Hey - I read an article from Dr. Benjamin Hardy that resonated. Ben is the author of ‘10X Is Easier Than 2X’ and ‘The Science of Scaling’, and he made a point about strategy that is worth translating into the world of complex enterprise sales.
Ben’s argument was direct: if you are worried about competition, you probably don’t have a strategy.
In enterprise sales, that idea shows up more often than people realise.
Many sellers spend a huge amount of time worrying about competitors.
Who else is in the deal?
What price are they offering?
Which AI feature did they just release?
That mindset feels normal in B2B tech.
But it’s usually an indicator that something more fundamental is missing.
Strategy.
Peter Thiel wrote in Zero to One:
“Competition is for losers.”
His point wasn’t arrogance. It was structural.
“All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.”
In enterprise sales, you see this play out.
When a deal becomes a feature comparison, price negotiation, or procurement exercise, the seller is already competing on someone else’s terms.
The direction of the decision was defined upstream.
Real strategy looks very different.
Michael Porter, who shaped modern strategy thinking:
“Strategy is about setting yourself apart from the competition. It’s not a matter of being better at what you do – it’s a matter of being different at what you do.”
And even more simply:
“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”
In complex B2B sales environments, that idea shows up in practical ways too.
The strongest enterprise sellers do not try to win every opportunity. They focus on a very specific opportunities.
They focus on a particular problem.
A particular kind of customer.
A particular compelling moment of change for the organisation.
They define the opportunity before competitors even realise there is one.
Which means the conversation rarely becomes about price or features.
Richard Rumelt, in Good Strategy Bad Strategy, wrote:
“Strategy is at least as much about what an organization does not do as it is about what it does.”
That applies to enterprise selling more than most people realise.
Strategy means deciding:
Which are my priority accounts?
Which critical problems can we help solve?
Which opportunities will you deliberately ignore?
Without those decisions, sellers can default to reacting.
Reacting to inbound opportunities.
Reacting to competitors.
Reacting to procurement processes designed by someone else.
And once you’re reacting, you’re competing (and then you’re a vendor).
The best enterprise sellers understand something.
If you’re worrying about competition, the real problem probably isn’t the competitor.
It’s the absence of a proactive strategy that makes the comparison irrelevant.
Ben Hardy’s observation about business strategy translates so cleanly here: when you have a real strategy, you’re no longer playing the same game as everyone else.
You’re creating a different one.
A short pause, if useful:
In your pipeline, where are you reacting to competition rather than shaping the opportunity?
Which accounts really deserve your strategic attention? Why?
And which opportunities should you walk away from?
-Aaron
P.S. Further thinking
– A recent note on the deal being decided before you were invited to bid
– Sales Life explores the longer game behind consistent enterprise sales success.