Ask HN: How do you really influence people in a competitive setting?

Ok, I read enough HN to know the standard and most popular response here about being "genuinely caring and honest to the other party" but really, how do you influence people into doing what you want when others are also trying to influence them? How do you get the guy in the other table to give you the contract/sponsorship/time/money etc? If you want to make this general question into a case study: Your competition who is also vying for their attention is three companies runned by psychopaths willing to say anything to get what they want, one company with an incompetent manager but has a whole lots of cash, and a company or two in China willing to copy what you did to get your future customers. For the sake of this discussion, let's say (in your opinion) your off the shelf product is better than average but unproven compared to your competitors. To counter this, your genuinely more than willing to invest in the client in making sure it works best for their system - even if means creating fully customized solutions for that client and spending major R&D funds to satisfy the client which also improves the base product. The other companies ran by the psychopaths are willing to lie to the client saying they too will spend just as much time as you but when they really aren't. The rich incompetent company is willing too but their product is less advance and they are well, dysfunctional.