Brand You: Never Trash Your Competitors

So many of the things that are important are pretty darn simple-minded truisms. And I’ve 

spent the last 35 years of my life stating and re-stating, often in very high volumes, the
obvious.
And so, here goes another one: Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, regardless of the
circumstance, regardless of your personal experience, never trash your competitors. Sell
yourself. The competitors may be nasty, they may be brutal, they may have done horrible
things to you. But when you walk in to be involved in that transaction, selling a training
program, selling a jet engine, selling pharmaceuticals, it is, “What we have here is special
and different than what other people have.”
When you trash your competitor—to once again state another piece of the obvious—
you’re simply going down into the gutter and convicting yourself. And if it happens to be
trashing a competitor who has a sizable piece of the business of the person you’re talking
to, they may have worked with a fabulous person in that organization or their reputation
may be tied to that other company, the competitor company. So, it may be simple, it may
be obvious.
I actually learned this from IBM many, many years ago, where if you ever badmouthed a
competitor, and I don’t care whether you were the number one salesperson in the district
or the region, you were out of there on the next train or the next bus. It was just about as
simple as that. And when IBM started breaking those rules, incidentally, which they did
when the arrogance got a hold of them, it was part of their near-demise before the
comeback of recent times.
Never ever, ever, no matter what your personal circumstance, memory, whatever, never
badmouth a competitor. Sell yourself. And if you ain't got nothing to sell, then just stay
away.

Source: #39 Brand You: Never Trash Your Competitors

It may be a simple truth, but it's a valuable one. Tom reminds us not to stoop so low as to badmouth the competition.

[Or, get a PDF transcript of the video's content: Brand You: Never Trash Your Competitors.]

Manny Luna

CEO/ VL Automotive Marketing