I’ve been helping clients do repositioning for almost two decades now. The lack of differentiator is the number one reason you can’t unseat whoever’s already doing similar things in an organization you’re trying to get into. 86% of buyers can’t tell the difference between two suppliers – huge majority just can’t tell you apart. Why not try positioning on your competitors’ weaknesses to differentiate?

For example, Netflix looked at everything Blockbuster customers hated: late fees (I paid so many), lost fees, the nightmare trip to the store before Monday morning, out of stock movies. They took all those weaknesses and positioned on solving every one. The Result? Blockbuster’s out of business, Netflix is the number one media entertainment company in the world.

In another example, a restaurant owner sent his staff to a higher-ranked competitor to find what they weren’t doing well – he found out that their competitor’s coffee game was weak, and beer drinkers got dismissed in the wine-obsessed environment. They hired a beer sommelier and coffee sommelier. The result? Rankings went from number 50 to number one.

Steps to Find Your Competitor’s Gap

So how can you pull off this positioning for yourself? First, do informational interviews with key decision makers – the check signers who’ll hire you. Find out frustrations, friction points, wish lists, things they’ve always accepted but were never been happy about.

Second, analyze why this persists in the market. Is it because it’s always been done that way? Is it too expensive to change? Or it’s not important to customers? These are cues, not facts, and they’ll lead you to figure out if you can change it and own it.

Third, look at your competitor’s negative reviews. Don’t look at one-star ragers who’ll always be angry – look at two, three-star ratings where you could fix easily what competitors are falling down on. For example, while submitting RFPs, I coach my clients to arrange meetings with the prospect buyers while they’re in mid-contract with their current vendor to understand what they’re not happy with. We then bake that info into our renewal bid. The perfect demonstration of how this was done was with my client Kym Insana from Always on Digital. Once she got the pain point – ie, the previous supplier’s AI breakdown, and how nobody keeping eye on it caused disastrous digital campaign fails, she made that weakness a cornerstone of her pitch and won a multi-millon Dollar contract.

Concept Test Before You Launch Anything

To suss out your competitors weakness and adopt it as your positioning, the fourth step is to concept test that positioning.  Talk to as many future prospects as possible asking them: “if this service were available, would you buy it for this much?” This is called the Purchase Intent score. Most small businesses skip this test and go directly to launch of the positioning but beware that if there’s no real market purchase intent and you’re just assuming that people will pay for this positioning – it is not a safe strategic direction.

For example, I spoke last week in DC to Next Generation businesses and the biggest thing I noticed was the lack of concept testing. Even more experienced business owners could fall into using their assumptions to pick a positioning because they themselves used a service they weren’t satisfied with, and consequently then tried to invent a solution without actually testing it. Without proof of concept, it won’t work with any serious buyer or investor.

Own It Through Thought Leadership, Not How-To

The last step to picking your positioning based on your competitors’ weakness is the step of owning the positioning through your thought leadership. Pump out content and educate your prospects around why the problem persists and what cascading issues it causes. In your communications with your audience, make sure to give them the what, the why of the problem, and the results of working with you to solve those competitive gaps. Remember, especially in the world of AI, you need clear positioning because AI only recognizes clear thought leadership. Not SEO.

Unless you have very pointed, specific, focused thought leadership, you’re invisible. AI is now a major player in determining search and sourcing, helping buyers match needs with suppliers. So watch your competitors for what they’re not doing properly and own those weaknesses.

Want to reposition your messaging to grow your leads? Follow me on X, friend me on Facebook,watch my Podcast onYouTube or connect with me on LinkedIn –and let’s talk.