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AMA: MURAL Senior Director, Product Marketing, Sean Lauer on Competitive Positioning

February 16 @ 10:00AM PST
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MURAL Senior Director, Product Marketing, Sean Lauer on Competitive Positioning
Top Questions
Sean Lauer
Sean Lauer
Instruqt VP of MarketingFebruary 16
One of the key things to consider with any information provided to a sales team is making sure you answer two questions: * Why does it matter? * What should they do with it? When it comes to competitive intel, keep in mind the following factors to deliver value to sales: * Timeliness * Imp......Read More
540 Views
1 request
What metric, goal or KPI can you put on providing competitive intelligence to the company or product teams?
I work in a company that measures the impact of all projects, but admittedly this is a difficult area to track. Would love to any suggestions/thoughts.
Sean Lauer
Sean Lauer
Instruqt VP of MarketingFebruary 16
Teams should be tracking win/loss rates vs specific competitors. This information is most easily gathered and tracked via the sales team (or possibly solutions eng) and stored in a system of record like Salesforce. Additional detail around win/loss reasons when in a competitive situation is key t......Read More
482 Views
1 request
Sean Lauer
Sean Lauer
Instruqt VP of MarketingFebruary 16
That's definitely a challenge! There are a few things you could try to gain more insights: 1. Utilize your sales team to ask about a competitor in discussions with prospects and customers.  2. Hire a third party to do win/loss interviews with prospects/customers. They may be able to ge......Read More
548 Views
1 request
Sean Lauer
Sean Lauer
Instruqt VP of MarketingFebruary 16
A competitor is anything that can be substituted for the value that your product offers. Sometimes, that's a product with a very similar feature set. Sometimes, it's a product that is designed for a different purpose, but people are using it (poorly) to solve for your product's value prop. And in......Read More
560 Views
1 request
What's your approach to competitive differentiation?
How does this inform your core messaging, how do you enable sales to understand what makes you different/better, how do you know if it's working with your target buyers?
Sean Lauer
Sean Lauer
Instruqt VP of MarketingFebruary 16
The most important aspect of competitive differentiation is that it's authentic and resonates with the customer and/or user.  From a core messaging standpoint, you first and foremost want to focus on the value prop of your product—make sure you have a clear and accurate description of the prob......Read More
431 Views
1 request
Sean Lauer
Sean Lauer
Instruqt VP of MarketingFebruary 16
Mural's PMM team has a dedicated team member for competitive intelligence, which helps us stay on top of our very competitive space. We also utilize Crayon to not only surface new intel, but also organize and create resources for internal teams. Intel that's gathered through other means (i.e. sel......Read More
410 Views
1 request
Sean Lauer
Sean Lauer
Instruqt VP of MarketingFebruary 16
Ideally, your narrative should actually be doing the heavy lifting when it comes to differentiation. Features can easily be copied. As this question states, it often leads to products being essentially the same across a competitive set. The components of your narrative—the story and the reason wh......Read More
526 Views
1 request
Sean Lauer
Sean Lauer
Instruqt VP of MarketingFebruary 16
The most important resource for competitive positioning is battle cards. It's the best summary and most actionable document (or group of documents) that can drive impact quickly. Some important components of battle cards are: * Top competitor profiles (firmographics) * Quick dismiss responses ......Read More
560 Views
1 request
Sean Lauer
Sean Lauer
Instruqt VP of MarketingFebruary 16
There's nothing that says gathering intel in standard ways isn't ethical or fair. There are definitely some tactics that might straddle the line and a few that go way over the line that should obviously be avoided. I would rely on approaches that are very common, ethical, and effective: * Win/l......Read More
785 Views
2 requests