Luigi MallardoA competitor’s disruption isn’t just news. It’s a temporary GTM window. Most founders miss it. The best ones build campaigns around it.
One competitor gets acquired by a Private Equity firm and everyone knows that their new mantra will be “cost cutting”.
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Another raises a large funding round but starts burning enterprise pilots that are poorly managed and do not convert.
A third begins losing key people while product execution slows down.
Most founders read the news. Some even congratulate the team on LinkedIn for the funding or the exit. Then they move on.
I don’t.
Whenever I see a competitor losing control of its narrative, my first question is: “Which of their enterprise customers just became more willing to have a conversation?”
Good GTM leaders don’t wait for demand to arrive. They capture it in the exact moment a competitor loses control of their narrative. And that moment is not a news event. It is a window.
That window is usually short. Sometimes a few weeks. Rarely more than a few months.
Miss it, and the market resets.
Capture it, and you can accelerate deals that would otherwise have taken another year.
This is about recognising GTM windows to act on, now
There is an unspoken assumption in B2B tech that competition is a game with rules. You build your pipeline, they build theirs. You earn your deals, they earn theirs. When a competitor struggles, the polite thing is to wait your turn.
I don’t agree with that “peaceful” perspective. The market does not reward patience. It rewards presence. And the founder who is closest to the moment of vulnerability, with the right message, the right list, and the right choreography, is the one who captures the demand that was never going to come through inbound.
There are three scenarios where a competitor creates a window. Each one requires a completely different approach.
Before getting there, let’s get something clear.
I’m not talking about attacking competitors. And I’m certainly not talking about celebrating someone else’s problems.
What I’m talking about is recognising moments when the market becomes unusually receptive to change.
In reality, enterprise customers don’t wake up looking for new software or AI agent. They move when something disrupts the status quo. Competitor disruption is one of those moments.
Window #1 — Competitor Acquisition
A well-funded competitor gets acquired. Maybe by a Private Equity firm looking for financial returns. Maybe by a legacy industrial player expanding into software or AI. The press release is optimistic. The LinkedIn posts are congratulatory.
Underneath the surface, something different is happening.
The internal focus of the acquired company shifts immediately to financial hygiene, cost rationalisation, and synergies. The product roadmap freezes or slows. The sales team is distracted, uncertain about their future, and often partially replaced. The customer success teams often become the first casualties of post-acquisition chaos.
Their enterprise clients notice. Not immediately, but within a few months, the signals start appearing. Support tickets take longer. The champion who sold them the solution is suddenly unavailable. The roadmap conversation at the QBR is vague in ways it never was before.
This window lasts 60 to 120 days from the announcement. After that, the new ownership consolidates the narrative and the moment closes.
The playbook is simple and requires no creativity. Build a closed list of their top fifteen to twenty enterprise clients. No spray and pray. Precision. Identify the accounts that fit your ICP and where the timing of a conversation makes commercial sense.
The message does not attack the competitor. It acknowledges the moment.
“You’ve probably seen the news about the acquisition. These transitions usually come with a period of uncertainty around roadmap, support, and strategic focus. We’ve been through this with clients who’ve navigated similar situations. Would it make sense to have a conversation?”
You are not selling a better product. You are selling stability in a moment of operational uncertainty. That is a completely different conversation, and a much more timely one to have.
Window #2 — Onboarding Disaster
The second opportunity is shorter. And far more counterintuitive.
A competitor has raised a significant round and is deploying capital aggressively. They are signing enterprise pilot agreements they know will not convert. The pilots go live. The pilots struggle. The clients are frustrated.
The founder’s instinct is almost always the same. “Let’s wait. Let the pain accumulate. Let the contract expire. Then approach.”
That’s exactly what I challenge. Working with a CEO some months ago I used an analogy that everyone immediately understood.
Like training a puppy.
If you don’t correct behaviour at the exact moment it happens, the puppy learns the wrong pattern. Later becomes much harder.
Complex tech enterprise buying works in surprisingly similar ways. At first, customers blame the vendor. “This implementation is terrible.” A few months later, something much more dangerous happens. They stop blaming the vendor. They start blaming the category.
“AI forecasting doesn’t work.”
“Retail planning software never delivers.”
“We’ve already tried this.”
The original business problem hasn’t disappeared. Their belief has changed. And once that happens, you’ve lost far more than one opportunity. You’ve lost the category.
That’s why timing matters.
You need a list of accounts that are in or just coming out of troubled pilot phases with the competitor. Your commercial intelligence sources — a former competitor employee, a partner in the ecosystem, a client who knows other clients — are more valuable here than any database.
The message goes directly to the pain without being aggressive.
“We know what happens when companies with strong funding and limited operational depth run enterprise pilots at scale. We’ve seen it. We know what goes wrong and why. And we know how to offer a controlled path out of it.”
The pricing structure and the SOW becomes a weapon. I’ve executed that playbook several times and it works. No payment until their current contract expires. A defined exit clause at three months. A controlled, low-risk transition that removes the financial objection before it is raised.
You are not selling your software or AI agent. You are selling a way out of the pain they are feeling right now.
Window #3 — Previous Vendor Trauma
This scenario does not involve a competitor in difficulty. It involves a prospect who was burned, not by the competitor you are displacing, but by a previous vendor. Six months to one year lost. Budget burned. An integration that became a permanent war story.
The competitor is already gone. The prospect has reverted to their old status quo, but they know it’s unsustainable.
Your champion internally loves your product. The qualification is strong. The use case is perfect.
You think you have won because of the champion’s feedback. You have not.
Because the budget is not approved by your champion. It is approved by the board. And the board’s memory does not work the way your champion’s memory works.
Your champion sees: “This new vendor has better architecture, stronger support, and a track record with companies like ours.”
The board sees: “We burned six months and significant budget on the last software decision. Now someone is asking us to trust again.”
That is not a commercial objection. That is organisational trauma. And you cannot treat organisational trauma with enthusiasm.
I have watched founders lose deals at this exact moment, not because the product was wrong, not because the pricing was wrong, but because they brought promises to a board that was asking for guarantees.
The playbook here is not commercial. It is architectural.
You need an integration formal discussion. Bring a specific document or one-pager, that is contractually meaningful. You need a written exit clause. You need to show the board that you have already anticipated the scenario where this goes wrong and built a structured path out of it.
The key business conversation here is that you are focusing on de-risking their past.
If you get in front of a board that has been burned and you talk about your product, you lose. If you get in front of that same board and talk about how you have structured the engagement to protect them in case of failure, you win.
Different windows require different playbook and choreography
One of the biggest mistakes I see is treating every competitive campaign the same way.
An acquisition requires one narrative. A failed pilot requires another. A product crisis, executive departures or operational instability each require something different again.
Consequently, the triggers change. So should the choreography. One campaign, one message, one sequence is rarely enough.
The companies that consistently displace competitors are the ones that recognise buying psychology before everyone else does.
The most expensive mistake: Waiting
Recently I was working with a CEO navigating two competitor situations simultaneously. One competitor had just been acquired by an industrial player. The other was burning enterprise accounts with cheap pilots they couldn’t execute.
However, the founder’s temptation was to do just one thing: wait and see how the situations evolved.
My reaction was immediate. These are two different windows, requiring two different lists, and two completely different choreographies. Launch both campaigns asap.
Instead, waiting wasn’t reducing risk. It was wasting the window. Because the moment a competitor is vulnerable is the only moment when the market is willing to listen to you outside of a normal sales cycle. Outside of an RFP. Outside of a structured evaluation.
This founder saw the window opening and acted with operational authority, winning the first 4 customers and increasing pipeline. They built an entire campaign around it. It worked.
The wrong question
When competitors struggle, most founders ask:
“How long before they recover?”
The better question is:
Which of their customers is experiencing uncertainty today, and how quickly can we start a meaningful conversation?
Competitor disruption releases demand that was already trapped behind inertia.
The best GTM operators don’t wait for that demand to arrive.
They recognise the window.
Then, they build the right choreography.
And they move before it closes.
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Featured image: Tom Fisk