Grow Revenue Faster with Messaging Chapter 6 Alignment, Playbooks, and Onboarding if I told you there’s a proven way to improve competitive win rates by 20%–30% in less than 30 days? Consistently competing to win is hard work. The secret is to focus on rep competence and confidence. Focus on how reps knock down formidable foes by repositioning perceived strengths to conflict with a buyer’s needs and wants. Regardless of size, it’s time to stop being defensive against the “fear, uncertainty, and doubt” (FUD) competitors are saying about you, and assert the leadership position in conversations. When I was at Salesforce, we crushed Microsoft and Oracle in every deal because we were scrappy, creative, and armed. My friends Dave Kellogg, Gary Hanna, and Sheevaun Thatcher at Host Analytics created a winning competitive strategy that resulted in dramatic results in win rates. The transformation happened in days. Here’s how they did it: Step 1: Know Thy Competition (and Don’t Bash) Start by focusing on top competitive strengths. Embrace them, don’t pretend they don’t exist. Focus on your buyer needs and why this strength isn’t important to them. Capture the questions reps can ask to plant traps, forever locking out your competition. Build a culture of overcoming objections and planting traps, versus aimlessly bashing the competition. Step 2: Record Bite-Size Coaching Videos Record short 2–3 minute video shorts for each competitive strength explaining what your competitors are saying and how you’d handle the objection. When recording the coaching videos, it’s important to get very granular. Map strengths to objection handling and map weaknesses to traps and questions your sales team can strategically pose during discovery. Step 3: Share Coaching Videos Turn the videos into role-playing exercises with real deal scenarios. Make sure everyone watches the videos and shares what’s working and what’s not working against each competitor. Have teams practice blending discovery questions with competitive trap questions. Bringing all your teams together will improve the confidence of the reps, which leads to immediate results.