The differences between positioning and competitive positioning, and how each can be used to differentiate your company to ultimately win a sale.

What is competitive positioning? To understand the overall idea and benefits of competitive positioning, we first looked at positioning.

There are several ways to design a battle card. Each design takes the company’s positioning or messaging into account as a component of the sales strategy. An important aspect is choosing the component of your business that you want to own in the customer’s mind. What makes your company unique? How is it different from your competitors? Some companies find success in providing a niche service or product. Not all companies might do this, but creating the idea that your company does something that others cannot is an important position and message to establish and send to potential customers.

If we have effective positioning and messaging, do we need something else? Yes! According to a 2012 Harvard Business School article, recent shift in customer expectations has brought about the end of solution sales. In the past, companies used to educate consumers on how we solve their problems. Now, with the ever increasing amount of YouTube how-to videos and articles about almost every problem imaginable, customers are much more likely to already know how to solve their problems. This means that modern companies need to show and convince customers that they should choose YOU to solve their problems. Companies need to go further to differentiate themselves. Competitive positioning can help with this by elucidating specific points and fact-based talking points that not only answer customer questions, but also provide a rebuttal competitor’s points.

These are just a few of the techniques that can help your sales team win more deals. CompeteIQ software helps automate competitive positioning by scaling the information down to the most important information.