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Alex McDonnell

AMA: Airtable Market & Competitive Intelligence Lead, Alex McDonnell on Competitive Positioning

September 20 @ 10:00AM PST
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Airtable Market & Competitive Intelligence Lead, Alex McDonnell on Competitive Positioning
Top Questions
What metric, goal or KPI can you put on providing competitive intelligence to the company or product teams?
I work in a company that measures the impact of all projects, but admittedly this is a difficult area to track. Would love to any suggestions/thoughts.
Alex McDonnell
Alex McDonnell
Airtable Director, Compete & Partner Marketing • September 21
For the Sales side, you can look at: - competitive win/loss rates - win rates of deals that used competitive support or resources vs. did not - ultimately, market share over time But for the Product teams or overall company distribution of intelligence, it's tough, because it's not as close......Read More
549 Views
5 requests
What constitutes a competitor, and what is the goal you have in mind when you conduct competitor analysis?
What is your philosophy when it comes to competitors?
Alex McDonnell
Alex McDonnell
Airtable Director, Compete & Partner Marketing • September 21

The goal of our work is to help our company build and express our competitive differentiation. A competitor is anyone who has a similar value prop for the same audience. Not necessarily the same solution. Even if a customer could feasibly use both, we might still be "competing!"

401 Views
2 requests
What's your approach to competitive differentiation?
How does this inform your core messaging, how do you enable sales to understand what makes you different/better, how do you know if it's working with your target buyers?
Alex McDonnell
Alex McDonnell
Airtable Director, Compete & Partner Marketing • September 21
Our competitive differentiation is central to our overall company/product positioning. They're almost the same thing. We have a high-level view of our position in the market vs other categories of tools, and a deeper view of the specific capabilities that make us unique.  Enabling sales is a c......Read More
765 Views
2 requests
What is the difference between messaging and positioning?
Alex McDonnell
Alex McDonnell
Airtable Director, Compete & Partner Marketing • September 21

For me:

Positioning: overall strategy of who we serve and how we do it better than the other major options

Messaging: language and themes we use to communicate Positioning.

And for good measure, Copy: exact words that appear on marketing assets, informed by Messaging.

447 Views
2 requests
How often do you talk to customers, or do qualitative + VOC research?
Is it continuous or at specific campaigns?
Alex McDonnell
Alex McDonnell
Airtable Director, Compete & Partner Marketing • September 21
All the time, through a mix of continuous and specific pointed research. Our Research teams owns some always-on research work such as our NPS survey or Brand Tracking survey, which often have competitive insights. For win/loss, I've taken both approaches. Currently we only use that research type ......Read More
433 Views
3 requests
How do you systematically organize & update your competitive intel when there's so much new information that can flow in every day?
Alex McDonnell
Alex McDonnell
Airtable Director, Compete & Partner Marketing • September 21
Web tracking tools like Crayon and Klue help us curate intel from the web, and Slack gives us a constant feed of discussion where people around the company share insights.  But what holds it all together and prevents it from feeling overwhelming is having our durable view of our competitive di......Read More
975 Views
3 requests
Relying on narrative differentiation is obviously essential when products are essentially the same across you and your competitor set, but it's also a tough thing to do? Any advice?
Alex McDonnell
Alex McDonnell
Airtable Director, Compete & Partner Marketing • September 21
The narrative is a huge part of positioning. That's what frame your product's actual capabilities and determines which criteria are relevant or irrelevant. That said, I don't quite accept the view that we just have to cope with a world where our products are the same as competitors :) For sure, t......Read More
459 Views
4 requests
What are the top documents you create when working on Competitive Positioning programs?
Alex McDonnell
Alex McDonnell
Airtable Director, Compete & Partner Marketing • September 21
- Market Map: Overall visual landscape of our competition. Where does everyone play, where are they moving? - Battlecards: Tells Sales/CS what to say when delivering competitive positioning to customers. - Product deep dives: Visual packages for Product teams to help them determine where our op......Read More
1852 Views
4 requests
How do you enable sales in deals where competitors say they have the same functionality as you, but do not?
Alex McDonnell
Alex McDonnell
Airtable Director, Compete & Partner Marketing • September 21

Use "trap setting questions." Craft a question for the customer to ask your competitor that will expose the lacking functionality. In extreme cases you could send a video showing that the competitor doesn't do what they say. good luck!

1079 Views
1 request
Where do you typically uncover the most competitive insights? What frameworks do you use to get clarity on the competitive position?
Alex McDonnell
Alex McDonnell
Airtable Director, Compete & Partner Marketing • September 21

Win/loss interviews have consistently been one of our richest sources. Also, plugging into active deals where we support the sales team (we use Gong and CRM to get alerts on which competitive deals we should help with).

1029 Views
2 requests