10 tips to make an effective competitive presentation

Last Updated on January 29, 2023 by Paresh Gupta

This post is NOT about delivering an effective presentation. Do a web-search on this topic and you will find a zillion words written on it. This post, however, is about delivering a competitive presentation, which is one of the toughest forms of presentation. Your goal is to convince non-customers to buy your product. But before that you must win their minds and hearts. You must make them believe your product is superior to the other product that they have been using. When you say your product is superior, it also means that other product is inferior. This thought may not be welcomed by your audience. After all, you are challenging the previous buying decision of your audience.

Photo by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash

Over the years I have delivered hundreds, if not thousands, of competitive presentations. Every such meeting made me learn something new. This post is about my lessons, rather rules, that I like to follow while delivering competitive presentations. If you are new at delivering a competitive presentation or even call yourself an expert, these rules will be of help.

The audience type of a competitive presentation

You have heard this a zillion times – Know your audience. In 2019, I wrote an article about the different types (and sub-types) of a competitive presentation. You can read it here.

Delivering a competitive presentation to your sales teams or partners differs from when your audience is the end-customer. The end-customer audience may be tough on you if they are not pleased with your product. But nothing like delivering a competitive presentation to a non-customer. It gets more challenging if they are not keen on making a change from their existing vendor, or they are planning to use another vendor, but not you. This will be my focus audience in this post today.

This post is not about the basics of making a presentation. For that, you can find many books and articles on the web. My focus today is on delivering a competitive presentation in a pre-sales environment with the goal of converting a non-customer into your customer.

#1	Highlight your advantages, not your competitors’ disadvantages

The focus of a competitive presentation should be on your product, not on your competition. Although, you may be an expert on the competitive product, prevent the urge of spending too much time on others, especially highlighting their issues. By doing so, not only do you avoid wasting your precious time, but you also avoid the risk of putting your audience in an awkward position. They, after all, are already using the competitive product, and highlighting the issues with their existing product is like an open challenge to their last buying decision. Don’t risk it. Rather, tell your audience how your product helps them in solving their problems. Stay focused on your success stories, your testimonials, and your roadmap while leaving only indirect references to your competition. When you talk about how outstanding you are, you spread positive vibes, earn more attention, and look more professional.

#2	Be honest when making any claims about your competitors

Don’t make any claims about your competitors that you can’t prove. Even if you know a major shortcoming of your competitor, avoid saying it if you can’t prove it. Find other subtle ways of conveying what you can’t prove (Read rule #3).

Most of us grew up seeing politicians talking about their opponents. Politicians may get away after making unsubstantiated claims, but a professional environment is different. If you can’t prove your claims, you are risking losing your credibility, and if you lose your credibility once, even your factual statements will not be taken seriously.

I remember presenting to an internet service provider customer highlighting the merits of my product along with a side-by-side comparison with the competitors. In between, I said something with which the customer disagreed. As an action from the meeting, they asked me to provide details about my claim. This situation was under control because I could find my claim written in the competitor’s public documents. It would have been different had I couldn’t find a proof of my claim.

Overall, stay honest and be ready to prove all your claims.

#3	Spread FUD. But don’t say it.

Fear, Uncertainly, and Doubt, better known as FUD, is a common industry practice. We all know the effect of fear on human minds. Doesn’t matter how much you like a product, but if the vendor is going out of the business, you may have a second thought on the purchase. The worst part, the rumor of the vendor going out of the business may be totally false. But still, a lot of people may make buying decisions because they want to play safe.

You want your audience to think about all the rumors about your competitor. Maybe your competitor is being acquired or planning a disinvestment or similar rumors from the street. But don’t put your personal reputation on such rumors. Refer to #2 above if in doubt. You should stay honest but find an indirect way to spread the FUD.

Here are a few strategies to convey such points:

1. Make use of coffee breaks, lunch breaks, or conversation during social hours.
2. Pre-prepare a good-guy-bad-guy strategy. Let one of your guys from sales interrupt and say such things. You stay neutral.
3. Refer to news articles, blogs, community forums, etc. There is no shortage of critics in the age of social media. Can you use such public information to your advantage?
4. Fake a story about another customer. This may be playing on the edge so decide if you want to use this approach. When I use this strategy, I say something like – ‘I was talking to a customer who told me blah, blah, blah. It was hard for me to believe him/her.’ Move on quickly.  

Seed a thought and let it grow in the minds of the audience. Still not sure of this approach? You should watch Inception movie again.

Open-ended conversations trigger the audience to do their own research. That’s what you really want, isn’t it?

#4	Stay relevant – Solve the customer’s problem.

Most people start a competitive presentation by highlighting the top-5 advantages of their products. If you think this is the right approach, you will be irrelevant soon because you are not even sure that your top-5 points are relevant for your audience. Do your research and find out what matters to the people in the room. When you don’t get enough information before the presentation, start with an informal chat. Ask your audience about their existing problems. Your chances of success will be higher if you can solve those problems. Always remember, it’s not about how perfect your product is. It’s all about what problems can you solve for the customer.

You must keep your top-5 advantages relevant to your audience.

You audience is finance team – Highlight business benefits and cost savings
Your audience is operational team – Highlight operational simplicity
You audience is CIO – Highlight how your products break organizational silos, help in end-to-end integration, cloud strategy, etc.

Imagine you prepared to show a demo of your product to highlight the ease of use. But if the CIO joined the meeting, be ready to change the plan. Fewer CIOs care about such low-level details.

I remember meeting a utility customer when I highlighted the automation capabilities of my product. The audience was the operations-manager and automation was not his aim for the next year. He made it clear and I reacted by not spending anymore time on automation. Different from this, other customers wanted to talk about automation capabilities all day.

The classic car-sale examples

You:

1. My car goes up to 200 mph.
2. Takes just 3 seconds to go from 0 to 60 mph,
3. Has best-in-class safety features
4. Takes less gallons per mile
5. Has a lower price.

This is your usual pitch. You walk in the room, load up your slides and talk for 20 mins thinking you made an impact. Here is the twist.

In your audience’s mind:

1. I never exceed 70 mph – Makes your 1st and 2nd point irrelevant.
2. Never met an accident in the last 20 years – Makes your 3rd point irrelevant.
3. Never push hard on gas – Makes your 4th point irrelevant.
4. I got deep pockets to buy gas and the hefty price tag of the car – Makes your 5th point irrelevant.

Your top-5 points were irrelevant for your audience because you did not do your research. Just to finish the example, the audience may have a personal preference for a red-colored car.

Here comes your 6th point:

6. The car is offered in 10 colors including red.

Audience: I like that. Can I have a test drive?

Your success rate will be higher when you collect detailed background information and personalize your presentation for your audience. Instead of top-5 advantages of your product, talk about how your product can solve your customer’s problems with those advantages. Do your research. Skip the usual pitch. Start a conversation. Ask questions. Know the problems. Solve them.

#5	More facts, less opinion.

Tell a fact to 10 people and you will hear 10 different opinions. Because of this reason, you should highlight facts and let your audience find their own conclusions. You should try presenting the facts in a way so that your audience thinks the way you want them to think. For you to be successful, the audience must have their own opinion. You want them to believe in your thought, not just agree with you. If you try to force your opinion, they may agree with you. But if you can make your audience believe in you, you are creating advocates for your product.

An open-ended conversation triggers brain cells, and it is your win if your audience spend time thinking about your facts to draw their own conclusions. It’s fine to share your opinions but don’t be strongly opinionated, and leave room for your audience to make their own opinions. You can do this by being more factual and less opinionated.

#6	Listen, Listen, Listen.

You are under pressure while delivering the presentation. Use this pressure to keep your ears in listening mode. The source of your content is your (or one of your teammates’) analysis. Things may change and you may not be aware of it. Even if your content is up to date, your audience is an existing customer of your competitor. They may receive roadmap updates from your competitor. Such information is generally shared under an NDA. Because of legal reasons, people do not disclose such information directly. But if you get a question which sounds out-of-the-topic, there is often more substance behind it. Do not hesitate to get more clarification on a question.

Listen to all the cross-communication in the meeting room. If two attendees are whispering among themselves, there is nothing wrong with asking them. Look for hints on what points you need to hit hard.

Listen to the feedback and tell your audience that you would come back after doing more research. Nobody knows everything. You will receive a better response when you listen a contradiction and follow-up with more data points. 

#7	Be creative to defend against Competitors’ advantages or your shortcomings

There must be some points where your competitors outshine you. You should silently skip such areas while presenting. This is the right thing to do. However, if someone in the audience raises it, be ready with creative a defense. Don’t just deny it. If you deny reality, you won’t be honest anymore. While you are presenting, the audience may verify your claims on the web using their mobile devices or laptops.

I have been to enough such meetings where the audience was pre-prepared by my competitor to ask specific questions. Expect such questions and be ready with reasonable answers. Don’t live in denial.  

So, what can do you? Here are a few tips:

1. Explain why your product has that shortcoming. Is it because of a trade-off? Do you do something else better which results in this issue? For example, your car consumes more gas than your competitor. Is it because you use specific parts to lower down the total cost of ownership? Show a big picture.
2.  Another strategy can be to share road-map if you are planning to address the short-coming in the near future. 

Just accepting and not letting this topic continue is fine. Your allocated time for the presentation is limited. Do not waste it talking about your shortcomings or presenting a defense. You don’t have to explain or defend it. Just agree with it and use the rest of the time to focus on other topics. May be others in the meeting are not paying attention to this question. But you may get their attention by continuing the to-and-fro on this topic. Overall, you end up hurting yourself more than trying to clear up the thoughts. 

#8	Respect your competitor(s)

I can’t stress this enough – Respect your competitors. Disrespecting or ridiculing their competitors is the most common mistake that people do while making a competitive presentation. Disagree, but don’t disrespect. And absolutely no ridiculing your competitors. Period.

In an ancient civilization, army generals used to send a token of respect to their enemies before the start of the war. This may be counter-intuitive in the modern world but their reasons for doing this have a lot to learn from. First, the other army may have some great warriors. Second, the sheer reason that the other army had the capability to stand and fight deserved respect. Now, bring the analogy to the modern corporate world.

Your competitor has probably employed some of the key industry-respected people. Also, your competitor product is used by your audience. After all, this is the whole reasons you are presenting to the audience trying to convince them. This means that your competitor is doing a good job, at least in the eyes of the audience. Because of these reasons, never disrespect your competitor. Give them credit for their good work. Remember, it’s a small world and people move around. You may never know if someone in the audience is an ex-employee of your competitor. Your lack of respect for your competitor may turn them off.

Anecdotes

1. A colleague of mine was delivering a competitive presentation to the internal sales team. In between, he made fun of the competitor in a disrespectful way. While he moved on with the presentation, I could feel an uncomfortable atmosphere towards the back of the room. Only during the lunch hour I learned that many folks in the room had worked for the competitor, and are still friends with their ex-colleagues. Overall, the disrespectful tone of the presenter did not go well with the audience.
2. I was presenting to a partner about the merits of my product. In response to a question about a competing product, I had to explain the limitations of the competitive product. While do so, I had a respectful tone, and I finished my response saying – They have some very smart people but not sure what went wrong with this product. Looks like some poor decisions resulted in the limitations. Right after that, I learned that the ex-product manager of the competitive product, the man who built the competing product, was in the audience. He changed the jobs from the competitor to this partner a few months ago. He agreed with my thought that there were some poor decisions resulting in the product limitation. My respectful tone, sticking to the facts, and empathy towards the people went a long way in conveying my thought and earning more credibility.

#9	Don’t hurt emotions and ego

During your competitive presentation it’s common for you  to say something with which some of your audience may disagree. You try to convince them again, but you get a push back. This is when you consider letting it go. Doesn’t matter how correct you are, don’t cross the line where someone’s emotions or ego get hurt.

I have been in front of the customers who love the competing product. They say that the competing product is simple. As you can guess, simplicity is a subjective idea. What is simple to me may be complex for you. Similarly, nothing will be simpler for them than a product they have been using from the last 10 years.

In other meetings, some folks in the customer’s organizations would try to be the smartest person in front of their management. Help such folks in achieving their goal. If you highlight an issue with your competing product which your customer bought, accepting this issue may looks like as if the customer did not do their research. Let it go off if the conversation goes in a ego-hurting direction.

Remember that people buy from people, and people sell to people. No deal can work if egos are hurt. Even if it means letting the deal go away, so be it. The customer may not buy from you, but have you earned their trust so that that they call you next time when they need a second opinion? Do they feel comfortable with you? Do the audience see you as a neutral advisor, or do they see you as a pushy sales rep?

#10	Failures are pillars of success.

Accept that you will not win all the deals. That’s reality. You may fire all your weapons, but still you can’t win over the competition. Maybe your audience still sees value in the competitor, although you believe that your offering is superior. Remember, while you are trying to convince your audience about your product, your competitors are not sitting idle. They are also trying hard to show the value of their product.

If you get the vibes during your competitive presentation that your audience will not buy your product, don’t lose your ground. I have seen presenters getting desperate, aggressive, or even disrespectful under the pressure of defeat. None of this will help. If you are not earning their business, the next best thing you can earn is their respect and friendship. Accept the failure and embrace it. Learn from the failure by revisiting your strategy. Analyze what could have been done differently. Adapt fast to accommodate the learnings. Don’t let this failure be part of the dust. Turn it into a pillar of success.

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I wrote the first draft of this post in early 2018, and finally, published it in 2021.