Chapter 6: The Liberation Squad

You cannot displace an incumbent with a standard sales structure.

The “One AE, One SE” pods work great when you are selling to a customer who wants to buy. But in a displacement fight, you are outnumbered. The Incumbent has an Account Manager, a Solutions Architect, a Customer Success Manager, and an Enterprise Support Lead all mapped to the account.

To win, you need a Liberation Squad.

A Liberation Squad is a temporary, high-velocity unit assigned to a specific “Must-Win” account. It has three specific roles.

The Quarterback (The AE)

This is not a “Relationship Manager.” Relationship Managers play golf. The Quarterback is a Project Manager. Displacement deals are complex engineering projects. They have timelines, dependencies, and risks. The Quarterback’s job is not to be liked; it is to keep the “Pilots” on track, to navigate the procurement maze, and to shield the technical team from “scope creep.”

However, in a Unified Pod, the Quarterback doesn’t work in isolation. They are the SE’s partner in the “Procurement Maze.” Technical friction often hides in the fine print of a contract, and a Strategic Scout should be in the room to flag when the Incumbent uses licensing terms as a defensive wall.

The POC Squad (The Makers)

In high-stakes technical selling, the “SE as a Unicorn” model fails. You cannot expect one person to be a high-level strategic advisor and a low-level implementation hacker simultaneously. It doesn’t scale.

To win, you need a POC Squad:

• The Architect (The Brain): They own the “Wedge” strategy and executive alignment. They understand the “Roots” (see Chapter 1) and navigate the technical-political terrain.
• The Implementation Specialist (The Hands): They are the shared execution force. Their job is not to give a demo; it is to spin up the environment and write the payload. They code the bridge that proves the value.

By decoupling the “Thinking” from the “Doing,” you increase your velocity and prevent engineering burnout.

The Gap Analyst (The Red Teamer)

This is the role most teams consistently miss. The Gap Analyst is the Skeptic. Their job is to find the flaws in the Incumbent’s armor.

• They read the Incumbent’s SLA fine print to find the loopholes.
• They analyze the Incumbent’s billing report to find the hidden fees.
• They ask the uncomfortable questions during the meeting: “What happens to your data if the Incumbent changes their retention policy next year? Oh, wait, they just did.”

The Strategic Scout

If you are a Manager, this is your most important lever. You cannot have your best Engineers on every deal. You will burn them out. But you must have them on the Displacement Deals.

Create a role: “Strategic Scout.”

In military terms, a scout is not deployed to win the battle; they are deployed to find the exploit. Standard field teams see the Incumbent’s “Good Enough” wall. The Strategic Scout sees the one unpatched vulnerability, the one legacy API that is leaking cost, or the one database lock that is killing performance.

They are deployed early—not to close the deal, but to find the “Wedge” that nobody else can see. When the Strategic Scout enters the room, the customer knows the architecture review is about to get real.