What rubbish
An interesting morning dealing with quite a number of new customer enquiries.
One customer told me he was placing his order with us on the basis that not only did we provide a prompt and competitive quote but because we never once engaged in rubbishing our competition. He had contacted 5 other companies and all had without exception “slagged” each other off when he mentioned who he was getting quotes from. We had not done that, far from it he said, we recommended several spray foam companies that the customer might like to deal with if we could not help. Hopefully, as the spray foam polyurethane industry matures there will be less silly behaviour and all companies will service an expanding and competitive market without the need to rubbish each other. Rubbishing in fact just serves to rubbish the industry.
Why some companies feel it necessary to rubbish their competitors, their own industry in fact, is beyond me. It is certainly not intelligent. Perhaps they do it in a misguided sense that it will help them win the order. But it seldom does amongst increasingly more educated buyers, buyers who have done their homework and know what they are buying and from who; the company’s reputation and standards. I know how I feel when someone starts to rubbish the competition, I turn off completely and work on the basis that they would say that but it will not negatively influence my decision against anyone they rubbish. In fact it influences my decision against the company doing the rubbishing. If they are so confident in their product and service they provide why do they feel it will positively influence me to buy from them when they try to rubbish the competition? It won’t and it doesn’t.
We work on the basis of trying to help our customers understand the product polyurethane spray foam, what it can do and can’t do, what applications are suitable and what are not, what benefits and the payback they will get, the costings and always striving to give excellent value for money and a very competitive quote for any work that the customer may require. Rubbishing our competition fits in nowhere here, in fact our competition, the quality decent companies we know of will be recommended if we cannot do the work within the customer’s timescales, and sometimes we can’t because of order book commitments. This helps the whole industry and gives a positive perception to the customer. Everyone is a winner even when we don’t do the work.
So, what rubbish it is to try to start to rubbish your competition.