Uncovering the Competition

Even a good Champion will often not tell you things that you don’t explicitly ask about. Maybe they won’t consider it relevant, maybe they are confident that it won’t get in the way, maybe it just doesn’t occur to them.

A key area we can get this wrong is around the Competition. Quite often, we will understand quite early that the competition is another vendor, or do it yourself, or take no action. But then we don’t do enough to evolve our understanding as the deal progresses. This can be a critical mistake – our Competition, even if it is internal projects or do nothing, can be actively working against us and we need to keep up with it.

We previously discussed that XXX is the main alternative to going ahead with our project. How is the team currently evaluating this alternative?

Yes, very straightforward. Don’t pussyfoot around the edges. If they don’t tell you anything, then you don’t have a strong Champion. We are not asking here for strengths or weaknesses, we are simply asking for the evaluation process.

How are they evaluating build-your-own? Are they taking account of the opportunity cost of their engineers not working on product features and time to value, on top of direct engineering cost?

If they are evaluating against competition, are they measuring against clearly defined Decision Criteria? How are they making concrete judgements against these criteria?

Who is most enthusiastic about the alternative?

The Competition generally has a Champion – even if that’s just a senior person who doesn’t want to spend money, therefore they are arguing for the status quo, or an individual contributor who feels their job might be at risk. Knowing the Competition’s Champion, and understanding what they care about, will enable you to address their concerns better, and similarly empower your Champion.

What is the Economic Buyer / your VP / the Dir of XYZ leaning towards?

This ties back into the question from a previous post regarding understanding what others in the organisation care about. The question here also avoids happy ears – enthusiastic Champions can often blind us to the fact that there may well be detractors, including senior ones, who we are not talking to. Find out from your Champion what the relevant stakeholders are saying, and why.