Digging a Pit for the Competition

In the mid-seventies I was selling for a living while I studied at university.

I was a young, inexperienced salesman in the alarm systems business.

One of the more primitive ways of finding customers was to "comb" the streets looking for new shops and businesses that didn't have an alarm yet. All this knowing that the insurance companies made an alarm a condition for insuring a business, so the customers really had no choice.

On one of these rounds I walked into a fairly new shop and struck up a conversation with the owner, a very elderly woman.

I asked a few questions and found out that it was indeed a new business with no alarm system.

I asked whether they needed an alarm... (knowing full well the insurance required one) and of course the answer was yes...

"Well then," I jumped in happily, "let's see what we can do for you..." But to my surprise, the lady put the brakes on my enthusiasm and announced that she had no interest in working with me.

"Why?" I asked, stunned. "Never mind," the customer answered. "I just don't want to."

I didn't give up. "I understand you need an alarm, and that's exactly what I do. So what's stopping you from placing an order?"

"I'm not interested," she replied firmly.

"Would you at least like a quote from me?" I persisted.

"No!" said the customer, and turned her back on me.

In desperation, I pulled out the "Door Knob Close", a technique I'd learned just a few days earlier, and said: "Okay, I guess I won't be able to help you. I'm leaving..." and started heading for the door. There I stopped for a moment and asked: "So now, maybe you could tell me after all, why won't you even take a quote from me?"

At this point, feeling she had finally managed to "shake off the pest," she gave in and declared flatly: "You used to work for Sha'ash!" (a big security company back then).

"I've never worked for Sha'ash," I replied, stunned.

"You worked for Sha'ash," she insisted.

"I've never even walked past Sha'ash!" I cried. (And I really never had worked for Sha'ash.)

Only when I pressed her did it come out that a competitor of mine (his nickname was "Pitzele"), who worked for Sha'ash in those years, had beaten me to that shop and tried to sell her an alarm.

When the sale fell through, he planted a "mine" for whichever alarm salesman was likely to come along next, planning to come back later and close the deal himself.

It turned out that this Pitzele had stopped by the door (just like I did) before leaving the shop and said something along these lines:

"Look, ma'am, you've heard my offer and I respect that you want to think it over. I'll be back in a few days. But either way, whether you buy from me or not, watch out for the alarm salesman who..." And here he gave her a general description of a man. A description that fits half the State of Israel... Then he added: "That guy used to work for us at Sha'ash, and we had serious problems with him... In the end we threw him out and he opened his own business. Watch out for him!..." And he left.

And I, the youngster, showed up right after him and fell into the trap like a total rookie.

Go prove you don't have a sister. (As the Hebrew saying goes: try disproving a story someone simply made up.)

The moral:

Most of us work in a competitive environment. Sometimes a very aggressive one. The stories here include a long line of moves designed to beat the competition, and not by cutting prices...

Talented salespeople start from the assumption that the competitors are always around, and that they're every bit as good. Ignoring the competition, or worse, looking down on it, is a recipe for failure.

Every move you make rests on the assumption that someone was here before me or will come after me, and I have to act in a way that neutralizes them.

There are as many moves like that as there are grains of sand on the seashore. Every one of them takes a great deal of information, experience and common sense.