Most competitor advice tells you to build a comparison chart and point out where the other vendor falls short. I’ve stopped doing that, because prospects rarely feel the pain of a rival product.
They feel the pain of their own workaround. It’s the spreadsheet only one analyst understands, the email chain where three people reconcile the same numbers, or the monthly export someone has to fix by hand before anyone trusts it. These processes cost time and money, and the people running them usually know roughly how much. A competitor’s feature list doesn’t keep them up at night. Their manual process does.
So I changed the question. Instead of asking how a rival compares, I ask the prospect to walk me through how they handle the problem today.
I reviewed a recent cold call with a CFO. The CFO said no, and the usual move would have been to push back. Instead, I pivoted to a curious question about their “secret sauce,” meaning how they actually track the problem today. That does two things. It disarms a decision-maker who expects a pitch, and it forces them to describe a process out loud. Once someone describes a process, they start hearing its weak points themselves.
Once they’ve described it, reflect it back in their words: “So the data gets exported, someone reconciles it against the invoices, and that happens once a month?” Then stop talking. Most people will fill the silence with the cost: the errors, the delays, the question nobody can answer until the end of the quarter.
Only then do I bring up a structured approach. I don’t say the competitor is bad. I say something like, “Here’s what it looks like when the data is structured from the start.” The contrast does the work. The prospect compares two processes, not two brands.
A few practical points from the calls I’ve reviewed:
Use connectors to build rapport before the pitch. A line like “I know I’ve caught you at a bad time” acknowledges the interruption and makes the call feel human rather than scripted.
Plan three or four steps ahead. Before I dial, I map the likely answers: “We already have a tool,” “Send me something,” “We handle it in-house.” For each one, I know the workaround question that follows. Reactive, one-step rebuttals end calls. Planning ahead lets you steer the conversation toward the outcome you want.
Don’t beg for the meeting. “Would you possibly have fifteen minutes?” signals low status and invites a no. Instead, give the prospect a clear, honest choice. The “super negative” close does this well: “It may be that this isn’t a priority for you this year, and that’s completely fine. Is that the case?” People who feel safe saying no often reveal the real situation, and that’s the information you need.
The lesson is simple. A prospect who has to explain their spreadsheet, email chain, or manual handoff has already made the case against the status quo. Your job is to make that description easy to give and to show them what the alternative looks like. You never need to mention the competitor at all.