeze, flee or fight. Most salespeople will try to fight, which leads almost inevitably to the same old quality, service, price arguments about why the prospect should select you versus your competitors. Sometimes, a superstar salesperson can win this fight, but it comes usually at the cost of profitability. In the “fight,” whether you win or lose the business, it’s likely that “blows” are traded between you and the other competitors that damage your relationship with them. Depending on how the fight goes, you can also end up with a damaged relationship with the prospect.
What if you did this instead?
1. Acknowledge The “Blow.” Have the prospect describe the situation and discuss the benefits they see doing business with the other vendors.
2. Get Off the Line. Instead of arguing and countering, just allow all that “competitive” stuff to pass and dissipate.
3. Reshape The Situation. Find the weak point in the prospect’s situation, their point of un-balance and nudge them a bit to take their balance.
4. Guide The Prospect To A Positive New Place. Instead of competing directly against the prospect and the other vendors, create a new discussion where you can design an outcome that is compelling to the prospect. Change the game. To quote Pogo again, “Go where they ain’t.”
Let’s take a very simple real world example. We have a client that sells and services industrial equipment. There are many competitors that are bigger and better capitalized. The competitors sell adequate, but somewhat lower quality equipment, often at a lower price. Customers have budget constraints in the current economy and are loathe to spend money on capital purchases, or even to commit to long term leases. Prospects are confused about who to buy from. Sales conversations tend to spiral downward into price negotiations. Sound familiar?
One large prospect needs to have a significant amount of work done by equipment of the type our client sells, and they do not have a good internal solution for the problem. But after several sales presentations the prospect still won’t commit to a purchase of our client’s equipment. Our client’s sales person is “sure” that he’ll eventually get the business. Wellllll…maybe…
My suggestion: change the game. Here’s one way:
Our client has excess re-conditioned used equipment in inventory, has people trained to operate the equipment and needs revenue. So…let’s invent a new “product” and offer the prospect a unique mobile processing service that my client will manage (at an attractive margin) on a month to month agreement. The prospect gets the work done on an outsourced basis, our client gets a relationship established, the prospect gets to see the quality of the equipment in actual use…and it’s a low risk venture for both parties.
When the prospect wants to buy the equipment, they can buy our client’s new gear with confidence, or they can buy the proven re-conditioned equipment that has been at work for them at a discount. Plus our client gets a profitable preventative maintenance agreement. The client gets their problem solved in an innovative way and everyone wins. If the prospect likes the service, guess what? Our client now has a new service offering (with a testimonial) to sell to other prospects.
Client objections we hear to this sort of creative approach are:
- “We’re not in that business.” (Well, re-think what business you are in.)
- “No one else in our industry offers this kind of program.” (Exactly!!!)
- “What if the prospect says no?” (So what? You get points for flexibility and creativity, and you also find out how much pain the prospect is really in.)
- “It’s a hassle to get something like this set up.” (OK, welcome to the world.)
Granted, this is not a complex example, but if this simple new service offering were incorporated into our client’s business, it is a strategy that incorporates all that we have been discussing in these three articles on Marketing and Martial Arts. It anticipates the prospect’s objections, it gets there first, and allows our client to reshape the discussion and lead the prospect in an unexpected direction that opens up all sorts of positive possibilities. Our client gets the inside track to future business, without slamming other vendors, but the big, strong, well capitalized competitors will be mystified about how our little “nobody” client ended up with such a strong, impregnable relationship.
Martially Yours: Michael Sipe
