AMA: ClickUp Head of Competitive Intelligence, Andrew McCotter-Bicknell on Competitive Positioning

There are a few documents that I maintain over time: 1. Competitor product releases for the Product team (updated monthly) 2. Competitive battlecards for the Sales team (updated as needed) 3. Win/Loss reporting (updated quarterly-to-semi annually) Each of these docs helps a specific audience within the company and make sure that they have the knowledge they need to make decisions.

Don't use corporate jargon and you're already 90% ahead of everyone else (if I had a nickel every time I read a company referring to their product as "industry-leading" or "robust"...). How do your happiest, most successful customers describe your product? Use those words. Don't use different words for the sake of being different. Be CLEAR about what your product does, the pain points they solve, and show screenshots. Talk to customers, read product reviews on G2, TrustRadius, etc. You'll notice patterns and might even be able to copy + paste their exact words in some cases.

Yeah, there's a lot of new info flowing every day. But a lot of it is noise. First make sure you understand what's important to the company. What are the big goals you're trying to hit? What's the direction that your product is going in? With those things in mind, you should be able to filter out a lot of garbage that isn't worth your time. In terms of channels to put the GOOD stuff in... I have two: 1. A Slack channel dedicated to competitive intel (open to everyone in the company) 2. A monthly newsletter The Slack channel acts as a real-time repository for me and anyone else in the company to share what's new / top of mind re: competitors. Posts are made and then conversations happen in threads. You'll notice that the stuff that isn't important doesn't usually garner much interest / engagement. The stuff that IS important will garner a lot. I can't recommend these types of channels enough for keeping the company up-to-date. The newsletter acts as a "best of" CI for the month. Take the most interesting things that have taken place (product updates, changes in competitors' headcount, new executive hires, etc.) throughout the month, and organize them into one deliverable. I use ClickUp Docs for mine, but you can use anything that you're comfortable with. I've also used regular Gmail and Mailchimp in the past.

There are two directions to answering this question: 1. Frequency of delivery 2. Content Frequency is important because Sales is constantly bombarded with info. You have to get in front of them consistently with different materials like presentations, documents, customer-facing assets, etc. to really get them to latch onto competitive positioning. And then there's the content piece. I try to think of competitive assets like a website and my sales team like its visitors. If you get too granular and use jargon-filled statements, they're gonna drop off and go somewhere else. * Use words that they and your customers use. * Read the sentences out loud—could you actually see someone saying the sentences out loud or do you sound like a robot? * Use visuals to help describe complex concepts If you nail these two, your Sales team will be unstoppable against competitors.

Multiple times per month. It varies though, depending on bandwidth as a one-person CI team. The most important thing is that, as a whole, ClickUp's Product Marketing team speaks to customers all the time for different reasons. I focus my conversations more around competitive intel, or win/loss info. Our persona PMM directors speak with customers that fit our ICP so we can better understand our strengths, weaknesses, and what their jobs-to-be-done are. Our Customer Advocacy leader speaks with power users and champions to make them feel great + excited about working with us. And then we each report back on what we learn. I've also worked with third-party win/loss consultants who conducted interviews on my behalf. That's always been super helpful (especially when I'm stretched thin).

1. Revenue impact 2. Product innovation I used to only focus on the first point. That's an important one—and if you have limited bandwidth, I'd recommend you start there first. These are the vendors that are impacting your sellers' win rates. They're likely the more well-known vendors in your category, are easy to discover, are brand names, and are the largest in size (headcount, annual revenue, etc.). The second point is important, as well, though. Especially for businesses that are wanting to maintain a long-term view in a category, it's critical to understand what the innovation looks like in your category, who it's aimed at, and who's building it. Are all of these startups impacting business today? Usually not by a lot (if at all). But these are the big competitors of tomorrow. And even though you don't need to make battlecards that focus on them for your sales team, you should still have a pulse of who these vendors are and what the innovation looks like.

I had one gut reaction when I read this question. "Why isn't there much public-facing marketing around it?" A few thoughts come to mind: 1. They discontinued the product (try checking publicly-facing knowledge centers, if they have any, to confirm) 2. They rebranded the product (this happens all the time) 3. The product was in beta, got a bad response from users, then went back into stealth 4. They're bad at marketing (in which case, you probably don't need to be too worried about this competitor at all) To answer your question though, you could find out for sure with a formal win/loss program. Identify accounts that you lost to against that specific competitor, ask them for an interview in exchange for an incentive ($50 - $100 for a half hour), and then ask them about the product in the interview.

Competitive win rate is a great north star goal. But it can be challenging to accurately impact that in a positive way in a short amount of time. A couple other KPIs I've used in the past and that I recommend: 1. Competitor confidence (from the sales team) 2. Project-based contribution If you can increase the confidence of your sales team when it comes to competitors, you can infer that it will positively impact your competitive win rate. So every 6 month, I send a survey to my entire sales team and ask them to fill it out. Here's what it looks like: 1. Name 2. Team (e.g. XDR, Account Executive, Customer Success, etc.) 3. How long have you worked at *company*? 4. How confident are you competing against Competitor X? (1 - 5) 5. How confident are you competing against Competitor Y? (1 - 5) 6. How confident are you competing against Competitor Z? (1 - 5) 7. How often do you use competitive collateral like battlecards, one-pagers, etc.? 8. How impactful has our competitive collateral and training been for you? 9. What would help you win more competitive deals? (open text field) If I've done my job, the answers to 4 - 6 should go up over time, and the answers to 7 and 8 should be "very often" :-) I can't tell you how helpful this has been for me in guiding what I work on with my programs. And then in terms of project-based contributions, try to find big projects happening in your company. This could be a website revamp, launching a big new product, revamping employee onboarding, etc. Figure out a way to get involved. If you're revamping the website, maybe look into advising on compare landing pages. If you're launching a new product, make sure the team is equipped with what the landscape offers that's similar. You get the idea. All of these things positively contribute to how your organization goes to market.

Get them involved. Interview them to learn about their encounters with competitors. Here are things that I regularly ask my sellers. * Which competitors are coming up most in conversations with buyers? * What are buyers specifically asking about? * What assets would help you win more competitive deals? * Here's something that I put together. Is this helpful to you? When you build a genuine relationship with your sales team, you'll notice that adoption will rarely be a problem. They'll see their contribution to the intel that you're bringing forth and they'll see that you're working to make them more successful. Try to get in front of them on a regular basis. Most orgs have a recurring meeting for their sales teams. Use that as an opportunity to present a new asset, explain a new initiative, give praise to a seller for winning a competitive deal, etc. The more they know you and become comfortable with your role, the more successful you'll be.

Limit the competitors you track to ~8 - 10 of the TOP competitors that are impacting revenue most. Yes, we should still be keeping a pulse and maintaining awareness of other vendors. But we can't REALLY track all of the activity on dozens of competitors unless we have a large team. Get buy-in from your executives on who you consider being top competitors (again, I'd start by organizing this list by revenue impact). And then prioritize them ruthlessly. 

To be 100% honest, I only have experience in SaaS so I'm probably not the best guy to answer this question. But I would venture a guess that win/loss could still help here. You'd be amazed at the info you could access if you have a great relationship with prospects, buyers, customers, etc. I'd also recommend hiring third-party consultants, like GLG, to dig into this for you. They can help you get in contact (anonymously) with customers of your competitors, or your competitors themselves. It sounds like you need very specific information, so it's definitely best to get that straight from the source of the provider or receiver of goods.

First, there is no one magic tool that will do your Competitive Intel program for you. All of the tools below require a strategy before using. But they can be extremely powerful when you use them correctly. For competitive alerts, battlecard creation, and win/loss reporting, try looking at Klue or Crayon. For third-party agencies that conduct win/loss interviews and surveys on your behalf, take a look at Clozd, DoubleCheck Research, or Iceberg IQ. For review mining, check out G2, TrustRadius, or wherever your customers leave reviews. For benchmarking, check out PeerSignal.org (free!)

Most Competitive Intel functions begin as siloed efforts within organizations. Product, Sales, Marketing, executives... they're all interested in competitors and conduct their own research for different purposes—with or without a formal CI program. But by implementing a formal CI program, the research goes deeper on the things that matter most, and wider across the company so that everyone can access it. But on its own, CI is just one person grasping at what they think is important for an entire organization to be aware of. It's significantly more effective when you get multiple POVs to help guide the program's efforts.

That's one way you can segment competitors. A few others you may want to consider: * Persona that's most likely to purchase the competitor * Company size that's most likely to purchase the competitor * Cost of competitor * Region where the competitor is most popular * Products that the competitor offers Try building out a market map that shows, visually, where you run into competitors most. See who shows up most frequently—those are likely competitors that you should keep an eye on.