Competitors as valuable rivals

The other day, an executive I coach, let’s call him Bill, came up with a problem he faced with a business partner in Morocco. Bill is a senior sales executive at a multinational manufacturing electrical components. He had a business partner with whom he used to work exclusively. Meaning that the local company was entirely in charge of the Moroccan market, and Bill did not make any direct sales to Moroccan customers from France.

Recently, the Moroccan partner explained that he wants to expand his business to other products that do not exist in Bill’s product range. He was investigating opportunities with one of Bill’s competitors with those products in their range.

According to Bill, this was a problem because he was afraid that his competitor would use this opportunity to “steal” his business partner and propose the entire product range, which would put Bill out of the game. 

I was curious to understand what made Bill think his long-time business partner was “stealable.” After a series of questions, Bill admitted that over the past couple of years, his company did not treat its business partners as it used to. Because they were going through a global organizational transformation, they spent so much energy to make it a success. Meanwhile, business partners like the Moroccan one were not their priority. Therefore, according to Bill, his company did not necessarily treat them well. So, if the Moroccan company starts to work with Bill’s competitor, it is very likely that he might want to extend it and stop working with Bill’s company.

Then I wanted to understand Bill’s options. It turned out that Bill was not that hopeless. He had the means to recover the relationship, make the business more interesting for his business partner and provide high-quality support. I asked if he could do it better than his competitor, no matter how good they were. He did not even blink…it was a strong, confident yes. On top of that, he had all cards to play right away.

At the end of the session, Bill made the following summary. 

“In fact, trying to protect my relationship with my business partner only through an exclusive contract does not make sense. It would be like staying together with my wife, even after losing love and respect, just because I am married to her. That would not make me happy at all. I love my wife and would spend the rest of my life with her, regardless of our signed papers. It is the same in business. I want my Moroccan business partner to keep working with us because it is profitable for him, and we will keep growing together. And I only need to care about him and his business better than any of my competitors would. Then I would not have to worry about my competitors “stealing” my business partner.”

Bill left the session knowing exactly what he needed to do. He already had all the answers anyway. He just needed some clarity.

My takeaway from this session was about competition. Having competitors in the game, gave Bill the opportunity to shake the dust off and keep improving to be better than the competition. In other words, keep growing. If there were no competition issues, Bill would probably not realize/recognize what his business partner was thinking about their cooperation.

Therefore, it is possible to see our competitors as valuable rivals helping us to keep growing. Have you ever thought of yourself as a valuable rival?