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Sarah Scharf

AMA: Vanta VP of Product and Corporate Marketing, Sarah Scharf on Competitive Positioning

May 14 @ 9:00AM PST
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Vanta VP of Product and Corporate Marketing, Sarah Scharf on Competitive Positioning
We will email you Sarah's answers to these questions after the event in case you can't make it.
Questions must be topic related and not promotional. (250 character limit)
Top Questions
How does one create a "positioning document?"
Our organization is focusing on a new customer segment and channel. My CMO has asked me to create a "positioning document" that we can share with senior leadership that articulates how we're going to market to this segment. Does anyone have a template or (and NDA-compliant) example document I could use as a model? Just trying to understand what type of information to include and how best to organize it. Thanks!
How do you find out about evaluations in which your organization was not included? This question keeps coming up within client discussions. Other than waiting for a press release to come out, what are other approaches one might take? I welcome your thoughts.
How do you obtain competitive intelligence on a competitor's product that has very little public-facing marketing around it?
I'm about to just call and ask them if they still sell it.
What do you use or do to get people to buy into your positioning plans and consistently using them?
The product marketers job typically revolves around positioning a product. Sometimes, it can be difficult to align sales, marketing, and product teams around your positioning.
How do you disseminate competitive positioning to your sales team?
What can we do if there's no Wave or MQ for our category?
What are some of the best practices and tools that you use to determine competitive positioning that you could recommend?
What market research do you do to segment your market, understand each segment's needs, and inform the build/buy/partner strategy? And how do you share those insights?
I'm working at a company where we're trying to unlock new industries that we as a company need to have a better understanding of.
What are your top 3 methods for conducting effective competitive research?
How do you systematically organize & update your competitive intel when there's so much new information that can flow in every day?
What are the top documents you create when working on Competitive Positioning programs?
How do you get competitive pricing and packaging information from B2B complex sales companies i.e not saas, and with components on hardware, software, business services
Like Industrial automation solutions, including costs for integration
How important is win/loss/churn research data to your overall KPIs? What percentage of your overall data comes from w/l?
How do you enable sales in deals where competitors say they have the same functionality as you, but do not?
How do you effectively convey that competitive intelligence is a team effort, requiring input from all areas of the business, particularly customer-facing teams?
What are the key differences when positioning a product for developers (who have a different buyers journey) vs normal saas products for business buyers?
What competitive positioning frameworks have worked best for you - i.e. standard/academic frameworks tweaked to your requirements or a completely redesigned framework that is proprietary
What tools or frameworks do you like to best utilize when conducting competitive and market intelligence?
What are some common mistakes that companies make when trying to differentiate their products from competitors?
How do you differentiate when competitors constantly copy new products and features?
Which framework can Product Marketing and Product collaborate on to exchange competitive insights for prioritizing the product roadmap and achieving successful attachment rates?
Is competitive positioning an output of a feature or a marketing story?
I see a lot of battles between start-ups about similar features/products; I myself have tried to position our product with a differentiated story not always backed by features. What's the ideal approach? Where does one draw the line?
How do i use multiple customer quotes and case study stats to create a 2 pager sales enablement asset?
Im not sure how i can structure this document, but i have (numbers) on how our product benefited the customer and why they chose us over a competitor and multiple quotes from different customers. What is the best way to tell a story?