Competitors Can Be Friends Too

(J.J. – Indianapolis, USA) This week one of my clients asked if I could be on a phone call with a salesperson who was selling a service that I was also suggesting to the client that I could provide. I said OK because I knew my client was a little confused and really just wanted all the facts.

The day before, she called to tell me she wasn’t going to make it, could I just be on the call? I thought – well this salesperson may not be so friendly since we’re both trying to do the same thing. That morning I rolled the cube and got ‘Competitors Can be Friends Too!’

I went into the phone call with a better attitude and the man was very nice, also providing some info that also helped me explain everything to the client.

(P.C. – USA) For the past 7 years, our company has been involved in environmental cleanup of a site. In an effort to save costs, our clients decided to have a different consultant (smaller and cheaper) conduct various routine tasks needed for the site, while keeping our company to handle the most complex aspects and provide general oversight of the project.

Early last year, we started noticing some problems with a quarterly report produced by the other consultant. The field techniques used were deficient and the results obtained did not seem realistic. After various honest reviews of the work and different attempts to explain to the other consultant how to approach the site and also how to report the difficulties encountered, the reports were still incorrect.

For us, it would have been easier to just tell the client that it was better if we conducted the field activities and reported the data. Instead, our company proposed to send our own field crew to the site and to include the consultant’s field crew in order to provide some training for them. The two crews went to the site and conducted the work in a collaborative way that was beneficial for the whole project.

This situation, which could have resulted in increased revenue for us, we transformed into a project that maintained relationships (even with competitors) and promoting collaborations with all the parties involved was the top priority.