Should you take on your (bigger) competition more directly in 2010?

The answer is: it depends.

What does this decision depend on?

The nature of your product, the visibility of your competitors and their ability to retaliate and do material damage to your current business.

What are we talking about here?

If your company is in a highly competitive industry, there will be clear entrenched players and a large number of newer entrants seeking to take share away from the leaders.   Often newer players benefit from a better and more flexible business or technology platforms and boast superior features and higher value for clients.

The question becomes: do you attack your competitors head to head on your website?

The answer is the case of competitive industries is yes.    The easiest pickings for you to grow your customer base is to take them from your bigger competitors.   You’ll save huge amounts of sales cost because you don’t have to educate them on the benefits of your product category.   Your only hurdle is to demonstrate that your product has superior ability to address their core pain / need areas.

There are critical tactics that you have to incorporate into that competitive displacement strategy.   These include:

1) a clear head-to-head comparison from the perspective of the client’s need areas

2) an easy way for them to test (prove) that your product is superior (ie. easy transition and a well setup free trial).

When you have big competitors, every sale is a competitive one — so you have to meet the challenge head on with a precise, well executed competitive displacent strategy.