B2B software sales is an overcrowded and fiercely competitive space, with dozens of vendors in every category, so it’s essential for salespeople to know who they are competing with for each customer in their pipeline.

But getting buyers to share this information isn’t easy as they often feel that doing so tips the balance of power to the seller. There are 3 common ways to go about finding out by only #3 is reliably effective. The 3 ways are:

1. The direct ask —“Who else are you evaluating?”

2. The assumptive ask — “I assume you are talking to Competitors A and B. What have you seen that you liked?”

3. The strategic ask —“What do you like most about the solutions you’ve looked at so far?”

1. The direct ask

Salesperson: “Who else are you evaluating?”

The biggest problem with asking this question is that it immediately puts the buyer on the defensive because they know that the moment they tell you who else they are looking at, you will immediately launch into a tirade carefully prepared list of reasons why they should not buy from your competitor.

Most buyers will demur with a “Oh I’d rather not say”, or “Sorry we can’t disclose that”, which is hard to recover from. Occasionally a buyer will tell you outright but in my experience if they don’t immediately volunteer their reasons why they prefer you, it’s a sure sign that you are not in pole position to win the deal.

2. The assumptive ask

Salesperson: “I assume you’re also talking to Competitors A and B? What have you seen that you liked?”

This is a better approach than #1 because you are 1) directly acknowledging that you’re in a competitive buying process, which in turns build trust and 2) indirectly framing who the competitors should be.

Many sales leaders don’t like their reps mentioning competitors by name because they fear it gives the buyer ideas of who else to RFP, however the bigger issue is that it causes you to get skewed feedback.

Either the buyer starts ranting about your competitors, or starts raving about something that they know you don’t have, as a way to knock your product (this strategy is very common with experienced buyers). Neither of these is particularly useful because if they are complaining about your competitors to you, you can bet they are complaining about you to your competitors.

3. The strategic ask

Salesperson: “What do you like most about all the solutions you’ve looked at so far?”

This is the best approach of the three because it 1) puts the buyer at ease by feeling in control of the conversation, 2) focuses on what the buyer really cares about, rather than which vendor they like and 3) gives you the opportunity to ask follow up questions to probe without getting into the rant/rave situation of the assumptive ask.

It also flows logically into the next question:

Salesperson: “And where do you feel they are falling short?”

This gives you further insight into what the buyer really cares about because you can be sure that whatever they tell you here is on their list of decision criteria. As before, it also gives you the opportunity to ask follow up questions like, “Sounds like that is important to you. Where would you rank it on your list of criteria?” And if you have a tight ICP and have done your homework on your competitors, you should be able to figure out who they are simply based on what you hear.

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