How to Be a Fierce Competitor

What Winning Companies and Great Managers Do in Tough Times

Jeffrey J. Fox

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780470588536
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Customer Relations
• Index: Business

From best-selling author Jeffrey J. Fox, how the savvy see opportunity -- and capitalize on it

Economic downturns separate the winning companies from the struggling. And as best-selling author Jeffrey J. Fox shows, tough times also give solid companies, strong managers, and potential rainmakers the opportunity to seize market share. In this eminently readable, practical resource for business leaders and managers, Fox explains exactly how the savvy few who rise to the top stay focused and alert, get new market share, hire good recently fired talent, increase investments into customer service, speed innovation, train all customer facing people, make acquisitions, get rid of underperformers, build brand names, pay for measurable performance, and lots more.

Potential rainmakers, CEOS, marketing superstars, and great bosses have long turned to Jeffrey J. Fox for advice. Now he shows exactly what to do to weather any climate.

CHAPTER 1

THE FIERCE COMPETITOR COMPANY

Fierce competitor companies relentlessly, tirelessly, continuously do whatever they legally can to pursue and capture every profitable customer. They never stop innovating. They never stop selling, reaching out, and communicating to their markets. They train, train, train, and execute, execute, execute. They never stop ripping out waste and bad costs. Fierce competitor companies play to win. They compete for every inch of shelf space, every customer purchase, every first look and last look. They want every good customer, every sale, every penny in every pocketbook.

Fierce competitor companies have peerless customer service, amazing innovation, price leadership, highest-quality image, strong market share position, and great brand names; they are “most admired” by industry followers; and they make money.

Fierce competitors focus on their customers and their competitors. They watch everything their customers and competitors do. If a competitor is doing something that appeals to customers, the killer competitors will do something similar, but better. They often know more about their competitors than their competitors’ own employees do.

The fierce competitor companies create jobs and add employees. Their marketplace success funds payrolls and benefit plans, creating prosperity for families and communities. Their purchasing budgets sustain thousands of suppliers and the suppliers’ stakeholders. Their profits create value for share owners, pension plans, and retirement accounts. Their tax payments and philanthropy support school systems, police departments, Little Leagues, and hospitals.

These companies are ethical, honest, compliant with regulations, and model citizens.

They are sometimes feared and always watched by their competitors. They are loved by their customers. They are easy to do business with, but they never take it easy. If the rest of the industry starts work at 8:30 AM, they are in by 7:00 AM. If everyone else closes on Sundays, they are open. If the other guy wings it, the fierce competitors plan their moves with care.

It is tough to be a tough competitor. Fierce competitors often require more sacrifice than ordinary players. Fierce competitors know that happy, rested employees are most productive, and they work at morale building, but they never lower the performance bar. Never.

If you or your company is not a fierce competitor, then hope one never enters your industry, your space, your market.

As you will read, fierce competitors do unusual things—often spectacular, hard-to-believe, bold actions—to get customers, to get market share, to win.

Some of their stories may sound like urban legends, but they’re not. They are what you need to be doing, how you need to be thinking, the risks you need to take, and if you want to gain market share, seize opportunity, and win when the stakes are at their highest, read on.

CHAPTER 2

BAD TIMES ARE GOOD TIMES

Good, always-surviving, fierce competitors hunger for new sales, new customers, new revenues, new products, new talent, new technologies, new geographies, new channels to markets, new brands. They are always alert and ever on the lookout for assets of all kinds that they can use to strengthen their position in the marketplace.

The savvy, smart, well-led companies see bad times as a good time to gain market share, to out-fox the competition.

Fierce competitors …

• aggressively pursue underserved customers.

• market to brand-indifferent customers and work mightily to make them brand-loyal.

• go after the other companies’ dissatisfied, angry customers.

• buy under-priced hard assets.

• build capacity.

• hire newly available human talent.

• acquire product licenses, anxious good suppliers, undermarketed products, new wholesalers and distributors, and core-relevant acquisitions.

They go after market share and emerge from the downturn ahead of companies that pull back and play it safe.

CHAPTER 3

HUSTLE. HUSTLE. HUSTLE.

From the economic panic of 1823 through the Great Depression and the twelve recessions since 1955, the facts are indisputable: those companies that outsell, outmarket, out-train, out-innovate, and out-hustle their competition emerge from the downturn in a stronger market share and profit position than do those companies that hunker down.

Tough economic times are the perfect times to get new customers, launch new products, build inexpensive capacity. The marketplace is not as crowded with other sellers. Your ads are more prominent. Customers have more time to talk and to evaluate products—especially those that cut costs, boost revenues, and make the customer more competitive. Customers favor the company that visits them over the company that does not.

Two companies competed to sell specialized stencil machines used in the sign-making business. Due to “market conditions,” the larger company cut its travel budget for sales people, significantly reducing the number of visits the sales force could make to current and new customers. On hearing that news, the CEO of the significantly smaller company sensed an opportunity and went into marketing overdrive. He met with his sales force and offered to increase commissions on selling products that were strategic to the bigger competitor. He offered one-time bonuses for every new customer the sales people switched to his company. He offered one-time bonuses for every deal closed on a Saturday. He added money to the travel budget as long as it was spent on breakfasts, lunches, or dinners, but only and always with customers.

The CEO hired one new person whose full-time job was to call customers and set up sales appointments for the sales people. The small company reached out to every possible customer, letting them know the company was increasing customer service levels and offering repairs on machines the big competitor sold, and now had a “no questions asked” warranty policy. The CEO notified all of his machine component suppliers of his plan. In exchange for the promise of increased parts volume, he negotiated paying in sixty days versus forty.

The CEO knew the larger competitor was an established company with good customer loyalty. He personally called the competitor’s biggest customers to suggest that if their loyalty was greater to the sales person who called on them than it was to the larger company, he would consider hiring that sales person.

The CEO repeated and repeated his locker room speech: “We do not have 100-percent market share. There is business to get. Go get it.”

The CEO later marveled at the situation. “If our competitor had done what we did, it might have put us out of business. It certainly would have hurt us. They had the money, the customers, everything. Now we do.”

Don’t hide from the customers. Don’t hunker down in a hole. Don’t go dark to the market.

Call one more customer.

Pay 1 percent more.

Add one more hour to your day.

Send one more email.

Take a chance.

In tough times the tough don’t start selling; they ratchet up their selling. Fierce competitors put more people out in the field selling. They make it possible for sales people to make more money, not less. They invest scarce dollars to visit and meet more customers. They don’t “save” money by quarantining their sales people, by cutting advertising, by reducing customer service reps.

Fierce competitors go for the business when the other companies are giving up on the business.

CHAPTER 4

LEADERSHIP IS NOT “PUSHERSHIP”

It is said that in WWII Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, Germany’s greatest general, knew whether the looming battle would be won or lost as he looked into his commander’s eyes. “I knew the outcome because their eyes mirrored mine.” Rommel lost very few battles, but his message is clear: a leader’s attitude, posture, presence send signals that the organization correctly processes.

Great leaders will exhibit levels of confidence that exceed levels of certainty. They look into the mirror until they see victory peering back. They lead the organization with confidence, even when uncertain. They are sometimes fearful but always fearless. They may be overwhelmed, but never daunted, always willing.

The first leadership is self-leadership.

Leaders set winning examples that employees can emulate.

Field Marshall Rommel told his commanders: “Be an example to your men, in your duty and in private life. Let the troops see that you don’t spare yourself in your endurance of fatigue and privation. Always be tactful and well-mannered and teach your subordinates to do the same. Avoid excessive sharpness or harshness of voice, which usually indicates a man who has shortcomings to hide.” Leaders take note.

True leaders don’t push the soldiers, the employees, the sales people. Leaders push themselves. They push themselves through the tough times into the good times.

Leadership is “Pullership.”

CHAPTER 5

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LEADERS AND MANAGERS

Job titles, media profiles, membership in King Arthur’s Court—these give not a clue as to what makes a leader or manager.

Leaders can be good or bad. Managers can be effective or not. Leaders can bring victory or march, head high, into the valley of death. Leaders can be accidental, appointed, elected, promoted, proven or not.

Great leaders supported by superb managers is what the executive team shareholders want. Leaders, regardless of title or job function, can be found at every level of the organization. Same with managers.

The single biggest difference between leaders and managers is the tolerance for ambiguity. Leaders can deal with ambiguity, can deal with not having all the facts, not having all the data. Leaders make decisions, big decisions, midcrisis decisions, without certainty of the outcome. Managers don’t.

Ironically, it is in crisis, when thinking and reflection are most needed, that fast decisions are required. It is in crisis that the most needed facts and information are not available. Managers are immobilized by the blank page, the shattered compass, the blackout.

Leaders respond and act. They may be wrong, but they don’t dither, dawdle, delay. They decide. Managers may have the best MBA education possible, but they measure metrics, analyze, maintain the status quo, and, as they love to say, “do deep data dives.” Data dives are good, necessary, professional, but when you come up for air, that’s it. Decide.

Smart, realistic, objective homework and analysis of all available facts, data, research is a fundamental of good business stewardship. But during a crisis, tough times, when the need for guiding information is penultimate, but it’s not at the ready, and when there is no time to dwell, you want a leader pulling the trigger, not some guy calling headquarters for signed-off detailed instructions.

Note how often in a tied-game soccer shootout, shooter number five, the game winner or loser, may not be the team captain, may not be the leading scorer, but he or she is a leader.

No ambiguity. Make the shot or lose the game.

CHAPTER 6

KNOW YOUR COMPANY’S RAISON D’ETRE

That marvelous French term raison d’être means “reason to be.” Everyone in the company must know why the company exists—its raison d’être. Everyone must know what business they are in. All companies exist to get and keep profitable customers. The getting and keeping of profitable customers requires giving customers what they want and need at prices that exceed all company costs. Customers want to feel good or they need to solve a problem or some combination of the two. These are the only reasons any customer buys anything.

Winning companies understand this buying phenomenon. Thus they don’t sell products and services; they sell outcomes. Great marketers sell what the customer gets from the product.

Rolex doesn’t sell time, it sells status. Timex doesn’t sell status, it sells time. Titleist doesn’t sell golf balls, it sells lower golf scores. Harley-Davidson doesn’t sell motorcycles, it sells individualism. Pfizer doesn’t sell pills, it sell cures.

If Pfizer were in the business of selling pills, it wouldn’t make vac...