AMA: Cisco Product Marketing Leader, Elizabeth Grossenbacher on Competitive Positioning

Competitive positioning should not be “seen” in the market. The positioning is meant to be an internal guidepost for your own company. However, your marketing team may want to leverage your competitive positioning to create competitive takeout campaigns. Here are a few excellent examples of that:    Competitive landing pages that target competitor customers. These landing pages are highly targeted, with high quality content. They should articulate your value and differentiator. Bonus points for ...Read More

Customer interviews! Happy customers are very willing to spend time with PMMs and share what they have learned about competitors.  Listening to sales calls. In addition to sitting on calls, I love tools like Gong where I can use AI to quickly access insights! Plus, it’s hard to make time to sit in on calls. Using tools like Gong can help you get the research done faster.  Sales data. Use reports from whatever tools your sales team uses (i.e., Salesforce reports). From here, you can see which com ...Read More

Here are my top 3 go-to's for this one... Recruit a top salesperson to record some sound bites leveraging your positioning. Take the recording and make it available on your sales enablement database. Email the link with a blurb to salespeople. You could also include this in any internal monthly emails that go out to salespeople.  Present your positioning at sales kick-off event (typically at the start of the fiscal year). Hold a meeting where you present it to salespeople and invite them to atte ...Read More

There are many reasons why a price war could happen, and without more context into the market/players, it would be hard for me to say. It’s true that for nearly all transactions in the B2B world, budget is a top priority for buyers. That doesn’t mean it should come down to price. At various organizations I’ve been at (Cisco, Twilio, and a few start-ups), we have won multiple competitive deals while having a premium-priced product. When we won despite being the more expensive product, it’s becaus ...Read More

Competitive analysis should be a priority in the following environments:  When you’re actively losing market share or your win-loss rate is decreasing.  When your sales team is struggling and having head-on battles with competitors to win deals.  When prospects are asking about the difference between your product and a competitor’s… and your sales team can’t answer it.  When your company is looking to expand into a new market and you need to know which competitors may already be in that space.  ...Read More

First, take a step back and understand why you would need to participate in AR activities. Is it for PR? Product validation? Make sure you partner with your AR/PR team to align on the strategy for how you intend to leverage analyst relations and reports from these firms. If market/product validation is your goal, here are some approaches to consider: Engage directly with these firms to explore opportunities. Analyst firms have other reports they use in industries where there is no Wave or MQ. I ...Read More

I’ve seen product teams and sales teams get so beaten down by focusing too much on competitors. Here are the top 3 biggest mistakes I’ve seen.  Companies get too caught up in feature comparison. The value is totally lost here. What to do? Ensure your sales team has a competitive positioning story that articulates HOW your product provides value and WHY this is better for customers in the long run. Sales teams talk too much about competitors and not enough about their own product’s value to the c ...Read More

Market intelligence + competitive intelligence = a full picture of how your organization fits in a market.  Market intelligence is tells us what's driving decisions, actions, and budgets for customers. Think about it like supply and demand, and what is driving the demand or supply. Market intelligence helps define the GTM strategy or informs a marketing plan. Learn more about GTM strategy and market intelligence, check out THIS QUESTION from my AMA on GTM strategy! Competitive intelligence is ba ...Read More

Remember to use data from the sales team and customer conversations to determine which competitors to focus on.  Your positioning should be based on how each vendor attempts to solve the customer’s problem. Start with identifying what is the problem your customer is trying to solve. Then, go through each key competitor and understand how they help the customer solve that problem. Think like the customer! Why would a customer choose your competitor? Then follow this same process for your product. ...Read More

This question blends market strategy with competitive strategy. Yes, it’s common to pursue industries that align with your GTM strategy. (Pro-Tip! Check out my AMA on GTM strategy here). In doing so, you’ll run into competitors who’s GTM strategy may be similar to yours. That could include industries or geo-locations. If you’re just starting your competitive analysis from scratch, then prioritizing competitors who show in your target market is a great place to start. However, don’t stop there wh ...Read More

Both competitive positioning and general positioning start with the customer in a specific target market and the problem they face. Dig deep into the problem and understand why it hurts so bad.  General Positioning: In general positioning, you’re articulating how your product fits in the overall market (including partner vendors, competitors, etc.). It gives context to the customer in regards to how and when they would buy the product. Competitive Positioning: In competitive positioning, you're ...Read More

The fundamentals of customer-first competitive positioning do not change with the business model. All competitive positioning should use the following framework: What’s the customer’s pain/problem? How are existing vendor (specific to your segment, i.e., self-service) aiming to solve this problem? Why is each vendor's approach beneficial to the customer? How does your product solve the customer’s problem? This is where your differentiator should come out. Why is your approach better for the cust ...Read More

Everything is a marketing story when it comes to communicating with customers. ;) Competitive positioning should be an output from competitive analysis. If you’re not seeing your competitive positioning resonating with your audience, then you need to go back to your analysis.  I’ve often found that PMMs approach competitive analysis from a feature-comparison perspective. While that can be helpful, it is not the full picture. It’s far too limited, and you cannot create a strong story from this.  ...Read More

The answer to this is all about segmentation and understanding what customers in that segment care about and what their unique pains are relative to other segments. Once you have that, the approach to competitive positioning is the same. You start with that customer pain/problem, then articulate how your product solves that pain, and why it’s better than the alternative.  Using your Shopify example, you would first need to analyze “customer care-abouts” for each of the respective audiences: ente ...Read More