Here is something I have noticed after years of helping MSPs build outbound sales programs: most of them think they know their competitors. They really don’t.
What they have is a collection of impressions:
- Some gossip from a disgruntled sales rep who used to work at the competitor down the street.
- A prospect who mentioned another MSP during a discovery call.
- A vague sense that so-and-so is “strong in manufacturing” or “mostly doing break-fix.”
That isn’t competitive intelligence; it’s hearsay.
The good news is that structured competitive research doesn’t require a spy. It requires about two hours a week and a browser.
What your competitors’ websites reveal
A competitor’s website is a documented record of what they are prepared to sell. Not what they could sell if you pushed them. What they are actively promoting, packaging, and staffing for.
Look at what’s featured on the homepage versus what’s buried three clicks deep.
If a competitor has a full-service page for managed IT but only a vague one-liner about security, that tells you something real. They’re likely reselling a security product they can’t fully support. Or they’ve added the page because someone told them they should.
Look specifically for: AI readiness offerings, compliance support (HIPAA, CMMC, SOC 2), automation services, and co-managed IT.
These are the services that show up as buzzwords on many MSP sites right now, but very few have built actual delivery capability around them. When a competitor’s “AI” page is three paragraphs of marketing copy and no mention of how they implement or support anything, that’s a gap, and you can use it.
Look at case studies and testimonials.
Which industries are represented?
A competitor with eight testimonials from dental practices is probably well-embedded in that vertical. A competitor with generic “small business” testimonials probably hasn’t niched down, which means they’re likely competing solely on price.
Those are two very different animals to go up against.
Proof points matter because they signal real capability, not marketing intent. Any MSP can say they do cybersecurity. Far fewer MSP websites feature a named client, a specific outcome, and a recognizable industry to support them.
Building a simple tracking grid
You don’t need a fancy tool for this when you’re just starting to learn. A spreadsheet works fine. Competitive analysis tools exist, and once you’ve decided that you’re invested in using analysis as a sales lever, you should explore them. For now, pick two or three local or regional competitors. For each one, track:
- Which services have full pages?
- Which services get vague mentions?
- Whether there are case studies and what industries they cover?
- How they price or position their entry-level offer?
- Most importantly, make note of what is NOT there. What offers or services are completely absent?
Then look across all of them.
What’s missing from every single one?
That’s your market gap.
Not a gap in one competitor’s offering, but a pattern across your entire market.
If nobody in your area has a structured AI readiness assessment, or nobody is talking about CMMC compliance for their manufacturing clients, that’s repeatable information you can build a sales process around.
One observation on one website doesn’t mean much. A pattern across three or four competitors means something is actionable.
From gap to sales conversation
Here’s where most people drop the ball. They do the research, identify something interesting, and then go back to asking the same generic discovery questions they’ve always asked.
What a waste.
If your competitive analysis tells you that nobody in your market is offering a structured security assessment as a starting point, you don’t open your next discovery call with “so tell me about your current IT situation.”
You open with a hypothesis. Something like: “Most of the companies we’re talking to right now have some security tooling in place, but haven’t had a formal review of whether it’s configured correctly. How often does your current IT firm provide you with proof that your business is secure?”
That’s a different conversation. It positions your MSP as an expert-level provider who knows the market, not someone reading from a script. And it gets you to the real pain faster.
Smart MSP competitors are already looking for these exact gaps on your website and these same vulnerabilities within your client base. When you do the same analysis in reverse, you’ll know how to effectively displace them without even saying one negative word about another MSP owner.
Lead with Only the Gap
This feels counterintuitive to many MSP owners. You want to win the whole account.
You want to talk about your full managed services stack, NOC, helpdesk, and vCIO offering. I understand why that feels important: for most MSPs, that’s where most of their revenue comes from.
Take it from someone who has run hundreds of targeted, competitive-displacement campaigns in the MSP space: Leading with the full stack is the hardest possible way to displace an incumbent.
Any small business owner who has changed IT providers even once knows how disruptive that action will be. Nobody is ever keen on the idea of ripping out everything they have and replacing it. They’ll be even less excited about the idea of doing this with someone they have just met.
Lead instead with the specific thing their current MSP isn’t doing for them:
- An AI readiness assessment.
- A compliance gap review.
- A security posture report.
Something narrow, low-risk, and clearly valuable that doesn’t require a full commitment – or any discussion with or co-operation from their current IT provider. The more time you have with your new prospect before they even mention your name to their incumbent provider, the better.
Get into the account.
Deliver something useful, then expand from there.The entry offer isn’t about revenue. The entry offer begins your relationship. The revenue comes after you’ve proven you can deliver.
What to do next
Set aside two hours this week.
Pick two or three competitors in your primary market.
Go through their websites using the criteria above: featured services versus buried mentions, proof points, industries served, and what’s missing entirely.
Document it in a spreadsheet. Look for the patterns. Find the one biggest gap that shows up consistently. Build one offer that addresses that gap, and one set of discovery questions that opens the conversation about it.
That’s the whole exercise.
It’s not complicated.
Your competitors are telling you exactly what they’re not prepared to sell. Their websites are right there, and you can browse them anytime you wish.
Go read them and get started on building your displacement plan. If you’d like some help learning how to displace MSP competitors, find some free, unpaywalled sales advice on the Fox & Crow Group blog.
Photo: Prostock-studio / Shutterstock
