AMA: Atlassian Head of Core Product Marketing & GTM, ITSM Solutions, Daniel Kuperman on Competitive Positioning

The biggest mistake is to focus on what the competitor does versus what the customer cares about. Don't start with what the competition is doing or not doing, start with what specific customer needs are not being met by the current players, and find better ways to serve them. Another common issue is to be too reactive to the competition and following competitors into whatever new shiny thing they believe will give them an edge. Again, looking at what the customer wants and why they want it will give you a better competitive edge. A great way to do this is by using a jobs-to-be-done framework to identify current and future market needs. Finally, many companies try to be the best in all markets for all customers and look at their competition as "every company that does X". If you try to be the solution for everyone, you end up being good at nothing... focus on a particular market with specific players and find your edge there, before venturing elsewhere.

Competitive differentiation is, first of all, a positioning exercise that means finding ways to influence the customer's perception of your company and product versus existing alternatives. This means not only what your direct competitors (other vendors) are, but what other ways of getting the customer's job done there are. You might have a powerful new financial app but if the customer is used to Excel and, well, it's kinda free if you have MS Office, then are you considering Excel a competitor? So, the approach to take is: 1. Map all competing vendors and alternatives; 2. Identify the customer's "job-to-be-done" and which areas your product help with; 3. Map how competitors approach the same jobs and what are their strengths; 4. Interview customers to find out what matters the most to them; 5. Identify your "value wedge", i.e. the customer need that your product solves but competitors don't or don't do as well as you do.

This is tricky, especially if you are a startup or strapped for cash. I have reached out to people via Linkedin asking for help to validate a specific product or feature and have also seen other companies to the same. If you have the budget, hire an outside market research firm to help with it. Another good way is to leverage your channel partners (if you have any) because they can put you in touch with people that match your ICP and who might be more interested in helping because a trusted partner asked them to!

We are always looking at the competition and assessing their moves. Having said that, we don't obsess about it. This means there's gotta be a balance between what the market is doing vs what your own plans should be. Too much outside focus and you are just copying and following someone else, but only internal focus means you lose touch with reality. Each market is different, so the amount of time you spend on competitive analysis will vary a lot. I've been at startups where the market was very new and dynamic so we had to do monthly competitive analysis and deep feature comparison constantly because all vendors were super fast in releasing new functionality. At another company I worked at, they came to a mature market as the disruptors of incumbent solutions, and so quarterly or semi-annual competitor analysis was a good pace because the large, incumbent vendors, were not moving very quickly. My recommendation is the following: * Figure out who your top 3 to 5 competitors are; * Identify their release cycles (you can see this via press releases, etc.); * Establish an initial cadence for competitive analysis, let's say quarterly; * Adjust as needed.

If you see different competitors by industry, then yes. At a previous company we realized that when we expanded into different industries (e.g. going from Tech to Healthcare), the competitive landscape changed somewhat. By doing a win/loss analysis we figured out that most deals that we lost, were 80% of the time going to a vendor we had never heard before. As we dug into it, we realized that the vendor had its origins in the healthcare space and since inception had never ventured out of that industry so it was not surprising we were completely unaware of them. As we interviewed customers, we then discovered why they were successful, how customers used them, what they liked and disliked about the vendor and we crafted a different competitive positioning for that particular market. So as you venture to other industries is important to take stock of the players there and possibly create new messaging, positioning, pitch decks, demos, etc. that match the expectations of your customers.

1. Talk to customers: they will tell you why they evaluated different vendors and what they liked/disliked about them; 2. Talk to channel partners: they have a deep understanding of the market and the other vendors; 3. Talk to analyst firms: they have seen all the major players and know them well and can help you identify their strengths and weaknesses. You noticed that I did not mention "do internet research" but that's a given... competitor websites, support portals, and more can be great sources of competitive data that you can get for free if you are good with search keywords. I have uncovered landing pages for promotions a competitor was not broadly announcing; have watched sales demos from competitors, and found detailed pricing proposals just by being creative with Google keyword searches.

In the traditional B2B Tech world, my experience has been that you need several ways to disseminate your competitive positioning: * Sales battle cards for your field sales teams and channel partners easily reference; * Training sessions to go over key competitive differentiation and review your value prop; * Self-service short videos where you go over competitors and how you win; * Create a dedicated competitive channel in Slack or MS Teams where field teams can come for information and ask questions; * Regular enablement sessions where you give field teams a refresher on your competitive positioning; * Share via email, Slack/Teams, new competitive win stories highlighting customer quotes that reinforce your positioning.

For me the term 'market intelligence' is more broad, signifying not only what your direct competitors are doing but also where the market in general is headed. For example, in a market intelligence report, I would expect to see information about customers' priorities and needs, new technology entering the market, and changes in behavior by geography, to name a few. In competitive intelligence, you focus more on the specific vendors in your market and how they are moving, what they are planning, and how these things may impact your own plans for product launches, etc.

The first source I would go for is your own customers. If you have a CAB (customer advisory board), that's a perfect forum for finding competitor intel. It is likely that your direct competitors are all still marketing to your own customers in hopes of winning them from you. Your customers could share which vendors they are hearing more from, and which ones have been quiet lately. Your customers can also share if they have seen competitor demos and what they liked or disliked about what the competitor showed. When I worked at another company, I had some loyal customers that would forward to us competitor emails to show what some vendors were telling them or how they were trying to lure them away from us. If you have channel partners, they can be a good source of competitive intel as well and share with you which vendors they have seen more active in both marketing and also in competitive sales situations. Trade shows are another good source of competitive intel gathering. Now that the pandemic is over and in-person events have come back, you can stop by a competitor booth and talk to the team there, get product literature, and even watch a demo (note: always disclose who you are and who you work for). As people come to your company's own booth you can also ask them what other vendors they visited and if they mention a competitor you can ask them what they liked/disliked about them in comparison to your own offerings, this is a great way to get some good intel.

Good question. In my experience, the best way to prioritize competitive insights is to show there's a clear connection between the work and business results. This often comes in the form of improved win rate for the sales team, better messaging for the marketing team, prioritization of product features, and higher ranking in analyst reports, to name just a few. Something to consider is creating a table in a Google Doc or similar in which you list all the deliverables or types of insights you will be gathering in one column and in the column next to it you identify which areas are impacted and why. For example: a) Competitive battle cards --> helps sales to better position us in competitive situations and win more deals; b) Competitive messaging reviews --> assists the marketing team in updating our website and competitive landing pages, also helps the content team in their planning process; c) Competitor feature take-down --> used by the product team to prioritize roadmap items; etc...

Most of my experience has been with SaaS but I did work for a software company in the backup and disaster recovery space which had a hardware component as well and so did competitors. In that case, we leveraged our channel partners, who were very familiar with the industry and had previously sold competing products to get intel on what other vendors were charging. We also reached out to customers and asked about their experience with competing products and how our solution was priced comparatively. We also leveraged industry analysts and asked them to review our pricing structure. Although analysts will not disclose the price of your competitors, they can give you an idea of whether you are pricing below, the same, or above the competition.

The key rule of thumb is to always be truthful. Don't lie about who you work for, your role with the company, and what you are looking for. For example: * When filling out an online web form to download content from a competitor's website, use your real name and business email address. * When approaching a competitor's booth at a trade show, disclose who you are and who you work for. * Don't ask anyone else to misrepresent their intentions so that you can get eyes on a competitor's product or get insider information. * When interviewing former employees of a competitor, remind them to not disclose confidential or proprietary information.

The best advice I can give is to not throw everything including the kitchen sink into a competitive battle card. I've seen competitive intel of 5+ single space pages given to sales teams and you can guess how many people actually read it. When preparing competitive intel for sales, keep in mind that sales teams are typically looking for the following: * Why is this competitor participating in the sale in the first place? * How does the competitor address customer needs? What do they do well and what are they lacking? * How is our solution different in the ways in which we solve customer needs? * What other customers have chosen our solution vs the competitors? If you keep it concise (1 page) and to the point (short sentences), addressing the questions above, the sales team will thank you. Notice that you don't necessarily need to show: * how the competitor is priced: don't worry, the customer will tell you that. * all the features the competitors has: don't worry, the customer will bring it up to see how you compare. * the history of the competitors' products and company: not relevant to most deals. One other thing that typically helps is to provide sales what is your competitive positioning in 2 situations: 1. What is your positioning for when you are dislodging an incumbent; 2. What is your positioning for when you are competing against a new customer; Your pitch may vary depending on how you are entering the competitive deal.