I build lithium battery packs with top shelf battery cells recovered from various sources (medical devices, IT equipment, crashed electric vehicles, etc). Extensive testing goes into every cell and every pack before it leaves the shop and goes to a customer.

My main competition is brand new, high end battery packs (Expensive, not liars) and Amazon/Alibaba (Super cheap, very often demonstrable liars).

My value prop is “high performance batteries for about 50% of the cost of brand new + less environmental impact”. I have very happy customers, but I lose potential sales ALL THE TIME to the cheap, falsely advertised competition. Their game is volume, they don’t care.

Amazon/Alibaba sellers lie about the battery capacity of their packs constantly. They’ll advertise a battery with 15 amp-hours of capacity, but when tested never put out more than 7 or 8 amp-hours.

If you’re unfamiliar, more battery capacity (often measured in amp-hours or Ah) means your bike/wheelchair/scooter goes more miles (ELI5). It’s a critical measure of the performance of the battery you’re considering as it tells you (roughly) how far you can go on one charge (see “Range Anxiety” re: electric cars)

So when I come up with a quote for a 15 amp-hour battery for $200 (just an example), they’ll go on Amazon and see a “15 amp-hour” pack advertised for $100. I know for certain that the stuff on Amazon is not as advertised. I have the equipment to test these things.

My prospects do not know this. They see 15 amp-hour versus “15 amp-hour” as an apples to apples comparison when I know it’s not. I was that budget-oriented consumer so I understand where they’re coming from.

The approach I’m going with these days is something to the effect of “most of my clients come to me after buying a cheap Amazon battery and now want something better.” That captures the attention of about 20% of prospects. The rest I’ll never hear from again.

If I could get the message across, my prospect conversion rate would rise incredibly. How do I get the message across without being the guy trash-talking his competitors? Because no one likes that guy, and I completely understand why that’s a turn-off. If I was in the market for a new Toyota or Honda and the Toyota salesman trashed the Honda, that’s just a bad look, no matter how you cut it.

Thanks in advance, Reddit