Is It Ethical to Poach Customers

I'll soon be releasing my software product. It's much better than some of the existing products out there. My competitors make it easy to find who their customers are.
Do you think it's ethical for me to contact my competitors customers with an offer so that they switch to my product?

It's an interesting question. In theory businesses are always telling their competitors customers about their product via TV ads and other broad marketing.

Somehow we feel that is okay but contacting the customer directly is "poaching". I am not sure I see a real justification for that. I think as long as you aren't using questionable tactics to gain the competitors customer list then it's fair game.

If your product is better than your competitors, then you are doing the customers a service letting them know about it.

Why do you think you are "poaching" customers? If your competition lists their customers, they are publically stating who uses their product. They have no problem with this, so why should you? Is this unethical- I say no.

On the other hand, coverting your competition's customers into your own is going to be much harder than you think. Corporations have something I would refer to as inertia. It takes them quite a while to make up their mind as to what product to buy and once they make up their minds it is very hard to change that process. If your product is only 20% better than your competitions, you probably have no chance of changing these customer's minds about which product to use. You only hope would be if your product has some major benefit that your competition's product does not have. The more expensive the product, the less likely it is they will switch. And the more users they have for this product, the less likely it is they will switch.

The other major problem with "poaching" your competition's customers is discovering who is responisble for purchasing the software. We provide a list our major customers, which is of no use to our competition. Knowing that we sell our software to say, Xerox, is of no help to you in trying to locate who in Xerox is using our product and who is responsible for purchasing it.

So they've bought one product, installed it, learned it and are using it. Why would they throw away their investment and spend more time and money on you? You have an unknown product, you are new and they have no idea how long you will stay in business.

Instead spend the your time, effort and money on getting your own customers first, get feedback and ideas from them. And don't alert your competitors immediately. Wait until version 2.

Note: when you state your competitors make it easy to find their customers, is that just a list on their website? do you actually know the names of the decision makers? Just calling a company won't get a sale. The decision makers are behind many walls.