TABLE OF CONTENTS The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.
Arie de Geus
Be able to identify, neutralize, and ultimately defeat your competition.
Develop a competitive strategy from a technology viewpoint.
Understand how your competition sells.
Almost every sales opportunity involves isome element of competition. Frequently, you are fighting your biggest competitor for the right to convert a prospect to a paying customer. Throughout this book we have been preaching the merits of selling a solution and proposing the value of that solution to executives as high up the corporate ladder as you can reach. However, on many occasions the competitive environment will resemble hand-to-hand combat, despite the merits of solution selling. We all like to think that the team that presents the best return on investment (ROI) will win, but that is not always the case and that is precisely the environment this chapter discusses.
Although a significant proportion of the sales cycle is spent developing and proposing your own solution, it is important to understand against whom you are competing. Typically, you may compete against anywhere from one to three main competitors again and again, and also against dozens of point solution competitors that you will encounter only once or twice a year. Just as no professional sports team would ever play a match without scouting the competition, any competent sales organization must do the same. Try one or more of the following approaches to help identify whom you...
