Nice article by Lee Bartlett, I recall working on a deal back in the days when our biggest competitor at Oracle was Ingres based systems. I was selling Oracle Financials against Radius which was an accounting system based on Ingres.
I recall doing something and the competition reacting. In this case we actually found we had a mole in pre-sales at Oracle which was telling the competition our sales plans. But we ended up telling the person the wrong information deliberately, so they would pass on fake data and we won that bid.
Graham Hawkins talks in his first book about how buyers he interviewed would guess which sales methodology was being used by the salespeople as a laugh, when they had back-to-back sales presentations.
Ever since then, I've always tried to find out which sales process people used so that you can use that against them. Or understand a company's vulnerabilities so you can "press the buttons" and the opposing sales people spend their time running around wasting time. I once set up a bid process that only I could win, but I needed other companies to bid. I recall hearing about 4 organisations that spent the weekend replying to that bid that they couldn't and didn't win.
More detail in Lee's article.
Consider sports legends and their greatest battles. Muhammad Ali vs. George Forman, Roger Federer vs. Rafael Nadal, or Conor McGregor vs. Jose Aldo. These people didn't fight fire with fire. In "The Rumble in the Jungle", Ali didn't meet Foreman with brute-force. Instead, he waited until Foreman tired, and then beat him with superior movement. Federer never tried to overpower Nadal, he used his fluidity to gain the advantage. McGregor knew Aldo tends to overextend when fighting bigger opponents and practiced the straight left punch in anticipation.
http://leebartlettbestseller.com/blog/258-three-problems-with-a-predictable-sales-process
unknownx500
