Competitive Strategy

Follow this skill's evidence, artifact, privacy, action-control, and outcome-reporting rules below.

Domain: Sales.

Evidence and connectivity

Begin with authorized user-provided material and accessible work sources. Discover optional CRM capabilities at runtime and use them only to enrich or execute the job; never require a vendor, connector, record identifier, object name, or field name to begin when the minimum semantic evidence is otherwise available.

If CRM is unconfigured, unavailable, denied, stale, partial, or unsupported, continue with the supported baseline, disclose the affected scope, and block only the dependent conclusion or action. Distinguish an authorized empty result from failed or unexecuted retrieval. If no connected evidence source is available, ask for the minimum pasted facts or file needed for the next useful step and return a bounded framework or needs_input rather than inventing data.

Data Sources

Use relevant supplied material or applicable tools and sources you are authorized to access. These are options, not a mandatory checklist. Ask for missing essential input or context; unavailable evidence remains unknown, not negative evidence.

• Meeting Transcripts & Email for the customer's requirements, decision criteria and actual objections.
• Approved Competitive Intelligence for dated capabilities, tradeoffs and permitted proof or claim wording.
• Knowledge & Files for authorized product documentation, proof assets and claim-review rules.
• Record Snapshots & Exports for opportunity context and evidenced alternatives, not proof of customer preference.
• Public web for material public competitor facts missing internally; verify authority and claim approval before use.

Never send confidential content to public search. Preserve source authority, dates and privacy boundaries.

Purpose

Build an opportunity-specific competitive position that connects customer requirements and decision criteria to relevant, approved competitor evidence, honest tradeoffs, likely objections, and the next move.

Applicability

Applies when a selling context or customer use case is identifiable and the user needs to understand a named competitor, an explicit comparison set, or which competitive questions to investigate. When a competitor and approved evidence are available, build opportunity-specific positioning. When the competitor is unknown, produce discovery hypotheses and verification questions rather than asserting an incumbent or inventing a comparison. A missing opportunity summary or competitor association does not block a bounded discovery brief.

Usage situations

• "We are up against [competitor]. How should we position?"
• "Map our strengths to this customer's decision criteria."
• "Help me answer this competitive objection."
• "Which competitive claims are safe to use on this deal?"

Procedure

1. Define the opportunity, competitor, decision stage, and business decision the strategy must influence. Distinguish an established target from a proposed selection. If a generic continuation leaves the opportunity or competitor unresolved, keep the positioning conditional or ask the minimum distinguishing question. Do not silently select a deal because it has richer records. Sufficient supplied context can establish the target without a CRM lookup; an evidenced build-versus-buy alternative need not be a named vendor.
2. Assemble customer requirements, decision criteria, objections, stakeholder priorities, and known commercial constraints.
3. Assemble approved competitor intelligence and directly observed competitor facts, preserving source and date.
4. Separate approved intelligence, observed customer or competitor facts, and inference.
5. Map each material customer criterion to relevant differentiation, weakness, tradeoff, proof, and objection response.
6. Test whether the evidence is current, opportunity-specific, and sufficient for each claim; surface material conflicts rather than selecting the convenient source.
7. Recommend a positioning approach, proof points to use, claims to avoid, and the next validation step.

Judgment

• Current, opportunity-specific evidence outranks generic or stale material. Generic intelligence can frame a question but cannot establish what this customer values.
• A differentiation matters only when it connects to a stated or strongly evidenced decision criterion. Product differences without customer relevance are background.
• Show strengths and weaknesses honestly. Explain the tradeoff rather than hiding a disadvantage behind generic messaging.
• An objection response is relevant only when it addresses the customer's actual concern and is supported by approved evidence.
• Do not fabricate competitor capabilities, pricing, customer preferences, win rates, or proof. If material sources conflict, state both positions and withhold the affected claim until resolved.
• Apply supplied organizational rules for approved intelligence and claim use. Without them, keep recommendations qualitative and identify claims that require review.

Output

Deliver both a concise chat summary and one saved primary editable artifact, following the sections below. The artifact must contain supported competitive positioning or a bounded discovery brief.

Chat summary

In chat, summarize the recommended competitive posture, the customer criterion that most shapes it, the strongest supported differentiator or tradeoff, the highest-risk claim or evidence gap, and the next discovery or validation move.

Artifact content

• Opportunity decision context and evidence scope.
• Customer requirement-to-positioning map.
• Recommended differentiators, proof points, objections, and honest tradeoffs.
• Source classification for material claims: approved intelligence, observed fact, or inference.
• Claims to avoid, conflicts, stale or missing evidence, and validation needs.
• Recommended next move and an optional reviewable draft when requested.

Artifact selection

Choose one format for the complete internal competitive strategy, respecting the user's requested format:

• Word (.docx): Default for reviewing positioning, objections, tradeoffs and the next move.
• Excel (.xlsx): Instead for maintaining a criterion-by-criterion claim comparison, with the strategy narrative retained.
• PowerPoint (.pptx): A separate customer-safe derivative only when requested and reviewed; keep the full internal strategy separate.
• Markdown (.md): When requested or Office creation is unavailable or fails; retain the full content and disclose fallback limitations.

Use authorized, format-specific workflows. Keep content concise and styling simple. Plan changes together and apply them in as few supported batches as practical. Update authorized existing artifacts without creating duplicates or changing unrelated content. Follow Delivery and control for saving and reporting.

Delivery and control

Verify each save before reporting success and provide the actual links or locations. If saving fails, disclose it and provide clearly labeled unsaved content in chat. Keep internal strategy separate from any requested customer-safe derivative.

Guardrails

Analysis, recommendation, and drafting require no approval. Creating and saving the requested file artifact in an authorized location is permitted. Creating or linking a competitor record, updating opportunity data, or sending competitive messaging requires separate, specific approval and any required internal authorization. Report proposed, approved, completed, and unconfirmed states separately.

When NOT to Use

• Not for generic market research with no customer decision context.
• Not for a full business-case document; use business-case-composer.
• Never turn an inference into a competitor fact or use unapproved material as an approved claim.

Required information

• Baseline: an identifiable selling context or customer use case. A named competitor or comparison set enables positioning; when absent, the deliverable is a discovery-hypothesis brief with claims withheld pending verification.
• Claim-ready comparison: at least one customer requirement, decision criterion, or objection plus approved or directly observed competitor evidence relevant to it.
• Broader scope: stakeholder priorities, decision stage, commercial configuration, proof assets, and dated opportunity evidence deepen the strategy. Their absence limits the claims that can be made rather than blocking the whole result.
• Missing-input question: "Which customer use case should I assess, and is there a competitor or comparison set?"