How to Compete in B2B Sales Without Trashing Your Rivals

A founder’s guide to positioning against competitors in a way that actually earns trust (and closes deals)

If you’ve ever sat in on a sales call where a rep starts tearing into a competitor, you’ve probably felt that second-hand cringe.

As technical founders and GTM-minded devs, we know the product details, the architecture, the roadmap. So when a prospect says, “We’re also looking at [Big Incumbent Vendor],” it’s tempting to fire up a slide titled “Why They Suck.”

That move almost always backfires.

Buyers don’t want your rant. They want help making a smart decision with limited time, incomplete information, and a lot of internal risk. Your job isn’t to “destroy” the competition, it’s to help the buyer understand trade-offs clearly enough that choosing you feels like the safe, rational move.

This is where competitive positioning actually lives: not in snarky one-liners, but in how you frame choices.

---

The real problem: buyers are comparing, with or without you

Whether you talk about competitors or not, your buyers are already:

• Comparing feature pages
• Asking peers in Slack communities
• Pinging ex-colleagues for “real talk” about tools
• Getting internal pressure to “just go with the big name”

If you stay vague and “above the fray,” you don’t look classy — you look evasive.

On the flip side, if you go full attack mode, you look biased and untrustworthy.

The sweet spot: structured, respectful comparison that’s anchored in the buyer’s world, not your ego.

---

A simple framework for competitive positioning (that doesn’t feel gross)

Instead of thinking “How do I beat Competitor X?”, reframe the question:

“What trade-offs is this buyer actually making between us and Competitor X?”

That shift changes everything. You move from “attack” to “diagnose.”

Here’s a lightweight structure you can use (and train your team on):

1. Incumbent Strength
   
   What is the competitor legitimately good at? Why do rational buyers pick them?

2. Buyer Trade-off
   
   What does the buyer give up or accept when they choose that strength?

3. Your Differentiator
   
   Where are you intentionally different — in a way that matters for this buyer?

4. Proof
   
   Concrete evidence that your differentiator is real, not just slideware.

5. Impact
   
   What that difference means in business terms the buyer actually cares about.

This keeps you honest, specific, and buyer-focused.

---

Example: Competing against the “do-everything” enterprise platform

Imagine you’re building a focused workflow tool and you’re up against a massive enterprise suite. You know the type: 200+ features, 15 modules, 8 different login flows, 3 different pricing teams.

Here’s how you might structure the comparison:

Notice what’s not happening here:

• No “their UX is trash”
• No “they’re dinosaurs”
• No “we’re just better”

You’re acknowledging why they win, then calmly walking through what that choice costs the buyer, and where your product flips the equation.

---

Why this works (especially with technical buyers)

Technical buyers are allergic to hand-wavy claims. They’re pattern-matching for:

• Honesty: Do you admit where others are strong?
• Rigor: Are you talking in specifics or vibes?
• Signal vs. noise: Are you helping them think, or just pitching?

This framework hits all three:

• You credit the competitor where they’re strong → builds trust.
• You quantify your difference (time to go-live, adoption, etc.) → feels real.
• You tie everything back to impact → helps them justify the choice internally.

---

Turning this into something your team can actually use

If you’re a founder/CTO, you probably already think this way in your head. The gap is usually that reps don’t have your mental model — so they improvise.

That’s how you end up with:

• “Yeah, they’re known to be buggy.”
• “We’re basically them but modern.”
• “Our AI is just way better.”

You can fix this by turning the framework into simple battlecards your team can pull up mid-call.

For each major competitor, document:

• Where they’re the obvious choice
  • “If you need a single vendor across 5+ departments, they’re strong.”
• The main trade-offs
  • “Long implementation, lots of custom work, slower iteration.”
• Your sharp edge
  • “We’re optimized for teams that want to ship in weeks, not quarters.”
• 3–5 proof points
  • Deployment times, adoption stats, case studies, benchmarks.
• Plain-language impact
  • “Your ops team doesn’t burn 3 months on rollout.”

Keep it short enough that a rep can skim it in 10 seconds while the buyer is talking.

---

Guardrails to avoid accidental competitor-bashing

Even with a good framework, people slip. A few practical rules you can bake into training:

• Never attack people, only trade-offs

  • Bad: “Their team is slow and unresponsive.”
  • Better: “They work with a lot of large enterprises, so their processes are heavier. If you want faster iteration cycles, here’s how we work differently.”

• Let the buyer bring the dirt

  • If a prospect says, “We’ve heard they’re a nightmare to implement,” you don’t need to pile on. Acknowledge, ask a follow-up, then anchor back to your proof.

• Use “for teams that…” instead of “we’re better than…”

  • “For teams that need X, they’re a solid choice. For teams that care more about Y, here’s how we’re set up.”

• Default to specifics over adjectives

  • Replace “easier,” “faster,” “better” with “2 weeks vs 4 months,” “2 people vs a full project team,” “90% adoption vs 40%.”

These constraints force reps to stay grounded and respectful.

---

How one team used this to de-risk deals

Quick real-world style scenario:

A dev-tools startup kept losing to a legacy vendor. On calls, their reps would say stuff like, “Yeah, they’ve been around forever, but their tech is old and clunky. We’re way more modern.”

Buyers nodded politely… then still went with the legacy vendor.

When they reworked their competitive talk-track using this structure, things shifted. For that specific competitor, their card looked like:

• Incumbent strength: Deep integrations with 10+ legacy systems many enterprises still run.
• Trade-off: 6–9 month integration projects, heavy services involvement, high switching cost.
• Their differentiator: Native support for modern stacks, plus a migration path that doesn’t require a full rewrite.
• Proof: “Median migration time: 8 weeks; 70% of customers keep legacy system running in parallel during cutover.”
• Impact: “You can de-risk the move by phasing it in, instead of betting everything on a big-bang migration.”

Same product. Same competitor. Very different conversation.

Prospects started saying things like, “This is the first time someone’s explained the trade-offs clearly.” Win rates went up, and the team didn’t have to trash anyone to get there.

---

Actionable checklist for your next 3 months

If you want to operationalize this without boiling the ocean:

In the next week:

• List your top 3–5 competitors by deal frequency.
• For each, jot down:
  • 1–2 real strengths
  • 1–2 meaningful trade-offs
  • 1 sharp differentiator you’re proud of

In the next month:

• Turn those notes into a battlecard per competitor. Use a battlecard template in Notion, or adopt a CI tool that is Startup friendly (with a free tier), like Playwise HQ.
• Add:
  • Concrete proof (numbers, timelines, customer anecdotes)
  • A short “impact” paragraph in plain English
• Run a 45–60 minute session with your sales/CS team:
  • Walk through the cards
  • Role-play how to talk through them without bashing

In the next quarter:

• Listen to 10–20 recorded calls where competitors come up.
• Note:
  • Where reps drift into vague claims or snark
  • Where buyers perk up at specifics
• Tighten the cards based on what actually lands.

---

Templates reduce guesswork (and bad behavior)

When reps know exactly how to talk about competitors,what to acknowledge, what to contrast, and how to back it up, the “bashing” problem mostly disappears on its own.

They’re not trying to wing it. They’re following a pattern that:

• Respects the buyer’s intelligence
• Treats competitors as legitimate options
• Makes your strengths obvious without theatrics

That’s the kind of sales motion technical founders can stand behind.

---

Wrap-up

Competing in B2B isn’t about who can throw the sharpest elbows. It’s about who can help the buyer see the trade-offs most clearly and confidently.

If you:

• Admit where competitors are strong
• Frame the real trade-offs
• Back your differentiators with proof
• Translate it all into impact

…you’ll win more deals and build a reputation as the vendor people actually trust.

Curious how others are handling this:

How do you talk about competitors in your sales calls or demos today?

Have you found any phrases or frameworks that work especially well (or blow up in your face)? Drop your experiences below, would love to see how other technical teams are handling this.