{"id":47235,"date":"2026-08-06T16:03:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T16:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/?p=47235"},"modified":"2026-08-06T16:03:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T16:03:20","slug":"the-advantages-of-the-incumbent-vendor-part-3-leveraging-the-investment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/the-advantages-of-the-incumbent-vendor-part-3-leveraging-the-investment\/","title":{"rendered":"The Advantages of the Incumbent Vendor \u2013 Part 3: Leveraging the Investment!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once your solution is in production use, the appetite for your customer to repeat their selection and implementation experiences (see Parts 1 and 2) is typically very low. Reinforce and leverage this! During renewal and expansion discussions, remind your customer that all of these steps are already done<\/em> (and don\u2019t have to be duplicated, as would be the case for a new vendor).<\/p>\n

You customer doesn\u2019t have to climb that mountain again; they don\u2019t have to face freezing winds and oxygen deprivation (in the form of excruciating presentations, demos, and other vendor activities). They can enjoy the rewards of that journey without reexperiencing the pain!<\/p>\n

Furthermore, any competitor that tries to displace you hasn\u2019t even defined a plan<\/em> for their proposed expedition, as far as your customer is concerned. You are in a competitively advantageous position.<\/p>\n

Important Caveats<\/strong><\/p>\n

However, here are very important assumptions for the above to remain true:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Your customer achieved their Value Realization Events and is tracking well on the path to full ROI or has already achieved it (see page 110 in the paperback version of Doing Discovery<\/em><\/a> for more on Value Realization Events).<\/li>\n
  2. You have regular meetings with your customer via your account management and\/or customer success teams, so you are aware of any issues your customer is facing with your product or implementation (and have concrete plans to address them).<\/li>\n
  3. You regularly discuss product roadmaps with your customer to head off competitors\u2019 \u201cnew and improved\u201d offerings and capabilities. Your objective is to stay \u201cahead\u201d of the competition, with respect to functionality, or to minimize any perceived negative functionality gap between your offering and competitors\u2019.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Roadmap discussions are also opportunities to bind your customer more closely to you, by giving them more \u201cweight\u201d in the feature\/function definition, prioritization, timing, and implementation processes. Interactions with colleague companies at users\u2019 group meetings help reinforce this.<\/p>\n

    In our expedition analogy, this last item is similar to discussing future<\/em> excursions, encouraging your customer to participate in decisions about desired destinations, routing, daily travel distances, food and beverage choices, and sleeping arrangements. They enjoy a growing amount of ownership in the process and the results.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Resources:<\/p>\n

    Parts 1 and 2<\/p>\n

    https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/blog\/<\/a><\/p>\n

    The Incredible Value of Value Realization Events<\/p>\n

    https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/the-incredible-value-of-value-realization-events\/<\/a><\/p>\n

    Doing Discovery<\/p>\n

    https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Doing-Discovery-Important-Enablement-Processes\/dp\/B0B8RJK4C2\/<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Once your solution is in production use, the appetite for your customer to repeat their selection and implementation experiences (see Parts 1 and 2)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47234,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-47235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advanced_topics","tag-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47235"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47237,"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47235\/revisions\/47237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatdemo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}