AMA: Cisco Meraki Head of Product Marketing, Grant Shirk on Competitive Positioning

This is a great one! It's also something few people do well in an interview setting. It's a bit challenging to do verbally, but if you think it through in advance, you can be prepared when the opportunity presents itself. The first thing - the success of your positioning in an interview setting is best shown through anecdotes and specific details. Just like in real life, it's very hard to say "my positioning increased our pipeline by 15%." That's a complex calculus, and not easily justifiable. I ...Read More

I feel like every organization struggles with this. Everyone (and every function) brings their own definitions and biases with them.  Here is my definition of this: Positioning: This is the combination of audience definition, problem statement, product/category definition, and unique differentiation. Ideally can be summarized in a single statement (1-2 sentences) Messaging: A structured breakdown of the key pillars of your message, focused on an audience or launch. This is a framework that is us ...Read More

This is a fun one. An aphorism we could coin here is that "Competitive battlecards are just like datasheets. Every salesperson desperately wants a new one, but nobody ever uses them."  The challenge is that most competitive intel and content is boring, too detailed to use in the moment, hard to find, and usually out of date. What that means is that great competitive intel is a content marketing problem at heart. It has to be relevant, it has to be interesting, and it has to be easy to consume. T ...Read More

There are a number of templates available online. My first recommendation is to confirm your CMO's expecation - it's rare for a CMO to *not* have a favorite format for this.  However, if they are truly asking you to build something up from scratch, there are a few basic elements you need: Target audience. Who you are trying to reach. This is both persona (multiple) and firmographic Problem and solution. What the customer's core problem is, and how your product/solution addresses it, uniquely Pos ...Read More

This is the job within the job. You're always balancing two macro audiences: External (prospects and customers) and Internal (well, all your coworkers).  I'll reiterate what I've said elsewhere today. This is all about repetition, repetition, repetition. Put your messaging and positioning frameworks in a very visible place and refer to them constantly. Have a single slide that reinforces the pillars whenever you talk to other teams. One of my favorites - for a launch brief and planning kickoff, ...Read More

It's great to see companies putting more emphasis on measuring this. It's definitely a challenge, but if competitive investments aren't measured, it's less likely they'll be appreciated or incorporated into key processes. The ideal measure of competitive intelligence is win rate. Measured on a quarterly basis (and at the close of a quarter) it can indicate if the organization is competing more effectively in qualified opportunities. It's important to note that like most PMM metrics, win rate is ...Read More

This requires a few different tactics depending on the size of your sales team. YMMV based on culture, sales leadership, enablement structure, but it's a good place to start.  One thing that's constant, though. Establish a one-stop shop for all competitive materials (Folder in sales portal, intranet page, doc, etc.) and relentlessly point people to it. Publicly, privately, etc. Wear out your Cmd-C/Cmd-V keys to paste this everywhere. Ultimately, you're building trust in your team that you know w ...Read More

Answer one: Iterate, iterate, iterate. Answer two: Yes, brand positioning and product positioning are inextricably tied.  A statement that sounds bold but shouldn't be: Product marketing should drive brand positioning. It's the why of what we do, it stems from the problems we're solving, and builds on the uniquie approach you're taking to solving the problem. Brand positoining also resonates down and drives how we build what we build, how we interact with customers, and how our product (and our ...Read More

Pricing and packaging are positioning. They're the most concrete way you are defining the value and TCO of your solution relative to the pain a customer is feeling. But it's important to remember that they're only one tool in your toolbox.  Pricing relative to competition can signal a premium product in a commoditized market. Or it can indicate a value-driven sale as a disruptor. Certainly free or freemium is the most aggressive disruptor approach (though not always the most successful).  Packag ...Read More

My primary philosophy around competitors is a little different than most: focus 80% of your energy on what makes you great as a product or service, and the rest on what anyone else is doing.  I've worked in duopoly markets (speech IVR in the contact center), highly fragmented markets (enterprise content and collaboration), and mature markets (enterprise networking). This approach works in all of them, because no matter how many competitors you have, you'll never have enough resources to properly ...Read More

I think this one just dropped in. Let's do it live! My gut reaction is: If you're being asked to do "extensive competitive research," something is broken. And you should say no, gracefully. It's very difficult, if not impossible to learn how to win in a market by looking at a competitive product from your (biased) POV.  If your CEO/founder/prouct team doesn't understand what problem they're solving for a customer and where they have a unique differentiator, you're not going to get that answer fr ...Read More

Yes, these are definitely different, but related. Product positioning: Durable, consistent framework for positioning a product or solution over the long run. Needs to account for current and future positioning.  Launch positioning: Unless it's a completely new product, this is derivative of the overall product/solution positioning. Ideally, it magnifies or highlights a subset of the overarching product positioning through the new capabilities you're introducing.  A launch is an opportunity to re ...Read More

The answer here is in the question. My approach to differentiation starts with understanding why the product or service you're responsible is uniquely suited to a specific customer. And then focus on what makes you great, not what makes others less good. Too many companies (including a few I've worked with) focus too much on the question of "how do we compete against X competitor?" This creates a backwards-looking mentality and you're always in reactive mode. I will say it's my favorite thing to ...Read More

This is highly requested, so I'll take a shot at it. But first, an acknowlegement of bias: I don't really like competitive tools that much. I find they put more emphasis on collection than utilization and understanding. Kind of like how we all can't remember anyone's phone number any more because we carry smartphones around.  Best practices and tools for determining positioning in a competitive market: 1. Understand your Tier 1 competitors' lead message and how it overlaps (or not) with yours. T ...Read More

I'll start with the assumption that this isn't a product you can personally go out and procure on your own. Hands-on is always great.  Review sites are good, and can often generate a list of targets to call for more qualitative research. My biggest piece of advice here is to always do compete research above board. Don't hide who you are or who you work for. Tell them you want to learn more, and be open about your goals. Honesty is truly the best policy.  The other thing that can work (though it ...Read More

Join the conversation. As a PMM, you should have a seat at the table in any customer conversation. You bring a different perspective to the discussion and can often ask different questions than your account exec can.  One thing that's important is to separate these customer conversations from "market research." Due to their in-depth nature, sales and customer conversations are more qualitative than quantitative. Listen, ask questions, understand their existing conditions and frustrations, and le ...Read More

Oof, tough situation. It's very hard to navigate these situations, and tougher to give advice without context into why that group might be protective. Often, if you take an open mind in and ask, you'll learn that there are good reasons for this. Then you'll have to adapt what you want to learn. (If you want, DM me with some more context and I'll try and answer 1:1).  But, I'd say if you're not getting access, the first thing to work on is that internal trust across teams. They may have been burn ...Read More

This is going to sound like a product management (not marketing) answer, but if things are truly moving that quickly -- new competitors, new use cases, new feature requirements -- the best way to stay on top of competitors is listen to your customers first. Many times, companies are too focused on what the competition is doing and forget what's most important: solving your customers' problems as effectively as possible. We had this problem at Box early on. On the surface, the market we were in h ...Read More