Everyone we sell to already uses the big incumbent. How do I position against them without trashing them?
The short answer
Never attack the vendor, attack a specific frustration their own customers already voice, in their words, lifted from review sites and your win and loss calls. Trashing the incumbent insults the person on the call who chose it, and that person is usually your champion. Then go straight at the real objection, which is almost never that your product is worse, it is that switching feels expensive and risky: show the migration steps, offer a parallel run, produce someone who has already done it. Pick one narrow wedge where you are obviously better instead of a feature grid where breadth will beat you.
Go deeper, your way
5 hand-picked resources, 1 India-specific, 5 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.
🎧 Podcast
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Why we picked it
Chapter three of this episode is literally how to position yourself against a giant, and Dunford's answer is the one this page argues for: go at the competing alternative and the frustration, not the vendor. Hosted by Prime VP, so the examples land for founders selling from India.
Why we picked it
Gives you the four-part structure for positioning against an alternative (what they use now, what is wrong with it, your different approach, why that is better) and the rule to pick an enemy your buyer already resents.
Why we picked it
The operational half of taking on an incumbent: timing outreach to renewal windows, mining review sites for the buyer's own words, and treating switching cost as the objection you must answer with migration proof rather than more features.
Why we picked it
A founder writing up her own repositioning in detail, including naming Intercom and Customer.io directly and landing on a smaller pond. Honest about how many attempts it took, which most positioning writing hides.
Why we picked it
Deals with the four things that actually stall positioning work in a grown-up company: nobody agrees on who the competition is, teams talk their own product down, differentiation is fuzzy, and nobody knows whether you are positioning a product or a portfolio. Part of it sits behind a paywall.
