Some of your best sales will come when you beat out another foe. Hard-nosed selling is involved when you mount a case as to why your prospect should give you the bag of cash and not the other guy.

In market-share battles, where there is a defined number of vendors battling for a set amount of seats on the bus, you must talk frequently about how your offering stands up against prospect expectations, and the competitive field.

The best path to take is to probe early – and often – about what the prospect thinks of your offering compared to others being considered.

You may receive vague answers from the prospect, but don’t let that disarm you or make you take your foot off the gas.

Keep probing. Keep qualifying.

This all leads to preparing competitive questions ahead of your meetings and integrating them into your agenda so you can have proactive and honest discussions. The signal that proves whether you are proactively probing and qualifying customers about their options is your close rate – a low close rate means you’re hearing a lot of "No’s" …and you’re hearing them late in the cycle.

Keep pushing to find the truth about you versus the other folks.