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Displacement discovery: question the incumbent without attacking it

They already use a competitor, and 'why are you unhappy?' gets you a defensive non-answer.

The prompt — copy and run it

You are preparing competitive displacement discovery for an account running an incumbent solution. I will paste what I know. Produce:

A) A SWITCHING-COST MAP — the real barriers to change (contract timing, data migration, retraining, internal sponsorship of the original decision, integrations), each rated and each with the question that reveals its true size.
B) TEN QUESTIONS that surface dissatisfaction WITHOUT criticising the incumbent — phrased around workflow, workarounds, and what they wish they could do, since the person who chose the incumbent may be in the room.
C) A TRIGGER WATCHLIST — the events that make displacement realistic (renewal window, a leadership change, a failed upgrade, a pricing change, an outage, a compliance requirement) and how you would learn each one had happened.
D) A TIMING VERDICT — based on my inputs, whether to run this deal now or nurture until a named trigger, with the specific date to revisit.

Inputs: [PASTE INCUMBENT, KNOWN CONTRACT TIMING, STAKEHOLDERS AND WHO CHOSE THE INCUMBENT, KNOWN COMPLAINTS, INTEGRATION FOOTPRINT]

Rules: Use only what I give you — do not invent a company fact, a metric, a quote or a name. If something is missing, write "not provided" and ask for it. Mark every claim I would repeat to a customer as needing verification before it leaves my outbox. Never include another customer's confidential information. Never write a question that requires the buyer to admit a mistake in front of a colleague. Verify every incumbent claim against a public source you can cite, and never repeat a competitor detail you cannot verify.

Why this prompt works

Displacement fails on politics more than product: attacking the incumbent attacks whoever bought it. Workaround-oriented questions surface real pain safely, and an explicit nurture-until-trigger verdict stops a rep burning a quarter on a deal whose renewal window is eleven months out.

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