This article is based on Jack’s brilliant interview with Mark Assini on the Product Marketing Life podcast.  

One of our sales reps recently came to me for advice after a series of calls to warm leads. That day, he’d encountered three prospects who’d developed their own solutions, and those solutions were limiting their growth. 

These prospects were all frustrated but unwilling to take a leap of faith and abandon the solution they'd invested so much time and energy in building. 

If this situation were a movie, it would be called "The Silent Competitor." At the time, we had no idea how big a competitor these homegrown solutions were. We didn't know how many deals we were losing or winning against them. That meant we couldn't offer any immediate guidance to our sales rep on navigating these conversations.

As a product marketing team, we had to dissect the problem. How often was it happening? Was it a bottleneck at a specific stage in the sales funnel? Who was involved in these conversations? Were they CEOs or individual contributors? Why were they choosing a built solution over ours? What was the scope of the opportunity there? 

We had to get into the weeds and see just how big a threat this was. In this article, I’m going to do just that. We’ll explore:

  • How win/loss data and conversation intelligence helped us unmask this silent competitor,
  • Just how big a competitor homegrown solutions are,
  • How we empowered sales teams to have better conversations with CTOs reluctant to give up their in-house solutions, and
  • How all these insights helped us refine our messaging and positioning and expand our market reach.

Let’s dive in.

Diving into win/loss data on built solutions

Once we’d set our sights on our silent competitor, the next logical step was to gather data. We scoured win/loss records from previous deals, conducted win/loss interviews, and listened to sales calls that tackled this particular objection. The aim was to paint a clearer picture of the challenge at hand.

Now, when it comes to built solutions, every customer's approach is unique. Unlike a typical competitor with a marketing site, collateral, and a tangible product that you can experience and compare to your own, a built solution a) is in-house and b) can vary significantly. This makes it difficult to pin down its exact functionality, value, and benefits.

However, through conversations with our sales reps and our win/loss interviews, we began to piece together a picture of these built solutions. We identified a couple of different tech stacks and the verticals that made use of them. 

For instance, we found that in the food and beverage industry, companies often designed unique solutions tailored to address their specific challenges. Recognizing these patterns informed how we shaped our messaging and positioning for those particular conversations.

Unmasking the silent competitor with conversation intelligence 

At Linnworks, we use a tool called Jiminny – it’s a conversation intelligence platform similar to Gong, which many product marketers will be familiar with. Initially set up by our sales division for coaching purposes, our product marketing team also has access to it. 

When we got started with Jiminny, I submitted a list of competitors to our account manager, so they could improve tagging and transcription accuracy. This meant that every time a specific competitor was mentioned, we'd get notified and could delve into the details of that deal.

So, when the 'buy versus build' issue surfaced, one of my immediate moves was to feed this topic into Jiminny. The goal was to see how often these topics were coming up, listen back to those calls, refine our competitor-specific messaging, and then fine-tune our keywords and user personas accordingly. We then took what we’d learned back to the sales team to validate our findings. 

All this research and analysis brought some really eye-opening revelations:

  • Built solutions were our seventh-largest competitor in the market. 
  • Many prospects felt they were getting by just fine with their built solutions, even though they were curbing their growth potential. 
  • Mid-market companies were most likely to be using solutions built in–house.
  • CTOs were the primary persona involved in these conversations.

Empowering sales teams to tackle built solutions

After cataloging the soundbites we gleaned from Jiminny, we set out to create an internal battlecard. This included objection-handling tips, plus a concise elevator pitch.

The battlecard also included key talking points such as the customizability of our solution. Through our sales conversations, we’d learned that many prospects had their own engineering teams who had built bespoke platforms for specific needs and weren't necessarily looking for an off-the-shelf solution. So, one of Linnworks' most compelling features is the fact that you can customize it to fit your needs. 

Another critical point we highlighted was our 24/7 global support team – a stark contrast to many companies where all the knowledge on their in-house platform might be stored in one engineer's head.

Before rolling our new battlecard out to the sales team, we thought it important to give some context. We made sure everyone – sales leaders, the marketing team, and other stakeholders – was aware of the silent competitor and the size of the threat it represented. This helped us get the buy-in we needed later when it was time to introduce the battlecards and train teams on how to use them.

Armed with this detailed understanding, a fresh user persona, and a brand-new battlecard, we developed customer-facing assets. These included FAQs for sales reps to share with prospects. 

Once those elements were in place, we launched the battlecard, coupled with comprehensive training sessions. These sessions focused mainly on objection-handling techniques. They also covered when best to bring in a more technically proficient Linnworks representative or someone from the onboarding team to address particular concerns raised by hesitant prospects.

Addressing in-house solutions through the broader marketing strategy

Our final strategic move was expanding our marketing to reach prospects who are teetering on the decision to either buy or build a solution in our domain. This led us to create landing pages tailored to those specific searches. 

Our findings also helped us to recalibrate our positioning. When companies are switching solutions, they want as seamless a transition as possible. At Linnworks, we have an amazing onboarding team dedicated to ensuring new clients transition smoothly. But, as we reviewed our landing pages, we realized we weren’t shouting loudly enough about this strength. 

This was a golden opportunity to better position our strengths and win against competitors, especially the silent ones.

We also curated case studies of users who had ditched their homegrown solutions in favor of Linnworks. On top of that, we encouraged satisfied customers to leave reviews.

We even designed a structured framework for companies to assess their needs against our offerings. And we provided them with a Linnworks-branded pros-and-cons template, allowing them to weigh up their options.

So, what are you waiting for?

As the year winds down, it's an opportune moment to look back over your closed deal data. Look for patterns or trends that might have gone unnoticed throughout the year – perhaps there’s a hidden competitor preventing you from winning more deals. 

I'd also recommend getting a second pair of eyes on the data, so consider getting someone from outside the product marketing team to review it. It’s a worthy project to work on and one that will help set you up for success in the coming year.