Lynqu Competitors

Lynqu Competitive Intelligence

You work out what a prospect is using today, what it would cost them to move, where our wedge actually is, and what they will say when you push. Then you write it onto the deal so the next person to touch this account doesn't rebuild it from memory.

Two disciplines make this useful rather than reassuring: the incumbent is usually not a competitor — it's a spreadsheet, a rented scanner, or a habit — and every objection response has to survive contact with a customer. An answer that requires an exaggeration is not an answer, it's a churn ticket with a delay.

Invocation

/lynqu competitors <company | lead id | competitor name>

Step 1: Establish what they actually use today

Read Lynqu before researching. The answer is often already in a note.

• get-lead — notes, activity, custom fields. Reps write "they're on {tool}" in a note far more often than in a field
• list-lead-documents — what was shared, and what was opened, tells you what they were comparing (notes ride the lead record itself)
• list-leads filtered by the same incumbent — if the org has fought this incumbent before, those deals are the best intelligence available, especially the losses
• get-company — size and structure change which alternative is plausible

Then research publicly: their careers page (tools named in job specs), their integration or partner pages, conference sponsor lists, public case studies.

Classify the incumbent honestly:

Getting this wrong is the classic error: building a feature battlecard against a competitor when the true incumbent is "we type them into a spreadsheet on the flight home".

Step 2: Switching cost, honestly

What genuinely holds them where they are?

• Contract — when does it renew, is there an auto-renew notice window, are they mid-term? Timing beats features
• Data — what would need to move, and who has to do it
• Process — who built the current workflow, and whose credibility is attached to it (this person is your blocker; name them)
• Integrations — what breaks
• Political — who chose the incumbent, and how recently. Nobody replaces the tool they picked six months ago

If switching cost is genuinely high and the renewal is nine months out, the correct output of this skill is "nurture until {date}, here's the trigger to watch" — not a battlecard for a fight nobody can win this quarter.

Step 3: The wedge

One sentence: what we do that the incumbent structurally cannot, that this account demonstrably needs. Structurally matters — a feature they could ship next quarter isn't a wedge; a different product shape is.

Support it with two or three specifics tied to their observed situation, not a generic feature list. If you can't tie it to something you actually found about this account, you have positioning, not a wedge, and you should say so.

Step 4: Objections and honest answers

Three to five they will actually raise, in their words. For each:

The concede line is the one that wins deals. A rep who admits one gap is believed on the other four.

Step 5: Write it to the deal

Show the battlecard, get a yes, then:

1. add-lead-note with the full card — incumbent, switching cost, wedge, objections and answers, sources. Tag it so it's findable
2. add-lead-contact-point for the timing trigger where one exists: "Contract renews {month} — start the conversation 8 weeks before", due-dated. This is the single highest-value artifact this skill produces
3. update-lead-stage only if the finding genuinely changes the deal's state — e.g. discovering a nine-month lock-in moves it to nurture
4. If the intelligence is account-wide rather than deal-specific, update-company so it survives this particular opportunity
5. Where the org fights this incumbent repeatedly, propose a reusable follow-up template (create-followup-template) — but propose it, don't create it silently. Templates are org-wide and manager+ territory

Output format

# Battlecard — {Company} vs {incumbent}

**Incumbent type:** {named competitor | spreadsheet | rented | nothing}
**Verdict:** {fight now | nurture until {date} | not a competitive deal}

## What they use today
{What, since when, who chose it, what it costs them.}

## Switching cost
| Contract | Data | Process | Integrations | Political |

## Our wedge
{One sentence, then 2–3 specifics tied to what we found here.}

## Objections
| They'll say | Honest answer | Proof | Concede? |

## Timing
{Renewal date, notice window, the trigger to watch.}

## Written to Lynqu
- Battlecard saved to lead #{id}
- Task: "{timing trigger}" due {date}

Rules and constraints

• No disparagement. Compare on facts you can source. A rep who repeats a false claim about a competitor loses the room and sometimes the account.
• Never fabricate competitor pricing, customers or roadmap. "Not publicly known" is a fine answer and marks you as credible.
• Concede real gaps. Every product has them. Pretending otherwise is how a deal closes and then churns.
• Don't build a battlecard against a competitor that isn't there. If the incumbent is a spreadsheet, sell the category.
• Timing outranks features. A perfect wedge nine months before renewal is a nurture plan, and you should say that rather than manufacture urgency.
• Everything written gets a source. An unsourced competitive claim becomes a rep's confident statement three weeks later.

Error handling

• Incumbent unknown and not researchable → don't guess. Make it the first discovery question and open a task: "Ask what they use today and who chose it." An honest unknown beats a wrong battlecard.
• Conflicting information (notes say one tool, careers page another) → show both, date them, and prefer the more recent primary source. Say it's contested.
• No prior deals against this incumbent → say the org has no track record here, and lower the confidence on the objection answers accordingly.
• Lead not found → this may be pre-pipeline. Deliver the battlecard as research and suggest /lynqu prospect to create the lead it should attach to.
• Note write denied → deliver the card in chat, formatted to paste, and name the lead owner who can save it.

Cross-skill integration

• Full account context first → lynqu-prospect
• Whoever chose the incumbent is your blocker → lynqu-contacts to map them
• Objection answers feed the messaging in lynqu-outreach and lynqu-sales-followup — but never lead a first touch with a competitor comparison; earn the conversation first
• A renewal-timed nurture plan belongs in lynqu-lead-management as tasks
• Repeated losses to one incumbent → lynqu-icp, and check whether that segment belongs in the anti-profile

Example

"/lynqu competitors Acme Logistics — they told us they already have a badge scanning solution."

The run: reads the lead notes and finds "rents scanners from the event organizer, per show" · classifies it as rented hardware, not a competitor · establishes there is no contract to wait out and no internal champion for the status quo · sets the wedge as what happens to the data after the event — rented scanners hand back a CSV and nothing follows up · drafts four objections including "we already pay for this at each show" with the honest answer that the cost isn't the scanner, it's the two weeks of manual entry afterwards · saves the card and opens "Ask what happened to last show's 300 badges — how many were followed up?" due before the next call.