I walked into the boardroom feeling confident. We had the better product.
Our software loaded faster. The interface was cleaner. Our pricing was twenty percent cheaper than the incumbent giant that currently held the contract.
I spent an hour showing the executive team a side-by-side comparison. I highlighted every feature where we won and every area where the competitor lagged behind. It felt like a slam dunk case grounded in logic and math.
I lost the deal two days later.
The feedback was vague. They felt the other provider was safer. They were not ready to switch. They did not see a compelling reason to rip out their current infrastructure for a slightly better version of the same thing.
That loss forced me to reevaluate everything I knew about sales.
I thought I lost because I failed to explain our features clearly enough. I realized much later that I lost because I accepted the premise that we were in the same category as the competitor. By comparing us directly, I validated their position as the standard.
I was playing their game.
This brings us to the concept of depositioning.
Most founders think marketing is about positioning. They obsess over explaining who they are and what they do. While that is necessary, it is often insufficient when you are entering a crowded market or fighting an incumbent.
Depositioning is different.
It is the act of reframing the market context so that the competitor’s strengths become their weaknesses. It is not about saying they are bad. It is about saying they are irrelevant for the specific future you are building.
The Feature Trap
#When you build a new product, you are intimately familiar with the nuances of your features. You know why your database architecture is superior or why your customer support workflow is more efficient.
The customer does not know this.
More importantly, the customer does not care.
When you pitch based on features, you are asking the customer to do the heavy lifting of analysis. You are asking them to weigh feature A against feature B and decide which one offers more utility.
This is a trap.
When the comparison is close, the human brain defaults to the status quo. It is safer to stay with the devil you know than the one you do not. If you are only ten percent better, you are not better enough to overcome the switching costs.
Depositioning sidesteps this analysis entirely. Instead of comparing features, you compare models.
You group all your competitors into a bucket called “The Old Way.”
The Old Way Versus The New Way
#To do this effectively, you have to take a journalistic approach. You have to look at the history of your industry.
Why was the current incumbent successful ten years ago?
Perhaps they built an on-premise software solution because the internet was slow and security was a concern. At the time, their heaviness and complexity were assets. It meant they were robust.
Now, look at the world today.
Remote work is standard. Internet speeds are high. Agility is valued over robustness. In this new context, that same on-premise heaviness is no longer an asset. It is a liability. It is “bloat.”
This is the core mechanism of depositioning.
You do not say the competitor is bad. You say they were perfect for a world that no longer exists.
By defining the “Old Way,” you create a category for the competitor to live in. It is a category defined by the past. You acknowledge their success in that previous era. This builds trust because you are not throwing mud.
Then you define the shift.
!Frame strengths as critical weaknesses.
Finally, you introduce your solution as the only logical response to the “New Way.”
Turning Strengths Into Liabilities
#Let us look at how this works in practice.
If your competitor is a massive, established enterprise player, their strength is their size and feature set. They have everything.
How do you deposition that?
You frame the market as one requiring speed and simplicity. In a fast-moving world, an “all-in-one” suite is actually a “clunky, slow-moving monolith” that requires months of training.
Their strength (size) becomes their weakness (complexity).
Conversely, imagine your competitor is a cheap, point-solution tool. Their strength is that they are inexpensive and easy to install.
You frame the market as one requiring integration and data unity. In a data-driven world, a “cheap point solution” creates “data silos” and “fragmented customer views.”
Their strength (low cost) becomes their weakness (limited value).
This requires you to understand your own business deeply. You must know what you are willing to trade off. If you are the agile solution, you are likely trading off deep, granular permissions controls. You have to be okay with that.
You are not trying to win every customer. You are trying to win the customers who believe in the New Way.
The Unknowns of Market Creation
#There are risks here that we need to acknowledge.
When you deposition a competitor, you are making a bet on where the market is going. But what if you are wrong?
We often assume that the world is moving toward the things we value. We assume the world wants more privacy, or more speed, or more decentralization.
Sometimes the market moves backward. Sometimes the market fractures.
There is also the question of how aggressive to be. If you deposition too hard, you risk sounding arrogant. If you simply dismiss the competition as “legacy,” you might alienate a buyer who just signed a three-year contract with them.
How do you tell a prospect their current choice is obsolete without calling them foolish for making it?
That is a question of diplomacy and tact that data cannot solve. It requires reading the room.
Furthermore, how long does your “New Way” last before it becomes the “Old Way”?
Business cycles are compressing. The depositioning narrative you build today might only last eighteen months before a new technology creates a wedge that creates a vulnerability for you.
The Final Shift
#Returning to my failed sales meeting.
I imagine now how that conversation would have gone if I had not pulled up the feature comparison spreadsheet.
Instead of arguing about button placement, I should have asked about their strategy for the next five years. I should have asked if they believed their industry was becoming more fluid or more static.
If they believed it was static, we were never going to win. They should have stayed with the incumbent.
But if they believed it was becoming more fluid, I could have showed them why the incumbent was structurally incapable of supporting that agility.
I would have framed the choice not between Product A and Product B, but between the Past and the Future.
That is the power of depositioning.
It moves the conversation away from the features you built and toward the philosophy you hold. It stops the comparison game.
It allows you to stop competing with giants and simply walk around them.