AMA: Guidewire Software VP Product Marketing, Axel Kirstetter on Competitive Positioning

At a high level Sales needs to operate on three planes. Defending against weaknesses, driving towards strengths and disseminating fear. Long written thought papers are the wrong format. I believe in short simple bullet points supported by an explanatory video to get the message across. Ultimately it is the seller that needs to deliver the message. in person or over tele / video call. It is also helpful to draft answers for email based communication. Only challenge with that is that it leaves a trail so one has to ensure it is legally acceptable

I love this question as it puts competitiveness into context. If you can't find anything about a 'competitor' how is a prospect going to know anything about them? No information on review sites. No analyst overview. No social proof or testimonial. No website. No LI profile. No ads in support of key words. No financials. No incorporation records. No participation at industry events. How will a buyer buy from an entity that is hard to find. Answer: they were contacted by the competitor. An outbound sales motion. Said competitor has probably a personal relationship. Which already gives them a leg up and puts you on the losing street. Is one really competing with an entity that has little public facing materials? To be competitive one needs to operate in a category with somewhat known boundaries and criteria. As long as you are competitive against those criteria you can be confident of your offering and its value. In practical terms all you can do against the unknown is to play up FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt). Is it a financially viable business. Would you be their first client. Is ownership shady etc.

I think of competitors in two ways. 1. alternatives. Excel the classical example here. An alternative way of achieving the same 2. similar / same product offerings targeted at the similar / same buyer. This last part around targeting and segmentation is important. Tesla and F150 are both electric cars. But do they really compete? They focus on different market segments. Further when it comes to specific insights there is a short-term and a long-term perspective. Long-term, take a look at balance sheet and asset changes. short term who are they hiring, how is messaging changing over time (note: check out https://moat.com/advertiser/. Add to that internal data around win/loss at price points, by geo, by rep, by use case etc. These are all sources of input which you then need to aggregate for the goal. Which could be a battlecard or market share analysis or sales training or negotiation skills. Most importantly, a CI program is proactive. You need to collect data over time to address the goals set.

I believe in a simple exercise: * what are you good at. this is the category you want to operate in. Its table stakes. if you want to be in the electric car business and you cant design a chassis and a battery you have a problem. * what are you better at. this is where you are competitive. say your battery comes in 3 sizes. 0.5 hrs to full charge. 2 hours to full charge. 10 hours. * what are you unique at. UNIQUE! something that nobody else does. Irrespective of charging speed your battery and chassis will give the driver 600 miles of driving distance. This is what you message like crazy. This is all you talk about. And to be clear. there are say 10-15 things you need to be good at. 2-5 things you need to be better at. But only ONE you are unique at. What is hard is agreeing what that one thing is

this is such a good question. comp intel is not a one time activity. its ongoing. same with positioning btw. I separate 3 things: Information collection, information analysis and information dissemination. For the latter i recommend no more than 2x per year. Ideally around key events, like annual sales kick off or annual customer event. Why? Quite simply because Sales can't absorb more. They need to retain so much information as is that its genuinely difficult to absorb more. In terms of analysis I recommend quarterly. Public companies send out quarterly reports. its important to stay on top of those. For collection, this is a weekly exercise. Job changes. Key staff coming and going. Messaging update. But these events are blobs and may not indicate significant change unless they are tracked over time. Whereas a tree can be interesting (say a new CEO or a change in ownership) unless you focus on the forest (win/losses, innovation cadence, strategic positioning) you won't see the change over time

There is an interesting overlap between market research and competitive intelligence. that intersection is market intelligence. strictly speaking CI is only about direct competitors. Ignoring things like technology changes, indirect / partner landscape, macroeconomic changes, market size, regulatory pressures and various other areas. With that, asking your research team to keep an eye on how the market is evolving and therefore what it means for the competitive arena is a helpful partnership

Here is a controversial statement: value communication beats narrative design. I know narrative and storytelling is a big topic in the product marketing world. But, I would encourage any reader here to invest in their ability to communicate value. here is why. From a sellers' perspective its nice to tell a good story. It has a feel good factor. And its nice to hear your own voice. However, one is focused on an output. A better story. But, the purchasing process is a rationale decision. A buyer needs to weigh up what am I getting at what expense level. This is an outcome decision. This holds especially true on the B2B side (vs B2C). Arguably value communication is a form of storytelling. Irrespective, a superior ability to inform how the acquisition of ones offering will change the acquires life makes you stand out. It automatically results in purchase preference. So much for the philosophy of it all. If you are stuck at narrative differentiation. I would encourage the focus on non-functional aspects around mission, social good and community impact. One of my previous competitors had an inferior but credible offering. They beat above their weight by consistently doing two things 1. highlight why some of our features were not that important 2. highlight how they were investing some corporate profit % back into educational programs for girls. The former allowed them to draw us into their competitive battleground. And the latter made a difference in terms of undecided buyers.

I recommend three documents. 1. an inbound competitive document, covering things like product differentiators, win/loss analysis, pricing and type of open roles. 2. a separate document summarizing industry commentators, analysts or review sites. 3. Finally, a document that focuses on your category definition and messaging within. I call this outbound positioning document. The first establishes a competitive baseline. No FUD. Nor hearsay. Only qualitative statements. Times 4-6 competitors. this should give you a good insight of what you are up against. Industry commentary helps with understanding third party perspectives. This is important as the first document will inevitably be guides by your relative biases. Finally, outbound positioning is all about drawing the market you operate in according to your definitions. For example a simple 2x2 with pricing and quality. now map your market (=position). And then according to where you land you message accordingly.

Pricing and CI are two separate side of the same coin. Easiest way to win more business is to reduce your price. But that has consequences for revenue. Ultimately one product with different price points is aimed at a different cohort where price sensitivity, functional preferences and quality expectations get re-established. Let me keep with my electric car analogy from another question. Chassis and battery are a given as stakeholder. If now lets say you offer a service whereas you can change your car color up to 5 times a year. That appeals to a different type of a buyer. More in tune with fast fashion. To appeal to them you need to position the car not as an electric car but more the only fast fashion electric car. And price it in such a way that your costs are recuperated. Companies use this extension to address new segments once the core segment is saturated and growth needs to come from elsewhere

When your company only has one product, the product positioning is the company positioning. The next growth phase would be a portfolio of products. Say we are are the professional services cloud with one product for accountants another for consultants another for lawyers and finally one for bankers. Here the value offered by the product can differ to the value of the company or brand in other words. the idea should be 1+1+1+1=5. Finally, when you have multiple portfolios the issue becomes more one of what impact are you having on your community irrespective of your portfolio or product