How do you disseminate competitive positioning to your sales team?

It really depends on the current understanding of that competitive positioning within my sales team. I usually work with Sales Enablement or frontline Sales Managers to create a bill of materials that would help inform the team on competitive positioning.  Usually this includes but it varies on who I'm tryin to enable (Account executives, leadership, customer success, technical sales engineers, etc..) Competitive battlecards Why we win/why we lose messaging + customer stories Product differentia ...Read More

There are two directions to answering this question: Frequency of delivery Content Frequency is important because Sales is constantly bombarded with info. You have to get in front of them consistently with different materials like presentations, documents, customer-facing assets, etc. to really get them to latch onto competitive positioning. And then there's the content piece. I try to think of competitive assets like a website and my sales team like its visitors. If you get too granular and use ...Read More

You'll want to create materials that you can package up and disseminate via a central hub like Highspot, Seismic, Showpad, Confluence etc. When you roll this out make sure you lead with "what's it in for them?" (faster deal cycles, higher ACV, etc)  It depends on who you're trying to enable (AEs, AMs, technical sales engineering) but typical effective competitive positioning materials include: 1. Battlecards 2. Swords and Shields (offensive/defensive plays) supported by customer stories and proo ...Read More

Short answer: however works! Longer answer: Work with your Sales Enablement team (if you have one) and Sales leadership to come up with a plan. There are a few nuances that I think make roll outs more effective: Interactive group exercises: Positioning isn't meant to be read off a screen, it needs to come alive in context. Make sure any trainings you run include lots of group exercises, role play, situational awareness, etc. DIY (really): build credibility with sales counterparts (and conviction ...Read More

I've seen this done a number of different ways. Typically we have dedicated time with the field to train them on the positioning. You can get buy-in from the head of sales and enablement (if you have one) to schedule a standalone session that you run to help train the field on the positioning.  If your company already has a standing enablement session (e.g., a monthly sales training time slot), you can use that time, or dedicate a portion of the agenda to this in a Sales All-Hands.  I've also se ...Read More

Disseminating competitive positioning to our sales team is a strategic and ongoing process--as you likely know, there are new things popping up every day with competitors (product releases, acquisitions, partnership announcements, etc.). While I leverage a combination of comprehensive training sessions, regular updates, and interactive resources to ensure our sales team is well-versed in our product's unique value propositions, key differentiators, and competitive advantages, I also do a couple ...Read More

In the traditional B2B Tech world, my experience has been that you need several ways to disseminate your competitive positioning: Sales battle cards for your field sales teams and channel partners easily reference; Training sessions to go over key competitive differentiation and review your value prop; Self-service short videos where you go over competitors and how you win; Create a dedicated competitive channel in Slack or MS Teams where field teams can come for information and ask questions; R ...Read More

When it comes to sharing competitive info with your sales team, it’s key to think about where they’re already active and how they get their updates. It’s also smart to chat with sales leadership to figure out the best timing and methods so that the info is useful, not overwhelming. Here are some practical tips that have worked for me: Communication Channels: Keep your team in the loop with a variety of communication methods. Set up regular meetings or briefings, like monthly community calls, lun ...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 requires a few different tactics depending on the size of your sales team. YMMV based on culture, sales leadership, enablement structure, but it's a good place to start.  One thing that's constant, though. Establish a one-stop shop for all competitive materials (Folder in sales portal, intranet page, doc, etc.) and relentlessly point people to it. Publicly, privately, etc. Wear out your Cmd-C/Cmd-V keys to paste this everywhere. Ultimately, you're building trust in your team that you know w ...Read More

Keep it simple and practical. We use a simple battle card format to pull together the most essential details you need at your fingertips to enable competitive conversations. We host it on Seismic so it is easy to search for keywords and find the battle cards. We also do specific training sessions for tier 1 and tier 2 competitors (described above). I’ve also used slack channels to create a conversation around competition and tackle fringe situations effectively with group input. Again, those peo ...Read More

Develop a Competitive Playbook: Create a comprehensive competitive playbook that outlines key information about each competitor, their offerings, strengths, weaknesses, and positioning. This playbook should serve as a go-to resource for your sales team, providing them with the necessary insights to understand the competitive landscape. Conduct Competitive Training Sessions: Organize regular training sessions to educate your sales team on competitive positioning. These sessions should cover infor ...Read More

Put in a place that's easy for them to find, and be consistent. While that's oversimplified, it really comes down to that. Sales will look for competitive positioning as they need it, so having the materials in a place they can easily access and consistently get updates is the central part of ensuring it's used. There are of course a whole bunch of things we can layer on-top of this -- internal competitive newsletter, closed won/loss data sharing, and more. The internal newsletter can be a great ...Read More

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 o ...Read More

It depends of course on your market position. But assuming you are in a competitive market, your sales team should be very aware of your competitive positioning. I would certainly include competitive positioning in the following training opportunities: New hire onboarding - make sure to show new hires where they can find resources like competitive battlecards, training decks, one pagers, analyst reports etc. You should also spend some time reviewing the overall competitive landscape and the top ...Read More

Dissemination is where CI programs die. The most common failure mode: PMM builds excellent competitive content that lives in a portal nobody visits. Then PMM reports low adoption as a puzzle, when it is actually a predictable consequence of a push vs. pull problem. Reps will not go looking for competitive intel in an active deal. It needs to come to them, in context, in the format they are already working in. The channel mix that actually works by role: For enterprise AEs in active deals: Slack ...Read More

Here are my top 3 go-to's for this one... Recruit a top salesperson to record some sound bites leveraging your positioning. Take the recording and make it available on your sales enablement database. Email the link with a blurb to salespeople. You could also include this in any internal monthly emails that go out to salespeople.  Present your positioning at sales kick-off event (typically at the start of the fiscal year). Hold a meeting where you present it to salespeople and invite them to atte ...Read More