Content marketing · Pricing strategy
Doing comparisons is hard to do well. Ideally you want to use an independent third party as the source, one that would be hard for the competitor to disparage (a large customer for instance). Second if they are larger than you, listing them makes it look like you are in their league. But the same is true of weaker competitors so you list a bigger one you don’t list a weaker one and instead supply sales with whatever information showcases that you are better. If you are dominant you don’t even acknowledge you have competitors and simply compare your new products to your old ones favorably here too sales is given tools that showcase why the smaller firm can’t be trusted to execute. There is some danger in this last because your executives may begin to believe this to be true and eventually become blindsided by a firm that is good enough to get around your defenses. This suggests that regardless of the FUD you are generating you also make sure decision makers inside the company are aware of the real risk the smaller competitor represents. Not doing this was largely why IBM went from owning over 90% of the enterprise storage business to being almost completely forced out of it.