Mastering the sales in highly competitive situations

In today's highly competitive marketplace, selling is becoming more and more challenging to most sales organizations.  The number of players is increasing everyday, the competition is getting fierce and severe, differntiators are vague and vanishing,  profit margins are continuously shrinking, ....

In this atmosphere,  the best recommendation is for every business to identify and focus on its target customers who really need/appreciate the offerings (products, services, solutions, systems, ...) these businesses have.

Furthermore, I would highly recommend every business entity to do a factual and honest assessment of its competitive status internally with some well-known and appreciated criteria in mind.   I may go further in detail, but unfortunately, the details vary considerable from one business entity to another, from one industry to another, and from one target market/territory to another. 

Secondly, business entities need to know and understand their target customers.  I am not saying that you should do this to all your customers. this is not possible.  So let us focus on the 20% of your customers that bring 80% of the business.  This is where the exercise proves its best value.

Thirdly, you need to repeat this honest and factual assessment for your "offerings portfolio" and see which ones really deserve your highest attention.

Last but not least, you need to do this kind of exercise for your top-3 or top-5 competitors for your "key" offerings and for your "key" customers/markets.

Need more ideas to implement this suggestion ???