Workshop · Strategy
Competing without cutting the price
If all a company can say about itself is that it looks after clients and charges fairly, clients end up comparing prices, because price is the only thing they can compare.
- Duration
- 3 hours
- Delivery
- On site · Virtual
- Participants
- From 6 to 20 participants
- Investment
- Request a quote
Investment depends on scope, number of participants and delivery mode. We prepare a proposal at no obligation.
The problem it solves
Ask an owner why clients choose them and the answer is usually the one their nearest competitor would give: quality, service, experience, fair prices. None of it is false. None of it sets anyone apart either, because anybody can say it and no client can check it before buying.
When a company cannot say how it is different, the client does the only thing left: compare prices. The symptoms arrive in that order. Quotes get lost over small differences, sales asks for discounts to close, and every proposal looks more like everyone else's. Meanwhile the company does have traits that distinguish it — a specialism, a way of responding, a knowledge of the client — but it has not named them, it does not protect them, and sometimes it is losing them without noticing.
A company that competes only on price has to be the cheapest every time, and very few mid-sized companies can hold that position for long. A difference nobody has identified does not get defended either: it thins out when the person who carried it leaves, when the service is standardised in order to grow, or when a competitor copies it and nobody notices.
What it covers
A workshop on the competitive advantage of a mid-sized company: where it is genuinely different, how long that difference would last and what it has to do to keep it. It is neither a messaging nor a branding session, and it is not about setting a price. It works on the question underneath both: what verifiable reason does a client have to choose this company when there are other options, including the option of not buying at all.
The starting point is evidence rather than opinion. Participants bring deals won and lost over the past year and reconstruct, one by one, what decided the client. That material is used to separate the claims anyone can make from the differences a client can actually check: a lead time, a specialism, a way of solving a particular problem, a relationship others do not have. Something uncomfortable tends to surface. The reason clients pick the company does not always match the reason the company keeps repeating in its proposals.
The second part looks at how long each advantage would last. Through group discussion, every source of advantage is placed according to what it would cost a competitor to copy it: some can be imitated in weeks, others rest on years of accumulated knowledge or on relationships that cannot be bought. That reading settles which capabilities deserve investment to sustain the difference, and on which fronts the company should stop competing, because fighting for a market where only the cheapest wins drains the very resources that would protect the real advantage.
The session closes with the advantage stated in one sentence the sales team can back with evidence, and with the list of claims the company stops using. In ALUD's work this conversation belongs to the differentiation dimension of the Strategy engine, and it is the ground on which positioning, pricing and the offer are later reviewed from Growth.
What participants learn
- Identify, using the company's own deals won and lost, the real reasons clients choose it.
- Distinguish a difference the client can verify from a claim any competitor can make.
- Evaluate what it would cost a competitor to copy each source of advantage.
- Decide which capabilities the company invests in to sustain its difference and on which fronts it stops competing.
- Formulate the advantage in one sentence the sales team can back with evidence.
Agenda
- Why clients end up comparing on price alone
- Claims everyone makes: quality, service, experience
- Deals won and lost as evidence of the real advantage
- Sources of advantage in a mid-sized company: specialism, reliability, speed, knowledge and relationship
- What can be copied in weeks and what takes years
- Fronts where it pays to stop competing
- An advantage is sustained by investment: capabilities that need protecting
- A statement of the advantage that can be checked
What the organisation leaves with
- A written analysis of deals won and lost, with the client's deciding reason in each case.
- A list of the claims the company stops using because they distinguish it from nobody.
- A map of the company's sources of advantage, ranked by what it would cost a competitor to copy them.
- A statement of the advantage, with the evidence behind it and the capabilities that need protecting.
Programme details
- Format
- Workshop
- Also available as
- Executive talk · Intensive workshop
- Languages
- Español · English
- Includes
- Participant workbook
- Action plan
- Post-training resources
- Facilitation
- ALUD Consulting LLC — Global Business Transformation.
Who it is for
- Owners and leadership teams losing quotes over small price differences.
- Sales managers whose proposals look more and more like the competition's.
- Service companies competing in markets where everyone claims to offer quality.
- Partners preparing a review of the offer or the positioning.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this a marketing or branding workshop?
- No. No message or campaign gets designed. The workshop decides where the company is genuinely different and what it needs to stay that way; the message comes afterwards and is a separate job, which goes further once this question has been answered.
- What if we discover we have no clear advantage?
- That is a useful finding, and far better made in the room than in a tender. In that case the session turns to deciding which advantage is worth building, what capability it demands and how long it would take.
- Do we need to prepare anything?
- Yes: a list of deals won and lost over the last year, with whatever is known about why each one went the way it did. Without real cases the conversation stays at the opinion the company already holds of itself.
- Does it cover pricing?
- Not in detail. The workshop shows why a company with no identified advantage ends up competing on price, but building a price and a discount policy is covered by another programme in the catalogue, A price is decided, not calculated.
Request this programme
Tell us the context and we will prepare a proposal tailored to your organisation. No obligation.
Working this inside the organisation
If this challenge will not be settled in one session, ALUD Consulting LLC works it as consulting: management consulting, human resources, strategy, organisational design, leadership development and business transformation.