Why is developing a differentiation pitch important?

That’s a good question and you might be right. I’m sure it depends on how competitive your space is. If users best understand what you do by anchoring to the market leader, e.g. “salesforce without the bad UI” then yes your standard pitch probably has differentiation baked in. Or if your market is very well established and extremely crowded with no clear leader, your top line positioning will also require differentiation “The only BI tool that unites your whole team.”

But if your market is still small, and has a few equally weighted competitors, your top line should spend more time focusing on convincing the buyer why this way of doing work even matters. You’re still selling the problem, not the solution. In this situation I can see why your team might want a slightly more in depth differentiation pitch, when a prospect gets past the “why” stage to the “how.”