# **WAR TABLE STRATEGY: MASTERING MARKET AWARENESS & DESTROYING COMPETITORS**
## **The Business Battle Exercise & Market Awareness Ladder Strategy**
Every market is a battlefield, and most businesses are showing up unarmed.
They assume their customers already understand their problem, are ready to buy, and just need a gentle nudge. That’s not reality.
Customers exist on a **spectrum of awareness**, and if your messaging doesn’t meet them where they are, you’ll either confuse them or lose them to a competitor who knows how to guide the conversation better.
And speaking of competitors—why are you even letting them exist in the minds of your prospects?
At our latest **War Table Mastermind**, we sharpened two of the most lethal strategies for market domination:
1. **The Market Awareness Ladder** – A strategy designed to **control the customer journey** and systematically **move prospects from ignorance to purchase.**
2. **The Business Battle Exercise** – A ruthless, strategic drill that **exposes competitor weaknesses and neutralizes them** through precise messaging.
If you’re tired of being just another option in the marketplace and want to become the **only logical choice**, this breakdown is for you.
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# **1. The Market Awareness Ladder: Guiding Prospects with Precision**
### **Why Most Businesses Fail at Messaging**
Most founders, marketing teams, and sales leaders assume their audience already understands:
– **The problem they have**
– **The available solutions**
– **Why your offer is the best choice**
Wrong.
Your potential customers are scattered across five awareness stages, and **failing to acknowledge these stages is why many businesses struggle to convert leads into buyers.**
### **The Five Stages of Market Awareness**
1. **Unaware** – They don’t even realize they have a problem.
2. **Problem-Aware** – They feel the pain but have no clue how to solve it.
3. **Solution-Aware** – They know solutions exist but haven’t encountered yours.
4. **Product-Aware** – They’re aware of your solution but aren’t convinced it’s the best choice.
5. **Most Aware** – They’re ready to buy but need one final push.
Most marketing only speaks to the **Product-Aware and Most Aware stages**, leaving a massive chunk of potential customers untouched. That’s revenue left on the table.
**Your messaging must bridge these gaps and guide your audience from Unaware to Most Aware.**
### **How We Applied This in War Table**
We ran a **deep messaging analysis** to expose where our funnels, ads, and content were failing to move people up the ladder.
Key exercises included:
– **Identifying weak messaging gaps:** Where are potential customers disconnecting and dropping off?
– **Crafting “invalidation messaging”:** How do we position our offer as the *only viable choice* by exposing why alternatives don’t solve the real problem?
– **Strategizing content for each stage:** What content gets people to *realize* they need our solution before they even know we offer it?
### **How You Can Implement This Now**
1. **Audit your messaging:** Look at your website, ads, and emails. Are they only speaking to people who are already aware, or are you guiding prospects through awareness stages?
2. **Create content specific to each stage:**
– **For Unaware prospects:** Call out overlooked problems they don’t know they have.
– **For Problem-Aware prospects:** Educate them on why their current struggles exist.
– **For Solution-Aware prospects:** Compare poor solutions vs. effective solutions (hint: yours being the latter).
– **For Product-Aware prospects:** Hit them with differentiation—why your method is the only intelligent choice.
– **For Most Aware prospects:** Remove risk, offer undeniable proof, and close the sale.
3. **Measure and adjust:** Monitor how well your content moves people from one stage to the next. **Where’s the drop-off? Fix it.**
The businesses that **control the conversation** control the market.
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# **2. The Business Battle Exercise: Eliminating Competition with Surgical Messaging**
### **Why Competing Is Weak—You Need to Eliminate**
Most businesses waste time **comparing** themselves to the competition instead of **invalidating** them.
When you compare, you’re still playing in the same arena. **When you invalidate, you burn their arena to the ground.**
The **Business Battle Exercise** is about **positioning your offer in a way that makes competitors irrelevant.**
### **How the Exercise Works**
1. **Find your top three competitors.** Who’s taking customers that should be yours?
2. **Dissect their messaging.** What are they promising?
3. **Identify weak spots.** What are they missing? Where do they lack proof? Where do they make empty claims?
4. **Craft your invalidation messaging.**
– Call out industry-wide flaws without naming them.
– Shift those flaws into a **risk for the buyer**.
– Make your method sound like the **only intelligent choice.**
### **Example from the Session**
One of our War Table members in **fixed operations consulting** realized that most competitors were selling **“training” programs** that left clients to figure out execution alone.
**The Invalidation Message:**
🔹 “Most service advisor training programs fail because they dump information without embedding execution. We build scalable frameworks that integrate directly into your workflow, turning knowledge into real revenue increases.”
This **does three things**:
1. **Turns competitors’ offers into liabilities.**
2. **Positions the business as the safer, more effective choice.**
3. **Creates an immediate trust advantage**—because prospects now see normal training programs as **incomplete and risky.**
### **How You Can Implement This Now**
1. **List your competitors and their messaging.** What are they claiming?
2. **Uncover their biggest weak points.** Where do they promise things that customers complain about later?
3. **Turn those weaknesses into risks.** Frame their shortcomings as **fundamental flaws** that make buying from them a **bad decision.**
4. **Position your offer as the only logical solution.** Not just better—**the only viable choice.**
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# **Key Takeaways & Next Steps**
🔸 **Your business must control the customer journey.** If people don’t fully understand their problem, they won’t even recognize your solution. **Guide them.**
🔸 **Competing is weak—elimination is the strategy.** If your messaging treats competitors as viable alternatives, prospects will consider them. **Stop that. Neutralize them.**
🔸 **Every piece of content, ad, and sales call should move prospects up the Awareness Ladder.** Never assume they already understand their problem or the best solution.
🔸 **Invalidation messaging is your ultimate weapon.** **Make it so risky to choose another option that you become the only sane choice.**
Now’s the part where most mastermind recaps would say: *“If you’re ready to implement these strategies, sign up for our next session.”*
That’s weak.
**If you’re serious about dominating your market, crushing competitors, and building an unshakable brand, get to The War Table.**
We don’t do casual. We do **market warfare, strategic execution, and business domination.**
Game on. **Apply now and let’s build your empire.**