Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2015; the payment terms of 60, 90 and even 120 days on promissory notes it mentions reflect Spanish business practice at the time of the events described. Spreading false information about a business’s creditworthiness is unethical and can be unlawful. The tactic below is the author’s own anecdote and is not a recommendation.
Sometimes you don’t know who your co-workers really are until you come up against them at the competition. Call me strange, but I have always liked to keep a certain “sportsmanship” in the business world, and just because I leave one company to go and work for another does not mean my former co-workers become my enemies.
Personally, I have never had any qualms about sitting down for lunch in a restaurant or having a coffee with my direct competitors, whereas I have known salespeople who regard another salesperson as someone you shouldn’t even go near, simply because he works for the competition. And let me take this opportunity to remind you that social skills open doors, and that your professional future might even lie with the competition. So never be shy about saying hello to your competitors, or even sitting down to lunch with them.
Many years ago, when I left my job as a regional sales manager at a company, I had a task ahead of me: moving my old clients over to the new company I was joining. Honestly, it was not going to be very difficult, but it required a lot of speed, because I knew how my old company would react. It had probably already started devising the wrong competitive strategy: discrediting both the former employee and the products of the company he was moving to (in this case my new company and me, and not necessarily in that order).
That was a serious mistake on the company’s part, because it forgot that I did not make sales, I made clients. And not just clients but friends: I had even been to the weddings and christenings of some of my clients (another time I will tell you why such a close relationship formed between my clients and me).
1. If you know your enemy and know yourself, you will not lose even in a hundred battles
That phrase came to mind, together with the famous passage from The Art of War that explains that rather than attacking your enemy, you should attack his supplies and make him starve.
I knew that my old company’s way of balancing shipments and profits was to wait until the trucks were full before delivering. We had clients who placed small orders, so it was not profitable to send a truck for a few boxes, while others’ orders filled three-quarters of a truck on their own.
So the first phase of winning clients was to go after the key clients whose loss would wreck a delivery route. That way, while I visited the smaller clients, the trucks would not leave the factory, or if they did, the delivery would not pay for itself.
In any case, in less than two months I had 98% of all my old clients back with me.
But now I wanted a big client who had never been mine, and I had a problem.
There was a client who had never been mine (let’s call him client X). He was a preferred client who practically sustained the profitability of a department linked to the one I had run at my old company. The thing is, now I wanted that client.
The man had a reputation for being eccentric: very serious, one of those people you cannot speak to directly unless his secretary gives you permission. I had visited him three times, and all three times his secretary had fobbed me off. Politely, but she had more or less told me to get lost. Now we come back to that.
An old former colleague from my previous company, whom we could call a “friend” because I had known him even before I started working there, and who was one of the first to launch his own campaign to bring me down out in the field (friendship is a beautiful thing), kept calling me to have lunch together whenever we were in the same area.
The thing is, everything I told him turned up the next day as gossip, twisted and shamelessly manipulated. On top of that, my own clients told me what this man was saying about me, about my new boss and about my new company.
I remember calling him once to ask why he was doing it, and his answer was: “Carlos, don’t take it the wrong way. It’s business, and you of all people should know that in war and in business anything goes. Aren’t you professional enough to separate our friendship from work?”
And the truth is that he kept calling me and we kept meeting for lunch, even though I knew what was going on. This guy was smarter than me (or at least he thought he was). And that is something that really annoys me, especially when you sense that someone is trying to take you for a fool.
But then I asked myself the right question: “How can I use this idiot to my advantage?” And the words of The Art of War came back to me: if you know your enemy, if you know how your enemy thinks… keep your enemy close… and so on.
And I saw it clearly. My great friend and dear former colleague, a gossip by nature, insecure, eager to sink me and convinced he was smarter than me, was the one who was going to get me a meeting with client X, because he did talk to that eccentric client.
And I was clear that I only needed to speak to that client once to win him over, because I had a better product, I could give him better service, I could cut his costs, and on top of that I could make him more money by offering him exclusive distribution for the area.
2. The strategy for using my old former colleague to win client X
The next time we had lunch together, I gave my gossiping “friend” more information than usual, and I decided to lie to him outright, first to worry him and second to give him another reason to try to destroy me, and he loved that second part.
I told him to be careful with client X, because we had sold him a large quantity of material and his promissory note had bounced. “My company doesn’t want to sell to him anymore,” I told him. Obviously, I had never sold anything to this client (in fact, I had never even spoken to him).
This created two situations in my gossiping friend’s mind.
- His client had been unfaithful to him, because no supplier likes its good clients placing trial orders with the competition. That is how you start losing a client.
- This gossip, that I was going around saying client X was a bad payer, was something he would certainly have to pass on to him, because gossips who don’t let it out get indigestion and explode.
I gave it time to make sure my comments reached client X, who, I was sure, would want to meet me as soon as he heard.
The fact is that no company likes rumours going around that it is a “bad payer”, especially when it is a lie, not least because it can make it very hard for it to pay for materials at 60 and 90 days, or, as was common at that time, even at 120 days.
And of course, if my plan worked, all I had to do was find a way to turn that meeting into a future business relationship.
3. The day of the visit to client X
Once I had let a reasonable amount of time pass and made sure my gossiping friend had already visited client X, I went all in. I had a big breakfast in case my teeth got knocked in when I walked through the door, and I said goodbye to my family and loved ones just in case (OK, it was not that dramatic, but my heart was racing).
This time, when I reached his secretary’s desk, to my surprise she again refused me a meeting with Mr X, so I forced the situation even further: “Tell him that Carlos González from company Z is here; I think he wanted to see me,” I told the secretary this time.
And sure enough, they did not even invite me in: it was Mr X himself who came down the corridor, practically floating above the floor. His anger was obvious from his face, and his first words were: “How can you be such a lowlife and so shameless?”
Playing my part, I opened my eyes wide in surprise, raised my palms and said calmly: “I’m sorry? Do you and I know each other? Couldn’t you be confusing me with someone else?”
“Haven’t you been going around saying that I bounced promissory notes on you, when I have never bought a thing from you in my life?” he asked me, clearly worked up. At that moment I made my look of surprise even more pronounced, as if to say “What on earth are you talking about?”
And he was mine.
I said to him calmly and with a smile:
“Let’s see… have you ever bought anything from me?”
“Well, no,” he answered, keen to see where this was going.
“And did you and I know each other before?”
“No,” he answered again.
“If we didn’t know each other, and you have never bought from me, then obviously you can never have bounced a promissory note on me. What’s more, I want to work and do business with you. Everything I have heard about you is that you are a serious and reliable person. So… can you tell me why I would say you had bounced promissory notes on me? What’s more, what would I gain by saying you bounced promissory notes on me when it is completely false?”
At that moment Mr X was completely thrown, and all he could say was: “I don’t know… I don’t know anymore…”
And I put the icing on the cake.
“Oh, wait. That twisted bit of gossip wouldn’t have come from my old colleague [gossiping friend], would it? I ask because for months he has been telling everyone all sorts of strange stories about my company and me, because when I left the company I took practically all the clients with me, and since they cannot beat us on quality or price, they are trying this childish stuff.
“But don’t hold it against him, Mr X, because [gossiping friend] is an excellent person; I think they are putting a lot of pressure on him at the company after losing so many clients.”
Mr X then apologised and invited me into his office, where I was able to explain our advantageous terms for his company, and he ended up becoming my client.
A phone call the following week
The following week I received a phone call. It was my gossiping friend, friendlier than usual, and I already knew he had found out about my visit to Mr X. So I was sure that friendliness was meant to lead me, a few minutes later, wherever he wanted.
In other words, the old trick of sitting with Mr X with the speakerphone on so that he would hear me admit what I had told him.
And sure enough, when I saw clearly where he was heading, I decided to settle the matter and expose him:
“By the way, [gossiping friend], I don’t know what problems you have, and I don’t care, but don’t drag me into your childish little games again. First you tell me he bounces promissory notes so that I stay away from your client, and then you go and tell him that I’m going around saying he’s a bad payer. Be more professional, man!!!”
And when he started shouting “That’s a lie!!!” I hung up on him, because by that point, the more he tried to make excuses and explain himself, the guiltier he would look.
Was all that really necessary?
When you start playing a game, you first need to know the game, the players and the rules. If someone plays hard, you must be ready to play even harder.
Some of you may think that strategies based on deception and lies are not worth it, something General Sun Tzu would disagree with. In this case we are not talking about a client who bought trifles, but about a client worth 700,000 euros a year, turnover that more than gave life to the company I had joined, and whose loss dealt the death blow to the company I had left.
Once I had gained this client’s trust, six months later I confessed what had happened and how I had managed to get the meeting with him. His reaction was the typical one: “What a son of a b**** you are.” And my answer was also the typical one: “Yes, but if tomorrow you needed a sales director, would you hire [gossiping friend], or the son of a b**** who managed to land the 700,000-euro jerk?”
Further reading
Featured image: 663highland, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons.
