Hey, 👋 Scott from The Sales Mastermind here.

Today’s edition only takes 3 minutes.

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By definition, there can only be one category leader. Creating a category is expensive and time-consuming.

And it's not the only path forward. Countless businesses are carving out profitability without being number one.

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Today's newsletter

• Tour de What?
• Pick your battles
• True Differentiation

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Tour de France and Sales

The Tour De France (TDF) is road cycling's most prestigious stage race and started on Saturday. It is a brutal three-week stage race with 27 ways to win:

• 21 Stage Winners
• General Classification (GC)
• Mountains Classification
• Points Classification
• Best Young Rider Classification
• Team Classification
• Combativity Award

Then there are unofficial "ways to win":

• A "podium" (coming 2nd or 3rd)
• "Top XX" in any of the above
• Daily leader for each classification
• Lanterne Rouge (last in GC)
• Prize money from daily and overall activities
• Most kilometers in the breakaway
• And on and on

Each rider and each team have different capabilities, ambitions, and goals for the race.

Riders like Jonas Vingegaard - Team Visma | Lease a Bike (LAB) and Tadej Pogacar - UAE Team Emirates (UAE). Both former back-to-back GC winners arrive with teams hand-picked to help them win 2024's GC.

LAB and UAE have more budget, better equipment, and better riders than most other teams. Anything short of winning GC would be a poor outcome for either team.

On the other hand, Astana Qazaqstan Team (AQT) has a much smaller budget and comes to the Tour with one goal: Mark Cavendish must win one stage and become the most-winning Tour cyclist ever.

The critical lesson sellers can take from road cycling:

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Pick your Battles

Just like no team turns up to the Tour and tries their best, you shouldn't with your sales effort.

The most important way to pick your battles is to deliberately focus on a specific niche where you can truly differentiate yourself from your peers.

To do this, map your:

• True strengths - things you do well that customers care about
• Real shortcomings - things you are missing that customers care about
• True competitors - businesses in your weight class that customers see as legitimate alternatives to your product.

Note: True Competitors is the hardest part. For example, niche CRMs compete with Google Sheets and Salesforce. But they aren't true competitors as most customers don't put them in the same weight class.

Once you've mapped the above, look for overlap to develop your True Differentiation.

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True Differentiation

A true differentiation is something you do better than your peers AND your customers want.

Once you have this, double down on it, bring it up in sales calls, shout about it from the rooftops—whatever you can do to let people know this is what separates you from your true competitors.

However, be wary of false differentiation:

All credit goes to my friend Alex Urquhart for this one.

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An overlooked battle

When picking your battles, be careful not to waste time competing for deals you have no chance of winning or could bankrupt you if you do.

Like the opening example, the Astana Qazaqstan Team (AQT) will not compete for General Classification. They don't have the cyclists to get close, and it would cost them the ability to focus on Mark Cavendish.

For your business, aim for the right-sized deals with the right customers:

• Too small, and you'll slowly die from Cost of Sales or Cost of Delivery
• Too large, and you might die from overspending (relative to your turnover) on unwinnable deals
• Or worse, too large, your customer might take 120 days or 180 days to pay invoices, killing you via cashflow

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Do you know your true differentiation? Or are you still working it out?

Please hit reply; I'd love to understand what you're focusing on.

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Until next week,
Scott Cowley

PS Are you a SaaS founder looking to refer to your sales process? I have 2 spots available to support you 1-1. Book an intro call to see how I can help.

PPS Looking for the backlog? You can find it here.

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