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

March 23 @ 9:00AM PST

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Attentive VP, Product Marketing, Greg Gsell on Competitive Positioning

Top Questions

How do you create competitive intel that is really beneficial to sales (i.e. they actually read and use it)?

Greg Gsell

Attentive VP, Product Marketing • March 23

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 thos......Read More

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How do you obtain competitive intelligence on a competitor's product that has very little public-facing marketing around it?

I'm about to just call and ask them if they still sell it.

Greg Gsell

Attentive VP, Product Marketing • March 23

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 wor......Read More

476 Views

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What messaging and persona framework do you use and how much of competitive positioning do you cover in Messaging?

Greg Gsell

Attentive VP, Product Marketing • March 23

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 enti......Read More

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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?

Greg Gsell

Attentive VP, Product Marketing • March 23

'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 o......Read More

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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?

Greg Gsell

Attentive VP, Product Marketing • March 23

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 specifi......Read More

456 Views

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What are the top documents you create when working on Competitive Positioning programs?

Greg Gsell

Attentive VP, Product Marketing • March 23

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......Read More

463 Views

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What are some great examples of bold — yet tasteful — competitive positioning you've seen in the market? How can companies straddle the line without turning it into a game of finger-pointing?

Greg Gsell

Attentive VP, Product Marketing • March 23

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 struc......Read More

499 Views

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Winning NEW customers vs. Retaining EXISTING customers - which do you prioritize, and how do you drive your team based on that?

Greg Gsell

Attentive VP, Product Marketing • March 23

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 w......Read More

511 Views

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