Focus on one thing that truly is 10x better — and that matters. That can influence the buying decision.
Competition is stressful, but not all bad. Competition helps define a market. And importantly — many buyers will want to look for a second potential vendor — and that can be a great source of leads for you. That’s your shot in many cases.
Especially when you are the #2 choice, find something, one clear important thing, you can win fast on:
- Cheaper works, to a point.
- 10x faster.
- 100x easier.
- Localized (if competitor isn’t).
- Better mobile apps.
- A key integration (e.g., Salesforce or Talkdesk or Slack or anything) your competitor doesn’t have.
- More “enterprise grade”. Better SLAs, etc. Going more upmarket of a competitor can work well — if you can deliver what it really takes here.
- Etc.
Put differently, you have to be 10x better at something to break out.
If you are creating a market, that’s often 10x better than paper, or Excel, or a legacy system.
If you are competing in an established market, that’s one core, critical feature that is 10x better than the competition.
Here is one great example Algolia search-as-a-service employed way back in 2013, when they were just started. A use case when they were 10x better — and an honest assessment of when they weren’t:
Full Text Search in your Database: Algolia vs Elasticsearch
Fast forward to 2017, they’ve just raised $53,000,000.
