When rivals spread lies and poach your customers, hitting back feels tempting. Here’s why we resisted, and why you should too.

Competition is great. It keeps companies on their toes, fosters innovation, and constantly challenges your product.

At Yonder, the B2B SaaS company I co-founded, we’ve seen competitors entering our domain by bluntly copying our wording, and we’ve seen competitors trying to acquire us. We’ve seen competitors poach customers from us, and we have poached customers from our competitors.

I consider all those practices fair competition. However, we’ve also experienced signs of unfair competition on various occasions. Let’s look into some examples.

Example 1: Feature Badmouth

One of our competitors has copied our product, or is attempting to. As this competitor belongs to the same group as some of our (former) customers, they poached a couple of our customers by executive order from their group headquarters.

So far, so good. The problem is that the second of our customers forced to transition to the group solution told us which features they will lose when leaving us, as the group solution did not (yet) have all the features we have. And soon after, we read a case study in an industry magazine by this competitor, where the very same customer praised the (non-existent) feature set of our competitor’s solution.

Example 2: Economic Situation Badmouth

Another of our competitors tried to acquire us, but we walked away. Soon after this discussion ended, some of our customers asked if we were in economic trouble. With a puzzled look on our faces, we said no. Apparently, our customers were approached by that competitor who tried to acquire us. It looks like it was a very good idea to walk away from a closer collaboration with those guys.

Example 3: Personal Badmouth

Yet another competitor couldn’t accept that we pinched one of their largest customers. Soon after the onboarding project with our new customer started, the project team members received personal WhatsApp messages from our competitor’s staff, badmouthing our company and our product.

What Can You Do?

I’m afraid you can’t do much about all those practices. When you hear of such practices, you can curse in private with your team. But don’t go any further, and don’t engage in similar practices. Stay true to your values, and stick to your strategy, even if it hurts. Keep doing what you’re doing, and never forget that you’re not doing everything wrong when your competitors resort to unfair competition.

To finish off on a positive note, don’t give unfair competition more room than it deserves. Always remember all those competitors that engage in fair competition.