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April 18, 2005
Sales and Marketing
Befriending the "Competition"
Posted by Keith Ferrazzi at 4:21 PM
Since I've had some extra time on my hands, I finally got around to reading Alison Stein Wellner's piece in Inc.'s March issue: "Let's Be Friends: It seems nuts. But new research says that CEOs who become pals with their rivals do better than those who don't."
I'm so glad to see that the research is showing what many of us know to be true in practice -- that we all succeed better together. No reason that can't apply to entrepreneurs, CEOs, even competitors! In the past, I always got to know my competition when I was in key posts. Deloitte CMO, Starwood CMO... There were multiple reasons for doing so. One, more focus on getting your own stuff right is needed than on beating the other guy in order to succeed. Two, you never know where you or they will end up over the long term. Sure I appreciate a healthy rivalry, but again, that does not mean you cannot be friends around such a rivalry. (In the "Let's Be Friends" article, there's a great line -- "It's better to have your butt whipped by a friend than an enemy. At least that way you're more likely to find out why.") And three, of course, you can actually learn a lot from each other as well.
Now, as founder of a sales & marketing consulting firm and a training/speaking business, I think about competition in two ways. I don't have any competition. By the same token, everyone is my competition. The point is that any company can choose to go it alone without outside support relative to sales and marketing, or they could decide to use one of the big guys or another specialist group like ourselves. What I worry about is not if my "competition" is going to be a success, but if my business is shaping up as I would like. Our growth rate has been extraordinary so far, and I need to assure that our processes and talent keeps pace.
Let's look at each line of FerrazziGreenlight business. First, on the consulting side, I reach out to CEOs of other consulting firms that I aspire to be like to get guidance all the time. I hope to meet the leaders of Monitor Consulting, as I hope someday to have as large and thriving a practice as they have built. I am meeting with Michael Porter -- this week actually -- because I greatly admire him and want to know how he founded that firm.
I meet with other training and development houses and even refer business to them when we are at capacity. In the meantime, I learn so much and never feel that shadow of paranoia. I am paranoid, but not paranoid that someone else will be successful, too -- just paranoid that I might miss something that will allow me to grow our business into the thriving institution that I want it to be over the years. I speak to folks like Tim Sanders. We recently traded tips on launching books because he just released his latest, The Likeablity Factor. I talk with Michael Hammer and Jason Jennings and the list goes on and on. Even others who have written networking books, like Diane Darling, or those who are writing networking books, like Jeff Meshel. I am even editing his manuscript. How much more friendly can you get?
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Interesting article, and interesting points that Mr. Ferrazzi brings up. One thing that doesn't seem to be included by either the article or Mr. Ferrazzi's response, is the progression of competitors that become partnership organizations, which is what we are experiencing in our industry.
The best example that I can describe is the training aspect of our business where we once competed with CD-ROM and Web Based training (ours is mostly in-person and hands-on training). For a long time we were cautious of our knowledge base because in many ways it was one of the tools in our arsenal of "unfair competitive advantages" and we wanted to protect it.
Since that mind set, we have come around to a strategy more focused on the relationship building and partnering abilities of the companies we deal with. This has brought about these CD-ROM and Web Based companies (with our permission and assistance) to produce and co-market a line of products that presents our materials. As a result, they sell more of their CD/Web materials, and we gain some profit margin from that. Also, many people that take the CD/Web training from these companies, are now using that as a first step before coming to the live training that we provide.
Together, we have been able to break down some of the hesitations that people have about training seminars. They are able to get in to the first step of training (web/CD) and from that choose employees that would benefit from attending training through our organization. The share of customers became larger as a result, because we worked together to break down the barriers to entry for them. We also allowed them an "Easy In, Easy Out" approach. CD/Web eliminated travel expenses and allowed more people to be "pre-trained" before attending the live sessions. (Barriers to entry and Easy In, Easy Out are concepts that Joel Barker teaches in one of his more recent video's - if you've never seen them, I recommend viewing them).
We belive strongly that our industry is moving toward partnerships and building strong relationships with our customers as well as our partners and competitors is the way that we all succeed in the new world economy.
Befriending the competition! The title leads me to an observation: That regardless of all the "competitive behavior" that we have written and read about in the context of our capitalistic system, that there is hope for acknowledging and behaving as we should--playing nice with your brothers/sisters--is best in the longer run. This means to me that as enterpreneurs and executives--given that we have been described as sociopaths and who knows what else--can actually cooperate, be civil and human while attempting to share market influence or dominance. Isn't human nature grand? In fact, if we go back to the 80's or earlier the concept of strategic alliances, coopetition, cooperative arrangements,partnering, teaming up, etc. were in vogue. Now, we are revisiting the entire notion that just like the challenges that we experienced in building corporate teams to perform optimally, getting the brothers/sisters together towards to common goal works best! We just need to practice what is common sense given that we always have limited resources, imperfect and insufficient information and the world of opportunities continue to increase exponentially in many arenas. Working together can and is very challenging but another option is not acceptable!
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