I am sure many companies come to mind. However, in reality, your biggest competitor is not some other company but rather the status quo. If you are like most people, you see sales as a linear process: at some point, it has an ending. Your prospects will either choose your or one of your competitors. The truth is that more often than not, your prospects choose to maintain status quo and make no decision.

When people are faced with a choice between two things that appear very similar they will in fact put off making a decision until it is clear to them which one is better, - a process often referred to as "paralysis by analysis". If they cannot determine which one is best and if they can put off the decision without experiencing a lot of personal or professional pain, they will put it off every time, sometimes indefinitely. It's a natural human reaction, one that's backed up by a significant amount of scientific research.

One Big Pissing Match

Bombarding your prospects with messages about how wonderful you are or "me-too" products or services not only confuses them, but also can leave them paralyzed with indecision. Unsure about where they should invest their time, money and energy, your prospects make the safest choice - no decision. It's a pitch battle of You vs. Them. One moment you're up, the next moment, you're down. Throughout the process, there's a "spec war" going on. You gain the upper hand with one feature, but the competition matches your feature - and fires back with another.

You're trying to outmaneuver your competition with incremental features, but in reality, you and your competition are having the exact same conversations with your prospects. It's no wonder then that up to 60% of prospects choose to stay with the status quo. Your battle for differentiation should be more about moving your prospects off status quo as it is about beating your traditional rivals. What do you think is easier: stealing the 20-30% that your competitors are getting or the 40% that have not made a decision at all?

In reality, there's potentially more opportunity in moving prospects out of an undecided mindset than you've been able to get in the past 10 years going head-to-head with your competitors. That's why for most companies, the biggest competitor is actually the status quo.

You Need a Distinct Point of View

Instead of having conversation that uses a competitive matrix to compare you with your competitors, you need to have a conversation that provides your prospect with fresh insight into the problems you can solve for them and how you can do business together. Your prospects do not want to play 20 questions; instead, you need tell them something they did not already know about a problem that has a significant effect on their career or company's future. You need to earn the right to ask questions by sharing insights. Therefore, you'd better be prepared with insights, big ideas, or a unique perspective - whatever you want to call it you had better get one.

To win more business you need to have a well-choreographed conversation, both online and off, that leverages your distinct point of view, designed to grab your prospects' attention, challenge their current assumptions, and convince them to make a change. It's a deliberate approach to changing the conversation with your prospects in a way that puts you in the position of sharing useful insights. It helps your prospects to see around the corner at what challenges come their way and provides them with a way out.

Prospects making no decision can be fatal for your pipeline and your revenue. You need to offer a distinct point of view to get your prospects to care enough to do something different, and start leading them on the path of choosing you. This will help you rise above the competitive pissing match and change the game on your competitors, who are still fighting the bloody features-and-functions war.