Turn constraints into a competitive advantage

Constraints are not a competitive disadvantage.

Constraints make you stronger.

If you take advantage of them.

Don’t have endless buckets of money or resources being thrown at you by investors?

That’s perfect.

I’ve always loved competing against those who enjoy every advantage.

I spent years winning deals with enterprise customers for mission critical communications networks while working for start-ups. 

We had no brand recognition. We had no track record in the industry. 

We had limited resources compared to the multinational enterprises we were competing against.

Yet, all those constraints made us absolute hell to compete against. 

Because we were forced to be more creative and innovative in how we worked with our buyers. 

We achieved way more with less.

We had to be more dialed in on our ICP. 

We had to have a differentiated hypothesis that truly caused buyers to stop and think. 

We had to be more effective with every single sales touch because we didn’t have a dime to waste.

We were intellectually humble, endlessly curious, nimble and utterly responsive.

And our competitors hated it because they were constantly being forced to respond to what we were doing with the buyer.

You don’t want to be given a playbook to execute that other companies with different sets of constraints followed.

You want to be forced to experiment. And figure it out for yourself.

Because when the shit hits the fan, and it inevitably will on one or more occasions, you’ll be better positioned to thrive.

Constraints force you to figure out what will work for you.

Instead of having the “recipe” handed to you on a plate, you’re forced to experiment. 

My personal experience over decades of sales success is that the most resilient sales teams and effective sellers are those that had fewer resources. And learned how to figure stuff out.