AMA: Brex Product Marketing Lead - Spend Management, Jesse Lopez on Competitive Positioning

Simple answer: You treat your sales team like a customer.  Interview them to understand their competitive needs and challenges when articulating "value" or "differentiation" vs. competitors. Co-create internal enablement and customer-facing assets with them to ensure content adds value to their process vs. more complexity. Capture feedback on content, assets, and process by developing a sales advisory board.   Track competitive content and messaging performance by analyzing how your sales reps u ...Read More

Customer interviews are the most beneficial resource to land "how" you are different vs. competitors and "why" it matters to your customers. Instead of focusing on three research methods, I will recommend three types of interviews you should consider when researching a competitor: Switcher interviews: Interview customers who recently switched from a competitive solution to yours to understand what attracted them to your company and the key reasons for choosing your solution over the competition. ...Read More

The biggest mistake I have seen marketing teams make when trying to differentiate their products from competitors is to "differentiate" by renaming industry-accepted terms and capabilities for the sake of being different vs. showcasing what is that you offer, how are you different, and why that should matter to customers. Another mistake I have seen many companies make is to believe a feature list comparison on a website suffices to claim you are different vs. a key competitor. Most customers do ...Read More

Three types of research should inform any competitive and market intelligence program: Internal resources and intelligence, such as sales calls and win-loss analysis, are great for identifying high-level competitive and market insights. I typically use these resources to identify areas for further research (e.g., we usually lose deals to competitor X due to a specific capability gap) and differentiators to showcase in our marketing and selling motions. Publicly available resources, such as compe ...Read More