Every business owner knows the sinking feeling: You’ve filled whiteboards, held countless meetings, analyzed competitors—and still can’t articulate why customers should choose you over anyone else.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Most businesses survive this way, competing on execution rather than differentiation. But while these strategies can work, they come with costs that compound over time.
The Three Default Strategies (And Why They’re Eating Your Profits)
1. The Relationship Game
When your message matches your competitors’, you compete on relationships. Your sales team builds connections, joins networking groups, and grows the business one handshake at a time.
It works—until it doesn’t. Star relationship-builders are in high demand and command premium salaries. Industry data shows top-performing sales professionals often earn at the 75th-90th percentile of market rates¹. When they leave, they take their network with them. One client told us they lost 30% of revenue when their top relationship manager moved to a competitor.
Worse, this strategy scales linearly. Want double the growth? You need double the relationship-builders, double the networking meetings, double the time investment.
2. The Tactical Excellence Play
Some businesses master one marketing channel—becoming the best at LinkedIn outreach or Google Ads while competitors spread themselves thin across everything.
This creates a temporary advantage. But channels saturate. Costs rise. Competitors catch up. What worked at $50 per lead becomes unsustainable at $200. We’ve watched companies ride Facebook ads to rapid growth, only to see their entire model collapse when iOS privacy changes doubled their acquisition costs overnight.
3. The Sales Machine Approach
The third path: outwork everyone. Build superior sales processes. Make more calls. Close harder.
This is perhaps the most seductive trap. Strong sales skills can mask weak positioning for years. But it’s exhausting and expensive. Your team burns out fighting uphill battles, turning winnable 15-minute conversations into grueling hour-long persuasion sessions.
Research shows that companies with undifferentiated offerings typically need higher commission rates—often 15-30% of revenue versus 5-15% for differentiated products². Top salespeople know their worth and demand compensation that reflects the difficulty of their task.
The Compound Cost of Non-Differentiation
Here’s what these strategies really cost:
- Higher compensation costs: Premium pay required to attract and retain talent who can succeed without differentiation
- Increased turnover: Burnout rates increase significantly when every sale is a battle
- Slower sales cycles: Generic messages require significantly more touchpoints to close
- Price pressure: Without clear differentiation, price becomes the only negotiating point
Consider this sobering statistic: Only 28% of sales professionals believe their teams will hit 100% of their quota³. Even worse, sales reps spend just 28% of their week actually selling—the rest is consumed by administrative work³. When you lack differentiation, these inefficiencies compound dramatically.
One of our commercial building clients shared a stark example: In today’s slow market, they’re competing on bids where everyone looks the same. The result? Customers are signing contracts $100,000 cheaper on $400,000 projects—a 25% margin hit driven purely by the inability to differentiate.
The Alternative: Find Your Hidden Angle
After 25 years in marketing, I’ve yet to meet a business that truly has nothing unique to offer. But I’ve met hundreds who can’t see their own differentiation because they’re too close to it.
Case in point: A construction supply company came to us convinced they couldn’t compete against big box retailers many times their size. Ninety minutes later, we’d developed a positioning strategy that highlighted something these giants could never match—a unique service angle that resonated with a specific customer segment. They’re now thriving in a space where others said survival was impossible.
Your Next Move
You have two choices:
- Keep grinding—paying premium prices for relationships, channels, and sales talent to compensate for generic messaging
- Invest one hour to discover if you’re sitting on untapped differentiation
We offer a free session to explore whether your business has hidden positioning opportunities. No PowerPoints, no pitches—just focused questions from someone who’s helped extract differentiation from businesses in 47 different industries.
The session is free. The cost of competing on execution alone compounds daily.
Which path makes more sense for your business?
Research Notes and Further Reading
¹ Sales Compensation and Pay Positioning: According to Korn Ferry’s research on sales compensation design, “Aggressive pay-for-performance-minded companies often pay at the 75th or even the 90th percentile” of market rates. Companies with challenging performance goals typically position pay targets at the 60th percentile or higher. Read more: Korn Ferry – Sales Compensation Design: Factors That Impact Pay Positioning
² Commission Rate Structures: Industry research from QuotaPath and Mailshake shows that typical sales commission rates range from 5-30%, with higher rates necessary for undifferentiated products. Companies with strong differentiation can offer lower commission rates (5-15%) while those without differentiation often need to offer 15-30% to attract and retain sales talent. Read more: QuotaPath – 2025 Sales Commission Rates by Industry Read more: Mailshake – Understanding Sales Commission Rates by Industry
³ Sales Performance Statistics: Salesforce’s State of Sales report provides sobering insights into sales productivity. Only 28% of sales professionals believe their teams will achieve 100% quota attainment, and sales reps spend merely 28% of their time on actual selling activities. Read more: Salesforce – 27 Sales Compensation Statistics and Benchmarks
Additional Resources on Sales Productivity: McKinsey research shows that non-selling activities consume two-thirds of the average sales team’s time, highlighting the inefficiency that comes with competing on execution rather than differentiation. Read more: McKinsey – How top performers outpace peers in sales productivity
