Dear SaaStr: How Do I Take Over Customers From My Biggest Competitor?
You can do it, it happens all the time. But you gotta put in the work. 95% of vendors and folks and sales reps don’t actually put in the world.
You gotta do the 3 P’s:
- Patience.
- Persistence.
- Pounce.
First, you have to practice patience.
View all “lost” deals as just leads with a long sales cycle, and slowly but carefully do a specialized lead nurturing program for them.
It may take years to get another shot at a deal you lost to a competition. Not always, but often.
Just because you are “better” than your competitor doesn’t mean the customer is going to go to the effort to make the change. In fact, in the short term, that’s highly unlikely. But eventually. If the NPS is low. The customer is unhappy. Maybe in 18 months, or 2 years, or even 3 years … they’ll be willing to actually make a change.
When you are bigger, it can also even make sense to assign a rep or two here, with specialized comp plans.
Second, you have to keep adding value to the customers you lose. Yes. Persistence.
You have to be persistent even after you lose the deal. 99% of sales reps will be on to the next thing, so it often has to be driven by marketing via win-back campaigns. You have to keep top of mind at lost deals, and importantly, keep adding value. A few things that work well:
- Develop a series of very high quality content in the industry you push out to lose deals once a month. Not constantly, like an SDR on cadence overdrive, But just enough to truly add value. Go further than a mediocre “win back” campaign that doesn’t add true value. Make every single email in your win back campaign truly value-add.
- Invite lost deals to your customer conference. It can be magical if they come. Your existing customers will try to talk them into switching. And you’ll build bonds for when they are ready.
And third you have to be ready to pounce — politely — when a customer stumbles.
When the CEO leaves. When problems come up. When the champion of your competitor leaves. When your competitor gets acquired. This is a good time to have a conversation.
If you aren’t tracking this, you won’t be ready. So many SaaS vendors have no idea when champion change occurs, or even properly handle changes at key competitors.
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(Image from here)
