This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

If you are competing by creating a higher…

Your strengths are different from your competitors. So are your weaknesses. Even though you sell exactly the same thing, many of your processes are different. You have different capabilities and different limitations. You produce different…

The prospective client said that the salesperson was going to have thirty minutes to convince him that she was better than her competitor, a competitor that the prospective client had partnered with for eleven years.

The prospective client wasn't…

You know that you are better than your competitor; you’re confident in your ability to create more value for your dream client. You know that your ideas are better.

You also know that your offering is better than your competitor’s. You’ve…

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union both built massive nuclear arsenals. Both built nuclear missiles, both armed them with warheads, and both aimed them at the other’s major cities.

The idea was that if one side should…

John writes:

I am a landscape designer/landscape contractor.  I just took a call from a client about a drafting a landscape design.  They said they had also contacted one of my competitors and I really wanted to say, “Oh, they’re great…

You can’t win if you have already lost in your mind. Nothing has a greater impact on your results than what you believe. Your results are a reflection of your beliefs.

Holding the belief that your competitors are stronger than you will cause you…

So many things in sales are outside of your control. This means that you have to be exceptional at all of the things that are within your control.

You don’t have any control over the relationship that your dream client has with your competitor,…