Chapter 4: Mapping the Terrain

!TDD The Displacement Doctrine

Chapter 4: Mapping the Terrain

Plate V: Corporate Anatomy

The terrain of a displacement deal is not the server room. It is the organizational chart.

In a Greenfield sale, you need one “Yes.” In a Displacement sale, you need to survive ten “Nos.”

You are walking into a room where half the people built their careers on the legacy system you are helping them evolve. The Architect designed it. The Ops Manager maintains it. The CFO just signed the cheque for it.

To survive, you must map the terrain. You need to identify the Gatekeepers, the Skeptics, and most importantly, the Change Champion.

The Committee of No

You will face a standard cast of characters. You must have a specific strategy for each.

1. The Chief Innovation Officer (CAIO) / Digital Lead

  • The Persona: They were hired to modernize, but they are blocked by the legacy “Concrete Layer.” They are frustrated.
  • The Pitch: Speed. “We can bypass the legacy freeze and get your AI models into production in weeks, not years.”
  • Role: Your Champion.

2. The Security Gatekeeper (CISO)

  • The Persona: Their job is to say “No.” They view new vendors as new vulnerabilities. They love the Incumbent because “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM/AWS.”
  • The Pitch: Governance. “The Incumbent has sprawl; you don’t know where your data is. Use us as the ‘Air Gap’ or the ‘Sanitized Zone’ for high-risk workloads.”
  • Role: The Skeptic you must neutralize.

3. The Budget Owner (FinOps/CFO)

  • The Persona: They don’t care about latency; they care about the bill. They are terrified of “Double Paying” (paying for the Incumbent and you).
  • The Pitch: Unit Economics. “You are paying for idle capacity. We only charge for active resolution.” moving from CapEx to OpEx.
  • Role: The Deal Breaker.

Finding the “Change Champion”

In every embedded account, there is a Change Champion.

This is the person who hits the limitations of the Incumbent every single day.

  • It’s the Lead Data Scientist who can’t run their model because the GPU quota is maxed out.
  • It’s the DevOps Engineer who spends 40% of their week patching old servers.

They hate the status quo. But they have no power.

Your job is to find them and empower them. Give them the insights they need to fight the internal battle. Give them the TCO calculator. Give them the “Security Comparison” whitepaper. Write the email for them to send to their boss.

The Change Champion is your partner inside the fortress. They will tell you when the renewal is actually happening. They will tell you who is frustrated with the Incumbent.

The Stakeholder Matrix

Do not just put names in a CRM. Draw the map.

  • Who is the “Economic Buyer”? (Signs the check).
  • Who is the “Technical Validator”? (Signs off on the code).
  • Who is the “User Buyer”? (Actually uses the tool).

In a displacement, you usually win the User Buyer first (The Wedge), then the Technical Validator (De-Risking), and finally the Economic Buyer (The Contract).

If you skip the User Buyer, you are “Shelfware.” If you skip the Technical Validator, you are a “Security Risk.” If you skip the Economic Buyer, you are a “Science Project.”

You need all three.