How do you convey that competitive intelligence is a team effort, requiring input from all business areas, especially customer-facing teams?

Most Competitive Intel functions begin as siloed efforts within organizations. Product, Sales, Marketing, executives... they're all interested in competitors and conduct their own research for different purposes—with or without a formal CI program. But by implementing a formal CI program, the research goes deeper on the things that matter most, and wider across the company so that everyone can access it. 

But on its own, CI is just one person grasping at what they think is important for an entire organization to be aware of. It's significantly more effective when you get multiple POVs to help guide the program's efforts.

This is a great point! Competitive intelligence is definitely a team sport and should not be solely produced by Product Marketing! I always try to reinforce that Product Marketing's intelligence is only as good as what we are given. Oftentimes, sales or customer-facing teams hear about new things quicker than PMM can. So at all training interactions with those customer-facing teams I always close with a "help us help you" message asking for their help with gathering intel. If you say it consistently, they are more apt to remember! But beyond always closing with that ask in large group settings like scheduled trainings, I also always ask when I am speaking with someone 1:1, whether that be discussions with product managers (who might be doing their own research), anytime I am chatting with reps or CSMs, or even if I run into someone in the hall. Keep asking for intel and they will remember to come to you in the future!

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.

1. 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 numbers. This helps emphasize its importance and impact on business outcomes and gets you buy-in across the organization that they can help make an impact.

2. Flattery and Empathy: Show appreciation and empathy towards customer-facing teams. Acknowledge the challenges they face and how their input and insights are crucial for effective competitive intelligence. Respect their expertise and experience in dealing with customers daily. Also, a little flattery when they handle something well or provide important input goes a long way!

But the biggest thing is to ask for help and acknowledge that a successful competitive program takes a village.

Customer-facing teams are important CI efforts because they give real-time, on-the-ground feedback and insights. They’re talking to customers daily, so they have a firsthand look at what’s working, what’s not, and how competitors are stacking up. This kind of direct insight helps us understand market trends and customer needs better.

Here’s why this matters:

1. Real-Time Feedback: They give us the latest intel on what customers are saying and what competitors are doing, so we can make better decisions on things like roadmaps, messaging, and campaigns.

2. Understanding Customer Issues: They can point out specific problems or desires customers have that we might not see from other data sources. Fixing these issues can give us a big edge.

3. Validation: Their feedback helps us check if our assumptions are right or if we need to rethink our strategy based on actual customer experiences.

To make the most of their insights:

1. Set Up Feedback Channels: Create easy ways for these teams to share their feedback, like regular catch-ups or dedicated communication tools.

2. Include Insights in Reports: Make sure their feedback is part of our competitive intelligence reports and analysis so we get a complete picture.

3. Involve Them in Strategy: Get customer-facing team leaders involved in strategy meetings to see how their insights can shape our approach.

4. Keep Improving: Regularly review their feedback to tweak our strategy and stay aligned with what customers need and expect.

By bringing in insights from the folks who interact with customers every day, we can make sure your competitive strategy is relevant to what’s actually happening in the market.

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.

This is an ongoing effort, and I recommend that you take the initiative rather than waiting for another team to lead this. Talk with leaders and get their buy-in and then set up recurring meetings with different stakeholders on the Sales, Customer Success and other similar teams, and come prepared with questions that spark brainstorming. Share the goals in advance so that stakeholders can come prepared with notes they might have on the different subjects and so forth. Additionally, I recommend inviting at least two stakeholders to a single meeting because it helps everyone dig deeper into their thoughts etc. 

The "effectively convey" language makes me think that sharing competitive intelligence is not part of your company's culture. That's too bad - the best way to make it clear that CI is everyone's job is for leadership to be the one setting the priority. Here are some more grassroots strategies.

1. Direct outreach to some key sellers. Not necessarily management, but the over-performers whom other sellers want to emulate. Come with some research and hypotheses and ask their opinions.
2. Direct outreach to customer success team members. They may be in a good position to ask happy customers to share what they know. After this type of effort bears fruit once, they will be less afraid to ask the next happy customer. 
3. Co-presenting sales training with these same key salespeople. Convince them to share a win--and a loss--in front of their peers. They will want to be bought into the material that product marketing is presenting.
4. Make a case to sales and marketing leadership for third-party win-loss interviews. There's nothing like real-world data to get everyone aligned on competitive intelligence.