Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Alexis,
The creativity to get their attention depends a little on the line of business you are in, your company name, geographical area, the nature of your customers - are they conservative or open to a little fun? Here are some "brainstorming" ideas:

To get their attention, you could all dress in black suits and have dark sunglasses - kind of like a "spy," since this is your competitor's turf. That would bring attention to you versus the rest of the crowd, give you notice, and then you could hand out cards, brochures, etc.

Or if the venue is casual enough, you could all where teeshirts the color of your company logo with writing saying, "I'm not really here" or "I with the other guys" if you want to be more obvious.

For blantant, you could where your shirts with your company logo and hand out different shirts to prospects.

You could do a "mock press conference" at a time when you wouldn't be interrupting - like at a break - and have a bunch of your sales guys in hats with a "press pass" tucked in the rim, a pad of paper, flashing cameras at you, and shouting questions. You could "issue a statement, " which could be your company tag line or something about your product or service that you would like everyone to hear.

Or you could simply and quietly mingle and hand out cards and a features/benefits sheet for your offering.

Hopefully, these ideas will spark some other creative ideas. I hope this helps.

Wayde

I guess I need to know what you mean by "hosting a seminar".

If this is an event where the only thing going on is this seminar by the competitor, then I don't think it would be appropriate to promote your product there. If the registration allows you to go, you can go and quietly listen to what is said and learn what you can.

If it is a broader event (say they are demonstrating a product at their trade show booth, which is just one of many booths), then you can go and promote your product (but you shouldn't disrupt their demonstration).

There is always a risk of being guerrilla, not just in aggravating your competitors. Your tactic will have an impact on their impression of you. You have to make sure that what you do doesn't appear cheap (that you can't afford to do a seminar, but only to try to steal customers) or unfair to customers.

Hi Alexis

To my mind, Peter and Shelly are offering some pretty sound advice and that’s not just from a moral standpoint or being a bit of a wimp. “Do unto others” has a very strong marketing basis.

Whether it’s a private seminar, where you have no “right” to be present or a presentation during a public event or a trade show, your competitor’s clients are going to be there because they have consciously decided to attend. In the same way that slagging off your competition to a prospective customer is a bad idea, turning up and trying to hijack a competitor’s event with your people, your message and your own floorshow is equally stupid.

Rubbishing competitors doesn’t work for several reasons and the most important one is that your customer might already have formed a reasonably good opinion of them. Worse still, they might already have made a purchase. All that you are doing is telling them that they are idiots for holding such opinions or making such purchases.

If you take the same tactics to a seminar, you are tacitly telling the attendees that they are fools for wasting their time by going to the event when, if they had any intelligence, they should have stayed at home until you managed to get to see them. What the hell gives you the right to do that? If I was a buyer at a supplier seminar and some twit started to ruin my appreciation of the event, I’d tell him where to go – pretty girls or no pretty girls.

These days, getting people to attend a seminar is increasingly difficult. Their time is valuable and there are many conflicting demands on it. For some outsider to disrupt it would lead me to make a note never to deal with that firm. If they can show such disrespect to me and my choice of how I use my valuable time, why on earth should I want to have them as a supplier?

Then there’s the real prospect of retribution. If you seriously disrupted or spoiled your competitor’s event, what’s to stop them from doing the same to you? The first strike principal means that they probably won’t even have considered doing anything to damage your reputation because there are better things for them to do with their time and money, but if you start the bun-fight, retaliation will be sure to follow. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how they could concoct a scam, justify it mentally out of anger and execute it in a manner which would reduce your company to a laughing stock.

Don’t do it!

Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions