--- title: Why you may need to redefine your competition description: If you're in B2B sales and marketing, you need to be clear about who you are really competing against. The answer isn't always obvious... --- This is a search field with an autosuggest feature attached. - There are no suggestions because the search field is empty. # Why you may need to redefine your competition ![Bob Apollo](https://app.hubspot.com/settings/avatar/78fa41976d534cacbb0e22e151bc6816) Post by [Bob Apollo](https://www.inflexion-point.com/blog/author/bob-apollo) February 14, 2012 Who (or what) does your company really compete against? For the majority of B2B product or service offerings, the answer is unlikely to be restricted to a list of conventional “competitors” that look broadly similar to your own organisation. In fact, the key to achieving your full potential probably lies in redefining your sense of who or what your opposition looks like when it comes to your prospect’s time and attention. ![Competition](https://www.inflexion-point.com/Portals/41408/images/Question.jpg)But before you can consider your competitive landscape, you need to be clear about what markets you are going to address, [what your most valuable prospects look like](https://www.inflexion-point.com/attractive-b2b-marketing/identifying-your-ideal-customers/), and [what problems you solve for them](https://www.inflexion-point.com/attractive-b2b-marketing/issues-trends--trigger-events/). In fact, for high-value, considered B2B purchase environments, being clear about the “problem you solve” is critical to defining your competitive landscape. Here’s why: your effective competition includes all of the other options open to a prospect that recognises the problem and has decided to do something about it. These options might include other vendors that look somewhat like you or seem to fall into the same category, but they also include in-house/DIY solutions, completely different ways of addressing the issue, and deciding to do nothing. ## Competing against “do nothing” Having a prospect decide to “do nothing” after a long and resource-intensive sales campaign is particularly frustrating - but it happens all too frequently. The problem simply doesn’t appear painful enough for the prospect to risk disturbing the status quo. The remedy is simple: you need to “sell the problem” before you invest a great deal of time and resource in “selling your solution”. If you can’t get the prospect to associate some significant cost or pain with simply carrying on as they are today, that exactly what they will do. And you will have lost to that most fearsome of competitors, the inclination to preserve the status quo. ## Competing against radically different options Sometimes you won’t even recognise that your prospect might be considering a different approach to solving the problem - and if you don’t ask, you’ll probably never know, until it’s too late. So make sure that your sales people are asking their prospects how they might have tried to solve the problem before, and what other approaches to solving the problem they are considering right now - no matter how radical. ## Competing against DIY Your prospect may be thinking that they could solve the problem through their own in-house efforts - and their IT department might be encouraging them to believe it. This can be a tricky one to compete against. If they have already tried to solve the problem in-house and have failed, you can promote your expertise and track record. But if you detect that they are considering in-house solutions as a first-time fix, you might need to encourage your prospect to think about their past experiences. How many times has an in-house approach really delivered the result they were looking for on time? And how much control do they really have over in-house resources? ## Competing against conventional competitors Last of all, the obvious competition - other organisations that look like yours (and that appear to play in the same categories). Here, you need to implement a “same but different” strategy - and here’s why: if the prospect believes that they need a category of thing (be it product or service) to solve their problem, you want to get found in that category when they start searching for a solution. But unless you want to get boxed into selling on price, then you need to strongly differentiate your company from these other players - and the best way of doing that it is explain why your organisation takes a different (and provably superior) approach to solving the problem. Most important, you need to show how and why you are different before you claim to be better - the sequence is critical. ## Who (or what) are you really competing against? So - who or what is your organisation really competing against? How good a job are your sales people doing in identifying the options that their prospects are considering? And how clearly are they able to distinctively differentiate your offering against all the choices that the customer could make? ###### Tags: [B2B Marketing, ](https://www.inflexion-point.com/blog/topic/b2b-marketing) [Complex Sales](https://www.inflexion-point.com/blog/topic/complex-sales) ![Bob Apollo](https://app.hubspot.com/settings/avatar/78fa41976d534cacbb0e22e151bc6816) Post by [Bob Apollo](https://www.inflexion-point.com/blog/author/bob-apollo) February 14, 2012 Bob Apollo is a Fellow of the Institute of Sales Professionals, a regular contributor to the International Journal of Sales Transformation and Top Sales World Magazine, and the driving force behind Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners, the leading proponents of outcome-centric selling. Following a successful corporate career spanning start-ups, scale-ups and market leaders, Bob now works as a strategic advisor, mentor, trainer and coach to ambitious B2B sales organisations - teaching them how to differentiate themselves through their provably superior approach to achieving their customer's desired outcomes. [Follow me on my website](https://www.inflexion-point.com) [Follow me on LinkedIn ](https://uk.linkedin.com/in/bobapollo) [Follow me on Twitter ](https://twitter.com/bobapollo) ### Comments ###### Related Articles ### [Why your salespeople's inability to communicate value is killing sales](https://www.inflexion-point.com/Blog/bid/97863/Why-your-salespeople-s-inability-to-communicate-value-is-killing-sales) Posted by **[Bob Apollo](https://www.inflexion-point.com/blog/author/bob-apollo),** **Jun 06, 2013** Sirius Decisions are just the latest in a long line of analysts to declare that the #1 factor preventing companies from ... ### [B2B sales: it’s your prospect’s proposal that matters, not yours!](https://www.inflexion-point.com/Blog/bid/94990/B2B-sales-it-s-your-prospect-s-proposal-that-matters-not-yours) Posted by **[Bob Apollo](https://www.inflexion-point.com/blog/author/bob-apollo),** **Mar 12, 2013** In most complex B2B sales environments, a proposal plays a significant part in the decision making process. 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