An Exhaustive List Of How Jason Lemkin (CEO of SaaStr) Approaches Competitive Strategy

Author

Andy McCotter-Bicknell
May 27, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Jason Lemkin is a legend.

  • Co-Founded Nanogram Devices (acq’d by market leader for $50M)

  • Co-founded Echosign (acq’d by Adobe for hundreds of millions)

  • Founded SaaStr where he’s:

    • invested in dozens of successful startups

    • built a social community of 500k+ SaaS founders and execs

He writes about competitive strategy a lot too—I’m talking hundreds of tweets, blogs, and posts.

So I binged it all, summarized the advice that jumped out to me, and categorized them into two lists: tips for Founders & CEOs, and tips for Sales & Marketing.

Here ya go!

Top 10 Tips for Founders & CEOs:

  1. The best CEOs respect & understand the competition cold.

  2. Build relationships with competitor CEOs.

  3. If you’re not growing at least as fast as competitors, it’s a “you” problem. Don’t blame the market.

  4. Integrate with and open your API to your competitors. Make it easy for customers to buy both you and your competitor together.

  5. If you’re growing at a decent rate, competitors can’t really kill you.

  6. When pitching to VCs, spend extra time on “competition” & “why we win” slides. And no, these shouldn’t be feature comparisons.

  7. You need a 10x feature that competitors don’t have in order to win consistently. You can’t just be the cheaper option.

  8. FUD and competition bashing can work, but it can also blow up in your face if you’re not good at it.

  9. It’s ok to hire a couple sellers & VPs from competitors, but not much more. Why? Because it’s easy to assume they’re better than they are.

  10. How to check on a competitor’s growth plan: Search on LinkedIn how many sales reps they have, then multiply by $500,000. That’s how much in booking they plan to add this year.

Top 10 Tips for Sales & Marketing:

  1. The best sales reps respect the competition.

  2. Ask your prospects what competitors they’re looking at.

  3. Assume the competition is cold calling your customers.

  4. Create a dedicated sales & marketing “steal team” to win big against specific competitors.

  5. Used properly, discounting creates urgency to close. But it rarely beats competitors.

  6. Learn to do buy-out deals.

  7. Track when competitors’ customers are up for renewal. Then proactively reach out to them as that time comes closer.

  8. When the market is good, push for the biggest deal possible and box competitors out.

  9. Until you’re clearly #1, your homepage should plainly list the 3 things you do better than the competition.

  10. Mass spam-style SDR cadences can actually help force a vendor into a competitive deal. But they only work when they’re timed right.

If you enjoyed these lists and want more context, make sure to follow him on Twitter and keep up with his blogs at Saastr.com.

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