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

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 to common objections about your product vs the specific competitor Wedge questions to de-position each competitor Recent news so sellers can stay up to date Beyond those core components, teams might also find i ...Read More

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 why your product exists—can be the difference maker in conversations with prospects. What does your product stand for? What is the driving force behind your product strategy and the value you want to creat ...Read More

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 Impact Action Is the intel you are providing timely? Is it new and relevant or is it old news? If it's old news and most sellers are already aware, but you still think it's valuable, think about just adding it to backgrou ...Read More

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 to measuring success. It's not perfect data and should be viewed through a lens of subjectivity. Is there a product gap vs a competitor that led to a win or loss? Was it a pricing decision? Was the seller ...Read More

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 some cases, a competitor may be nothing at all—the status quo. When you're trying to sell a product to customers that's in a new category, requires a new skill set, or is rooted in people doing things d ...Read More

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/loss interviews Seller interviews Analyst inquiries Analyst category/industry analyses Investor resources Using competitor products (if possible) Competitor websites Competitor community forums Industry commu ...Read More

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 problem you are solving for people. If you happen to be in a competitive space with similar products, you want to make it clear why someone should use your product vs another to solve that problem. You should e ...Read More

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. seller interviews, VoC, executive conversations, etc.) is added to existing resources as well. Valuable new information is shared out in real-time via a PMM Slack channel that relevant audiences are a part ...Read More

That's definitely a challenge! There are a few things you could try to gain more insights: Utilize your sales team to ask about a competitor in discussions with prospects and customers.  Hire a third party to do win/loss interviews with prospects/customers. They may be able to get more information that a salesperson might not be able to obtain.  Hire a secret shopper. I realize this can be controversial, but there are firms out there that will do this for you. It can be a great way to uncover in ...Read More