Prompt Playbook: Leapfrogging Competitors using AI PART 5

Hey Prompt Entrepreneur,

So here you are, sitting with pages and pages of competitive research. Screenshots of sales pages, email sequences, ads, customer reviews, testimonials. Your AI project is bursting with intelligence. The CIA/M15 would be proud of you!

Your instinct right this second might be: "I need to build something that has everything they have, plus more features, minus the complaints, and maybe throw in some bonuses too."

Stop right there.

This is the first impulse. But it ain’t the right impulse.

Look at PayPal and Stripe. In 2010, PayPal was the undisputed king of online payments. No-one could touch them. Massive market share, hundreds of features, global reach, trusted by millions. Hell it was (and is) integrated into eBay.

Then Stripe launched with... seven lines of code.

That's it. While PayPal required complex integration, merchant accounts, and days of setup, Stripe let developers accept payments with seven lines of code they could implement in minutes.

Stripe didn't out-feature PayPal. Quite the opposite. They out-focused them. And PayPal, the incumbent giant, got completely disrupted by this "simpler" solution.

Today I'll show you how to use all your research to develop multiple leapfrog approaches—then systematically choose the one that can make your competitor's offer feel outdated.

Let’s get started:

Might Morphin’ Time

You've now got:

• Their complete offer structure (Part 2)

• Their marketing and persuasion tactics (Part 3)

• What customers actually experience (Part 4)

The temptation is to build something that has everything they have, minus the complaints, plus extra features. That's how you end up with a bloated offer that's impossible to deliver and confusing to sell. More is not better.

Instead, we're going to be strategic. Based on your intelligence, you'll typically pursue one of these angles:

1. The Focus Play Strip away everything except what customers actually value. If reviews show 80% of results come from 20% of the content, build the 20% and make it exceptional.

Example: They have 52 modules. You have 8 that get better results.

I was chatting to a founder who just exited his company for $3.5M. He ran a community for years that hinged on live webinars with various experts. He thought they were the key to success. But in 2024 he killed the live lectures off and… no-one cared. They were not what the community genuinely valued. Don’t assume anything - we want to focus in on what customers genuinely value

2. The Format Shift Same transformation, completely different delivery. They do self-paced? You do cohort. They do group? You do 1-1. They do video? You do text. They want the customer to do the work? You do a Done-For-You service.

Example: They sell a course on Facebook ads. You sell a service that implements Facebook ads.

3. The Support Differential If reviews consistently mention lack of support, make support your cornerstone. If they complain about too many Zoom calls, go async. Change the “touch level” to fit what the customers are looking.

Example: They offer "lifetime access." You offer "90 days of intensive implementation."

4. The Depth vs Breadth Play They go wide? You go deep on one specific outcome. They go deep? You create the "essentials only" version.

Example: They teach "everything about AI." You teach "AI for accountants' daily workflows."

Your Leapfrog Strategy Development

Now it's time to transform your intelligence into strategy. We'll explore all four approaches systematically, then let AI help you choose the best path. Plus mix in your own judgement of course!

First Prompt: Generate All Four Strategies

Use a reasoning model if available. Use all your existing Project work and run this prompt:

Based on all the competitive intelligence I've gathered, create four distinct leapfrog strategies. For each strategy, develop a complete brief:

STRATEGY 1: THE FOCUS PLAY
Design an offer that strips away everything except what customers value most. Make it 80% less but 10x better.

STRATEGY 2: THE FORMAT SHIFT  
Same transformation, completely different delivery method. If they're self-paced, consider cohort. If they're group, consider 1-1. If they're course, consider done-for-you.

STRATEGY 3: THE SUPPORT DIFFERENTIAL
Make support your core differentiator based on what customers say is missing. This could mean more support OR less support but better designed.

STRATEGY 4: THE DEPTH VS BREADTH PLAY
If they go wide, go deep on one outcome. If they go deep, create the essentials version.

For each strategy brief, include:
- Core positioning statement
- Specific target customer
- What's included (and what's NOT)
- Key differentiator
- Price point rationale
- Why this beats the status quo
- Main risk to consider

Use all intelligence from the project to inform each strategy. Make each brief compelling and distinct.

Second Prompt: Strategy Evaluation

Start a fresh chat in your Project (no preconceptions) and use this prompt:

I have four potential strategies for a new offer in the [your market] space. Please evaluate each objectively and rank them by market attractiveness.

[Paste all 4 strategy briefs]

Evaluate each strategy on:
1. Market demand (based on complaints/desires mentioned)
2. Competitive differentiation 
3. Delivery complexity
4. Scalability potential
5. Risk level

Rank them 1-4 with detailed reasoning. Which would you bet on succeeding and why?

Then suggest which type of entrepreneur would best suit each strategy (resources, personality, expertise needed).

Importantly we are giving the model multiple options and asking it to assess them all. If we were to simply give it one option and ask “is this a good idea?” then guess what: it would probably say yes! AI is agreeable and wants to make us happy.

By providing all of our strategies and asking it to give a comparative assessment we can get a more objective take.

Testing Your Positioning

OK! We’ve come a long way and now have a strategy to roll with.

It’s worth remembering that this is the outcome of stripping down a successful competitor offer and rebuilding the best practices into something new.

Before you build anything, you need to validate that your angle resonates. This isn't about perfecting your offer—it's about proving demand for your specific approach.

I've written entire Playbooks on testing and validation. Here are the essentials:

The Smoke Test Create a simple landing page with your positioning. Run $100 in ads. Are people more interested in your angle than the incumbent's?

The DM Test Message 20 people in your target market with your positioning. Do they immediately get why yours is different/better?

The Presale Test If you get interest, offer founding member pricing. Even 3-5 sales prove people will pay for your approach.

You're not testing features here—you're testing whether your positioning resonates. Does "learn by doing, not watching" get people excited? Does "90 days of intensive implementation" beat "lifetime access"?

We can test all of this via the marketing rather than the full product. Do so before building the product out!

Your Build Strategy

Once validated, you have three paths for execution:

Path 1: Full Delivery Build exactly what you positioned. If you promised "8 focused modules," deliver exactly 8. Honour your differentiation precisely. Follow this route if you can build the offer quickly. If it’s going to take months do not do this! Move faster using one of the other paths.

Path 2: MVP Approach Deliver the core transformation first, add the bells and whistles later. Strip the offer back to its essence and deliver that. If it works then flesh it out.

Path 3: Beta Co-Creation Run a founding cohort where you build with your first customers. This works especially well for support-differentiated offers where you're still figuring out the optimal format. I’ve written an entire Playbook on the cohort launch method.

Your competitive intelligence tells you what to avoid. Your validation tells you what resonates. Your build strategy brings it to life. Move through these step by step rather than jumping immediately to a lengthy and costly build!

What's Next?

You now have a complete system for competitive intelligence and offer design. But knowing and doing are different beasts.

Your next step: Pick ONE competitor's ONE offer and run this process. Give yourself a week to complete all five Parts.

The market is full of "me too" offers. Yours won't be one of them.

Keep Prompting,

Kyle

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