A short transcript of a business conversation about competitive positioning and common mistakes in sales messaging. Speakers argue that deeply understanding competitors enables exploiting their weaknesses, whereas many companies default to talking about themselves and brand identity rather than articulating product value and differentiation.
I think you mentioned it just sounds like you really knew your competition. And because you know your competition, now you know how to exploit their weaknesses. A lot of people feel like they really know themselves, but they don't know the competition. So then about all they can do is just make a good pitch and hope that it works out. So I think that is, like, probably number one.
Okay, I love that. Why do you think we naturally just talk about ourselves instead of the product that we're actually selling?
We naturally talk about ourselves, and when we naturally do it, because we naturally do it. I mean, we're. We've all been trained to do that, you know, in school, we've been trained to do that. Life, we've been trained to do that. And seldom do we really get challenged in a hardcore way about defending how we're better, you know, because so many. It's like, I had this one client that is a big insurance company, and they. And their logo is blue, and they. And part of their identity was. Were really nice. And so then I kind of started making fun of, like, they drink that blue Kool Aid, and if you started to challenge things, you almost get thrown out of their culture.