For many challengers, the real rival is a spreadsheet.

My last pieces ran the 7M Model against market leaders: Figma against Adobe, AI challengers against seat-based software. Many challengers never fight a market leader at all. They fight a spreadsheet.

Ask a founder who they compete with and you get a vendor's name. Look at where the lost deals actually went. An Excel tracker and the person who maintains it. An outsourcer billing per FTE. A feature inside the CRM or ERP they already pay for. Or nowhere at all.

Matt Dixon, co-author of The Challenger Sale, and Ted McKenna analysed 2.5 million sales conversations for The JOLT Effect. Between 40 and 60 percent of deals ended in no decision. In more than half of those, the buyer didn't prefer the status quo. They were afraid of getting it wrong.

Three questions before the first move

The 7M Model runs seven moves in order: the fortress, the dependency, the fragility, the motivation, the economics, the fork and the customer. It now starts one step earlier, with three questions about your target segment. Answer them for the roles that recur across your buyers, with your recent deals as the evidence.

1. Does the incumbent earn money from what you replace? A seat-based vendor does. A spreadsheet doesn't.

2. Is there a role at your buyers that loses control, status or credibility if it changes? The executive who signed the outsourcing deal might. So might whoever owns the spreadsheet, unless they hate maintaining it. That is what you need to find out.

3. Is there a role at your buyers that gains enough from the change, and has the authority to drive it?

A vendor that earns from the status quo will fight back, and the classic challenger moves apply. A spreadsheet won't, so you aim at the people around it.

The third question decides where you go

The third question matters whatever the first two say. If a role blocks the change, it tells you who can overrule them. If nobody blocks it, it tells you who will drive it, because free and familiar is still a strong fortress. When that role hesitates, more often than not it is fear of getting it wrong.

If nobody blocks and no role can drive it either, the segment isn't ready. No sales hire fixes that. Watch for the trigger that changes it, or move to a segment that is.

And when your deals give different answers to the same question, you are looking at two segments, not one. Split them, and ask the questions for each.

Finding the role that could decide

I once competed for a CRM deal at a large multinational. The European IT director wanted the CRM module of the ERP they already ran, and his team wrote the requirements to fit. A clear yes on the second question.

The third question opened the deal: the gain sat in sales, and the authority sat with the global IT director in the US. Their sales leadership, who had the most to gain, got me to him, and I made the case for the sales organisation. We won outside the process, with the one role that could decide.

So before you plan a single move, ask who you are really up against.