AMA: Postscript Vice President Of Product Marketing, Sam Melnick on Competitive Positioning

Rule #1 of Competitive Intelligence is to tie it directly to revenue. By doing that you uplevel it from being seen as a research project to something that drives specific impact for the business. Here are three revenue metrics I try to focus on: Win Rates: Track win rates against your top 2-4 competitors. Keeping the number of competitors limited helps maintain focus and provides clearer insights. Deal Involvement: Monitor specific deals where CI/MI has been involved. You could track content use ...Read More

Competitive positioning is worthless if you can't explain and train your sales and customer success teams. That's why partnering closely with your enablement team and front-line managers is essential to getting the right information to the team AND for them to retain the information. Here's how I've done it (with significant help from my enablement partners): Trainings: Provide live and recorded training sessions to ensure everyone understands the competitive landscape. Live sessions allow for r ...Read More

This is a fun, but challenging question. If there's no Wave or Magic Quadrant (MQ) for your category, long-term and strategic thinking becomes incredibly important. Here are some approaches to consider: Play the Long Game: Understand that establishing recognition in a category is a journey that typically spans 2-4 years. Be ready to commit to a firm and analyst practice for an extended period, getting placed doesn't happen in a single cycle. Explore Adjacent Categories: Look for existing reports ...Read More

Let's be clear. CI is a team effort and its very hard to be THE end-all-be-all source for this information. While that can work for a time, a small team cannot be everywhere at all times, so communicating that to the rest of the organization is paramount. There are two tactics I suggest using. Tie your efforts to Revenue (yes this is a common theme with me :) ): You must clearly articulate how competitive intelligence contributes to winning deals and ties directly to company-level revenue number ...Read More

Staying on top of competitive intel requires a structured approach since a lot happens in any given week and you can get requests from all over the business. Here's how my teams try to manage it: Prioritize Top Competitors: Focus on the top competitors and their key market activities, like webinars or blog posts, to ensure you're monitoring the most impactful information. You can't be everywhere, so prioritization on what will make the biggest impact is key. Centralize Requests: Use a central pl ...Read More