Mine testimonials to steal your competitors' marquee customers

When I advise b2b startups, they'll sometimes fret about the unassailable lead their competitors have in marquee logos.

They decide to sell to every customer except for the logos on their competitors' homepages.

I've learned to do exactly the opposite.

When I was at Constructor, Algolia had an early lead on us thanks to YC connections, a cheap offering and a good PLG motion. They had big logos like Lacoste and Under Armour.

But when we took a look at the Under Armour quote and case study, it was incredibly weak.

There were three tells:

• The only quote they had mustered was from a product manager, not an exec.
• The champion was no longer at the company.
• The "lift" was a small bump in the percent of customers who searched. That looked more like a vanity metric than a business outcome.

So we went hard at the opportunity.

It turned out the company was unhappy with the quality of results and was willing to pay a premium for a better solution.

The victory was even sweeter when it meant our competitor lost a key public logo, which are quite hard to secure.

That made the next opportunities easier to win as it gave the sales team an ascendant narrative.

Your competitors are neither as competent nor as effective as you imagine.

Often, attacking their strengths is a winning strategy.