AMA: Attentive VP, Product Marketing, Greg Gsell on Competitive Positioning

I try to use the Pyramid approach to all content. Start with just absolute essential information, then expand. This way sales reps are able to capture the exact right amount of information in the most efficient way possible. For example, say we are an apple company and our competition is those pesky orange growers from across town. I would structure my competitive teardown content like: * Main message Your time is valuable, don't waste it peeling an orange. Apples are ready to eat at a moment's notice * The main message has a single point of differentiation that is the most important. Repeat this message across all of your content and training so every rep knows that oranges are harder to peel. * Supporting messages The average orange takes 4 minutes to peel, that is an average of 3 hours a year for most fruit-eating adults! What could you be doing with 3 hours? Additionally, peeling oranges results in 2.7x higher finger injury rates than other fruit. * The supporting message is starting to get into detail to back up the main message with facts. We are bringing in stats (4 minutes to peel) and impact (3 hours wasted peeling). Additionally, I started with another line of differentiation with the peeling-related injuries. * The details Now go deep to back up your points, examine different use cases, etc. This is where someone can go to find what they need for a specific deal (ie "how do we differ from oranges picked by left-handed pickers", and more corner case questions. )

I think there are a couple of different docs that I would use, depending on the audience (internal, external) and the competitor (are you ahead, behind) INTERNAL resources * Feature comparisons * "Killer" features that set you apart * Common objections * Loaded discovery questions (I love these, questions your reps can use to purposefully attack a weakness) * Switch stories * Deal win stories (these are different than switch stories. Dive into how the rep positioned to overcome competitive objections) * Pricing comparisons EXTERNAL To be honest, I started writing this response with the internal vs external lens. I was always taught to take the high road when marketing externally. Your first call deck and messaging should be LOADED with differentiated features and benefits. Picking a fight publically isn't always the best idea. Better to get your reps fired up to bring the fight to each deal. The only exception is external customer testimonials. We do password protected customer interviews that we can share as references. Customers are much more likely to be blunt and honest when it is a gated asset. 

Call them! It is all fair game. Going deep on youtube and searching their exec team is also a great resource. Odds are even if they don't have public content, the CEO has spoken at a conference at some point. I always get a lot of info from new hires who came from competitors as well. You can work with recruiting and HR onboarding to create a process to ask where employees came from 

You have to pick something to focus on. Find whatever edge you can and make it seem like the biggest deal in the world. You can also talk about the sum of the parts as the narrative. Another approach is if the products are similar, go after a different audience or go bigger on one specific industry. Become THE solution for one subvertical

'I think a competitor is anyone who is in or adjacent to your space. Said another way, a competitor is a vendor that can cause confusion or slow down your sales cycle for some reason. There are a few different types of competitors: * Main competitors - the ones who you are competing with head on and can materially impact your revenue if you dont win. Spend most of your time on these. * Ankle biters - these are competitors that only impact part of your TAM. Ie a vendor who only goes after SMB. These are the ones you need to pay attention to because if you don't, all of a sudden you will be losing in that market and playing from behind. In that SMB example, plenty of competitors went after Salesforce down market in SMB then slowly crept their way up market (looking at you Hubspot). * Adjacent competitors - these are vendors who overlap part of your product functionality. They won't kill your revenue but will be annoying and slow down deals. They can also reduce the overall value of your solution if they take functionality away. * Frienemies - these are partners who you also compete with. Sometimes you have multiple products and partner on some, and compete on others. These are the trickiest relationships. Don't let down your guard, especially with your internal playbooks. Always make sure you are ready for a competitive throwdown if needed. 

Competitive positioning and messaging have to be one and the same. When you look at your decks and positioning, you need to do the gut check of "can my competitors say this" and if yes, change your messaging. You need to build competitive differentiation from the first impression through the entire sales cycle and at renewal. 

I will answer this question the total opposite way that you asked it based on something I saw this morning. I was making my son a bagel with cream cheese. The cream cheese had a logo saying "Our cows saw NOOOOO to ABCDE hormone". I am not here to comment on anything to do with farming. What struck me is right next to the logo, in LARGER FONT, was a warning saying "there is no evidence ABCDE hormone has any negative impact". I was kind of taken aback. What is the point of anchoring on this differentiation if it is totally made up and you have to state it is totally made up? As marketers you sometimes hear "don't let the truth get in the way of a good story" but in this case, they were so desperate for competitive differentiation that they fudged the truth and told you they were fudging the truth in a larger font. Don't do that. 

I have worked at two different companies and we approached it entirely differently. At the first company, we were far and away the market leader and defined the space. Here, we almost entirely focused on new logo acquisition for competition. If we won up front, we had the better product and were very sticky, plus the cost of switching vendors was very high, so the risk of churn was much lower. At my current company, we are in a highly competitive space. We are really good at new logo acquisition because we have a great trial experience and an awesome implementation team. We definitely focus on churn as much as new logo acquisition from a competitive lense. When your cost to switch is lower, businesses will often look to switch at contract renewal. It is key to make sure you are focusing on (and delivering) differentiated value and your CSMs are keeping in mind why you are better when they are speaking to their customers.