Making connections. Creating enemies.
Conferences are supposed to be about customers, products, partnerships and professional networking. We understand the concept. We simply find it a little boring.
When we see competitors, we prefer to make things personal. Why quietly explain why our product is better when we can question their competence, talk down to them, make insulting remarks and turn an ordinary industry conversation into something everybody nearby will remember?
Sometimes we are arrogant. Sometimes we are rude. Sometimes the conversation becomes threatening. Sometimes somebody says something about nationality, background or identity that should probably have remained inside their head.
We call this direct communication.
WE MAKE IT PERSONAL. Product differentiation through unnecessary hostility.
We confuse arrogance with confidence
Confidence would mean knowing our product, defending our engineering and explaining why a customer should choose us.
That takes evidence.
Arrogance is faster.
We can dismiss the competitor, question their competence and behave as though occupying the same exhibition hall is already generous of us. If they disagree, we become louder. If they challenge a technical claim, we can stop discussing the claim and start discussing them.
We know this occasionally makes us look insecure rather than superior. Fortunately, insecurity delivered confidently can be difficult to distinguish from leadership at a distance.
when we can simply behave
like everybody else is worse?
Technical disagreement is more fun when somebody gets insulted
A normal company might respond to a competing technical claim with test data, engineering analysis or a different specification.
We have discovered another method.
If the argument becomes inconvenient, attack the person. Their experience. Their intelligence. Their company. Their professionalism. Anything that moves the conversation away from the original question works surprisingly well.
The technical debate ends immediately.
Admittedly, a new debate begins about why we behave like this, but at least nobody is discussing the specification anymore.
CHANGE THE TARGET.
Sometimes an insult needs a threat
Most companies de-escalate conflict because customers, partners and competitors tend to meet again. We prefer to use the available momentum.
A disagreement becomes confrontation. Confrontation becomes intimidation. Somebody mentions consequences. Somebody makes it personal. Eventually everyone has completely forgotten which product started the conversation.
We tell ourselves this demonstrates strength.
What it actually demonstrates depends heavily on whether the person watching is a customer, competitor, lawyer or future business partner.
make sure the conflict remembers us.
If the product argument is weak, identity is always available
Technology, delivery, reliability and support would normally be the obvious ways to compare two manufacturers.
But sometimes somebody on our side discovers that a competitor has a nationality, ethnicity, gender, age or background that can be turned into a remark nobody asked for.
It contributes absolutely nothing to the technical discussion. It tells the customer nothing useful about either product. It does, however, tell everybody nearby quite a lot about us.
We believe in equality, of course.
We are capable of looking down on almost anyone.
NOW AVAILABLE WORLDWIDE.
We pay for the stand. The reputation damage is free.
Conferences are expensive. Flights, hotels, exhibition space, booth construction, graphics, screens, brochures, customer dinners and staff time can easily turn several days of networking into a serious marketing investment.
Then one of us opens their mouth.
Suddenly the thing people remember is not the equipment, the booth or the carefully prepared presentation. It is the insult. The arrogant conversation. The threat. The discriminatory remark. The senior manager who apparently believed everybody around them was beneath them.
The efficient part is that we do not even have to distribute the story ourselves. Competitors, customers and suppliers handle that organically.
€80,000
REPUTATION DAMAGE:
ORGANIC
Marketing spends months trying to make us memorable.
We can accomplish it in thirty seconds.
Frequently
Uncomfortable Questions
Are we aggressive with competitors?
We prefer “passionate”.
“Aggressive” is normally the word used by people standing nearby.
Do we ever cross professional boundaries?
Boundaries are difficult to see in crowded exhibition halls.
We normally locate them shortly after crossing them.
What happens after one of us behaves badly?
First we explain that the person was being direct. Then competitive. Then misunderstood. Then taken out of context.
An apology remains available if none of those work.
We could attend conferences, demonstrate our products, argue with evidence, shake hands with competitors and leave with more professional relationships than we arrived with.
But that would require separating competition from ego.
Instead, we sometimes behave as though being rude proves we are strong, being arrogant proves we are successful and intimidating somebody proves we won.
It does not.
It simply means that while everybody else came to the conference to sell equipment, we occasionally came to demonstrate our personality.
AT THE CONFERENCE
MAY BE OUR OWN MOUTH.