AMA: Replicant Head of Product Marketing, Raymond Hwang on Competitive Positioning

Good competitive positioning IMO has to do both. Grounding your competitive positioning in features as the tangible, objective capabilities of your product is important. However, the marketing story is how you translate those features into a narrative that resonates with your target audience and taps into their painpoints, desire, and emotions. To be more concrete, take Company A that primarily appeals to buyers based on a comparison list of features/functionality and what they have that their competitors are missing. Company B, on the other hand deeply understands the painpoints of their target audience. Although they're missing certain features that other competitors might have, the fact that their service & delivery teams take a lot of administration off of their buyer's plate, means that their buyer can focus on more pressing projects. They couple that with a customer story of a buyer who was promoted in their role because they were able to take those time savings and focus on higher level strategic initiatives because of all the time they saved. That story is going to resonate more. All to say, the most effective competitive positioning starts with a deep understanding of your company and your competitor's features & functionality. But it doesn't end there — they take that understanding to craft a specific narrative that speaks to the emotions, needs, and incentives of their customers.

A comprehensive competitive intelligence program has to tap into a bunch of different sources across your organization. Below are some sources I've found valuable in the past. * Sales Team: Your AEs/AMs are on the front lines day-in and day-out. They'll often have up-to-date insights on competitor tactics, customer objections, and lines of attack that have worked in the past. Listen to Gong/Chorus calls regularly, scour salesforce data, and directly speak with sales people for important info. * Customer Feedback: You can't replace direct feedback from customers, especially stolen or churned customers. Interviewing customers who switched over to you from your competitor will reveal a lot across features/functionality, pricing, what parts of their positioning didn't actually materialize, etc. * Analyst Reports: Analyst and industry reports are always a great way to understand the landscape at a high level. This is a great source to start with as you start tiering competitors and deciding which ones to prioritize first. * Competitor Websites & Content: Analyzing competitor websites, webinars, blogs, and marketing materials will give you a sense of how they are positioning themselves and which capabilities they're emphasizing. * Product Reviews: Customer reviews sites like G2, Capterra, TrustRadius, etc. can provide good insights into the features/service gaps of your competitor's offering.

Great question! Two that come to mind: * Slack vs. Email: I've always like how Slack positioned themself vs email as an overall category (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQsA2oiD_xA). They didn’t directly attack email vendors by name but instead hit on highly relatable pain points for anyone who's ever worked via email and highlighted the strengths of their platform. * Zoom: Zoom's "Video conferencing that doesn't suck" campaign is a great one (https://www.zoom.com/en/blog/video-conferencing-that-doesnt-suck/). Who doesn't remember how terrible video conferencing used to be? Another great campaign that immediately tapped into existing frustration around legacy players without needing to call out anyone by name. How do you straddle the line without getting dragged into the mud? I'd say: * Focus on your strengths: Emphasize what sets your product apart without directly comparing it to competitors/calling out all the things that are wrong with your competitor’s product. You can set buying criteria in the mind of your buyer while subtly de-positioning competitors at the same time. * Use customer stories: Letting your customers do the talking is so much more effective than a feature by feature comparison that prospective buyers are always going to be skeptical of anyways. Let happy customers do the marketing for you. Bonus points if you help them talk about why they chose your solution over competitors. * Point to external proof points: Analyst rankings, G2Crowd reviews, Glassdoor reviews, Awards, etc. are all things that you can point to to increase your credibility and back up your strengths with something more objective vs "just trust me"

There are plenty of ways to do this! * Competitor published info: Websites, press releases, annual reports (for public companies), whitepapers, blog posts, and social media profiles are all fair game and can tell you a lot about a competitor's product offerings, features & functionality, support models, target market, and overall strategy. * Industry reports: Analyst reports, review sites, Glassdoor, etc. are all great as well. * Events and trade shows: Observe competitor booths and attend their presentations. * Win/loss analyses: Interviewing customers and lost prospects to understand their decision-making process/criteria always yields insights.Many customers are very willing to share who else was in their evaluation set and why they chose you over them. * Subscribe to competitor newsletters and product updates: If you can, always good to get on competitor email lists so you can learn more about their product, updates, and marketing messaging. * Use competitive intelligence tools: If you want to automate some of this, there are software solutions on the market like Klue, Crayon, and Kompyte to help you automatically analyze publicly available data. * Analyze job postings: In some cases, job postings can be very revealing in terms of competitor strategic focus and growth areas,.

Really important question - competitive intelligence is more likely to be utilized if other functions are helping to source it and are brought in early in the process. A few tips to ensure it's seen as a team effort: * Establish a cross-functional team: Include representatives from sales, rev ops, sales enablement, PMM, marketing, product, customer success, and other relevant functions. Define clear roles & responsibilities. As an example, Rev Ops could handle win/loss reporting, product could lead a product tear down on a specific competitor, marketing could do a content analysis, and sales could source examples of head-to-head wins from their peers. For PMMs, you can take all of that analysis, combine it with your own primary research, and synthesize it for battlecards and competitor deep dives. * Set up regular communication channels: create channels such as compete forums, dedicated Slack channels, newsletters, etc. where teams can share insights and learnings from competitors. This channel should act as both an inbound channel (where you can learn from others) and outbound channel (where you share updated assets). * Executive buy-in: Make sure leadership understands the value of competitive intelligence and you have a sponsor who can ensure key partners are adding this to their OKRs/goals as well. Ask supportive leaders for resources and a small percentage of their team members time to contribute in specific ways. * Demonstrate impact: The job isn't done once you have battlecards and other assets launched to the field. Make sure you're tracking win rates vs. top competitors and how they're (hopefully) improving. Anecdotal feedback on how your competitive intel has contributed to wins, product roadmap ideas, or other decisions should be highlighted and shared. Those success stories will build momentum for others to get involved in the future.

Even without a Gartner MQ or Forrester Wave, there are a lot of ways to understand the competitive landscape. Take a look at some of my answers around getting competitive intel ethically and good sources of competitive intel. I've also worked in product areas where Gartner/Forrester/IDC were not yet investing significant resources, however there were other very influential analysts and research groups that produced high quality analysis of the competitive landscape. So all to say, take a look at: * Review sites: G2, Capterra, TrustRadius all have direct customer reviews and also comparative analyses for various categories. * Influencers: Specific influencers can carry a ton of weight in more niche markets. Work with these industry influencers who have the ear of your buyer to create awareness for your product while also paying attention to other vendors they cover and the analysis of their offerings. * Independent research firms: This one is harder as there is a ton of noise and low quality research out there. Talk with your buyers about where they learn about vendors in your category and who they trust. Oftentimes that will lead you to trade pubs or smaller research firms that produce high-quality content.

It's always a balancing act, isn't it? I've also had trouble overburdening customers in the past. Here are some things that have worked for me: * Get market research into regular convos: If your sales and customer success teams are having daily conversations with clients, arm them with questions so they can naturally get it into their existing convos. e.g. they can ask clients about their experiences with competitors or what additional features they'd find valuable. * Frame your ask to appeal to their incentives: Frame your ask in a way that shows they can also get value out of the conversation. E.g. "We're looking to improve our product and your CSM has expressed this is something you've wanted for awhile. Would you be willing to help inform how we build this feature?" or "We're looking to improve our offering around X, Y, Z. Would you be willing to share your experiences with other vendors in the past so we make sure what we roll out suits your needs?" * Offer incentives: Provide some small monetary incentives for customers who participate in more in-depth market research interviews or surveys. Everyone loves an Amazon gift card! * Use follow-up conversations: Once someone has said "yes" to a research session, I've found it's very likely they'll say yes again. In fact, I don't think I've ever had someone say no when I asked them "Would you be willing to chat again in a month so we can show you what we've come up with?" or "Would you be willing to chat again so I can share you some of the results from this research?" * Short surveys or polls: Instead of asking someone to sign up for an hour-long session, you can use short, targeted surveys that can be completed in <5 minutes to validate some of the hypotheses you create through your 1:1 sessions. Great way to get more scaled data back without spinning up a large quant project.

There's a few documents I've found consistently valuable for CI programs. 1. Competitive battlecards for customer-facing teams 2. Product deep dives: typically done for product teams to show them competitor capabilities and where there are strengths/gaps compared to our own offering. 3. Win/Loss reporting: data-driven and shows trends such as win rates by competitors, industry, region, etc. and reasons behind key losses 4. Messaging deep dive: more for a marketing audience to analyze competitor positioning and where there's opportunity for a more differentiated message.

Yeah that's a really important step. Nothing is more frustrating than putting together a great battlecard and competitor deep dive that then goes unused. Your sales enablement counterpart and sales leader will be your best friends in this area. * Sales Training Sessions: Goes without saying, but live training sessions are the first step. Beyond just sharing your findings, you should include role-playing exercises where sales reps have the chance to practice pitching against competitors, handling objections, and using tactics from your battlecard. I've also found hosting a roundtable with your best reps and how they've won head to head deals is great for engagement. * Ongoing practice: This can't be a one-and-done thing. Sales managers should be making time to help reps role play and get competitive positioning into their day-to-day rhythms. * Up to date CMS resources: Sometimes sales people don't use your resources anymore because they don't trust that it's up to date. Ensure battlecards, objection handling, competitor profiles, etc. are all timestamped and that you're updating them regularly. For Tier 1 competitors that should be quarterly. For lower tier competitors, perhaps twice a year, depending on how fast your industry moves. * Regular Updates and Newsletters: Provide ongoing updates to the sales team through a dedicated Slack channel or newsletters. These updates should include any new competitive insights, announcements, product launches, and/or updates to positioning and how they should respond to them. Encourage your sales partners to also put anything they learn about competitors into the Slack channel so knowledge isn't siloed among teams. * Actionable Battlecards: A common pitfall with battlecards is providing way too much detail. Your sales partners will sometimes only get 20-30 seconds to deposition a competitor. Give them a 20-second sound bite, a couple offensive themes, some landmines, common objections & responses, and customer proof. Not to say you can't point those who are interested towards larger documents that include all the great info you've found and synthesized. But focus on the "so what" and offering a quick reference. * Videos: Develop short videos or recorded training sessions that walk through your competitive positioning materials. I've found this is especially important to scale your time as you onboard new sales team members. * Feedback loop: Finally, invite the sales team to provide feedback on what's working and what's not. Get their input on who to prioritize next. Involve them and they'll be more likely to consume what you create.