How do you systematically organize & update your competitive intel when there's so much new information that can flow in every day?

This is a great question because without a framework for competitive intel you’ll get overwhelmed and lost in the noise. Here’s a few tips to get started:

1. Define and tier your competitors. Every industry is saturated and you can’t track every competitor or alternative that your sales team comes across. Bucket your competition into tier 1 (who you’re always going head-to-head with), tier 2 (other common players you come across in deals), and up-and-coming competitors to keep an eye on. Keep the tier 1 list short and manageable since that’s where you’ll focus most of your energy. You likely already have a good idea of which competitors fit into which bucket, and you can run a SFDC report to confirm the competitive set and see the trends in your competitive mix.
2. Determine your competitive assets for each tier. Will you have battle cards, regular competitive news roundups, trainings on competitive plays, etc? Aligning with your sales team and other teams who’ll be using your competitive intelligence on what will be useful for them. Be clear about what you can support for each competitive tier. And think about what kinds of competitive intel you need for each audience (SDRs, AEs, product, etc). These inputs will help determine what competitive information you need to collect.
3. Set your cadence. While you want to keep competitive intel and resources fresh, PMM has a lot of other priorities. Set expectations on how often each type of competitive asset will be refreshed.
4. Invest in a Competitive Intelligence platform such as Crayon and Klue. RSS feeds are useful, but you still need to sift through all that information. CI platforms not only aggregate all the relevant data but also help you filter it, organize it, and immediately insert it into battlecards, competitive Slack channels, and anywhere else that information needs to go.
5. Block off an hour weekly to review the competitive updates, share relevant information with your team, and incorporate the intel into assets as needed.

Keep in mind, that while it seems like there’s so much new information daily, most of it is noise. The big updates you need to know will immediately rise to the top, especially if you’re using a CI platform.

Web tracking tools like Crayon and Klue help us curate intel from the web, and Slack gives us a constant feed of discussion where people around the company share insights. 

But what holds it all together and prevents it from feeling overwhelming is having our durable view of our competitive differentiation. We have a specific set of capabilities + a surrounding narrative that we believe cuts through the competitive noise. Once you've defined that clearly, minor pieces of competitive intel start bouncing off of you. :) good luck!

Yeah, there's a lot of new info flowing every day. But a lot of it is noise.

First make sure you understand what's important to the company. What are the big goals you're trying to hit? What's the direction that your product is going in? With those things in mind, you should be able to filter out a lot of garbage that isn't worth your time.

In terms of channels to put the GOOD stuff in... I have two:

1. A Slack channel dedicated to competitive intel (open to everyone in the company)

2. A monthly newsletter

The Slack channel acts as a real-time repository for me and anyone else in the company to share what's new / top of mind re: competitors. Posts are made and then conversations happen in threads. You'll notice that the stuff that isn't important doesn't usually garner much interest / engagement. The stuff that IS important will garner a lot. I can't recommend these types of channels enough for keeping the company up-to-date.

The newsletter acts as a "best of" CI for the month. Take the most interesting things that have taken place (product updates, changes in competitors' headcount, new executive hires, etc.) throughout the month, and organize them into one deliverable. I use ClickUp Docs for mine, but you can use anything that you're comfortable with. I've also used regular Gmail and Mailchimp in the past.

We’re able to stay organized and updated on competitors largely due to crowd-sourcing information. We have a Competitive Intelligence Slack channel that extends across teams throughout the entire company so that individuals and groups can contribute any notable findings or insights. Updates, press announcements and feedback from customers is all shared in this one central location so that others can easily access it, as well as contribute. Additionally, new information is added into a grid or spreadsheet to organize the latest and greatest in a more detailed way, with links to the source of the information in case anyone wants to dive in deeper.

You're right: competition never stands still. And when you capture competitive information, it's likely that you are seeing the result of what they put into motion weeks, months, or quarters ago. 

I've approached the flow of information coming from the competitive landscape differently from company to company. Here are a few guideposts that I've used:

•  Time-based: Find a cadence -- like 1x per month, 1x per quarter, etc. -- to update your competitive intel, including content like Competitive Cards. If you wait any more than a year, you are waiting too long.
•  Release-based: Another cadence to use is based on product releases. Since they are points where your product's capabilities have changed, they offer good opportunities to re-assess your product vs. competition.
•  Enablement-based: Similar to Time and Release-based, you can use your Sales Enablement cadence to keep your competitive intel updated since you'll need it to train the sales team. Another benefit to doing this is that Enablement provides an input opportunity for the Sales team to inform your Competitive content.
•  Real-time: Competitive marketing is a team sport, so find channels to share competitive news in real-time. Like many companies, we have a dedicated Slack channel for competitive conversation. We also use GitLab, itself, to document work in this area and enable everyone to contribute to it (again, it's a team sport)

Mural's PMM team has a dedicated team member for competitive intelligence, which helps us stay on top of our very competitive space. We also utilize Crayon to not only surface new intel, but also organize and create resources for internal teams. Intel that's gathered through other means (i.e. seller interviews, VoC, executive conversations, etc.) is added to existing resources as well. Valuable new information is shared out in real-time via a PMM Slack channel that relevant audiences are a part of. Those real-time updates are aggregated and added to existing materials regularly, but for anyone wanting to know the latest news as soon as it happens, the Slack channel is where they look. 

The downside to having a steady flow of new information is that there can be information overload. You need to determine what's most important to share immediately and what can be aggregated and incorporated into a later update. If it's deemed to be important enough to share immediately, make sure to include an explanation of what stakeholders should do with the information. Make it actionable so that it can be impactful. 

I really love using Klue as a source of truth, it does half of the updating for me.

I also have a Google Spreadsheet tracker I use with a tab for each competitor and key categories like "product releases" where I link to any resources I can find (i.e. Product Showcase webinar, press release announcement) and add notes on "WHAT THAT MEANS" for our company.

I really also love doing newsletters because you can look back and see what updates you shared, and what else you may need to consider discussing.

I will also have pockets of time that I dedicate to digging deeper into a certain competitor. If I see in Gong that we are hearing a new competitor come up consistently, I will do a deep dive that month to understand our positioning against them.

At the end of the day, we can't let competitors win based on "shiny object syndrome" when they announce a new product release--unless that new product or feature is a truly a game changer/disruptor AND it is actually GA in the market. Most of our solutions have value beyond a specific feature, and when you get into the feature by feature selling game, it tends to be a losing battle (unless you HAVE to check a box for something specific on an RFP). The value often lies in the platform as a whole + the team members that support it!

Much like with target audiences, you have to choose a heirarchy of competitors. This should be informed by the alternatives you come across most often in sales calls. This can be tough when alternative companies are getting a lot of media attention, but my rule generally is, until we start seeing a competitor on calls, we don't build a profile. This is partially for focus and partially because without hearing directly from your buyers why they are considering another provider you are putting a lot of weight on your competitors marketing materials. 

For updates - we do so on a rolling basis as we learn updates and whenever we review and update our positioning.

1. Establish a Centralized Repository: Create a centralized repository or knowledge management system to store and organize competitive intelligence. This can be a shared document, a dedicated folder structure, or a specialized competitive intelligence software tool. I use a pretty simple google spreadsheet where I date and track links by competitor and source.

2. Set up Information Gathering Channels: Implement channels to capture new competitive information efficiently. This can include setting up Google Alerts, subscribing to industry newsletters, following competitor social media accounts, and monitoring industry forums or discussion boards.

3. Define Information Categories: Develop a framework to categorize and organize competitive intelligence. This could include categories like product features, pricing, marketing strategies, customer feedback, partnerships, and market share. A clear taxonomy of your information categories keeps it organized and easy to upkeep.

4. Divide and conquer- on my team, we've divided our competitors up and each person is responsible for going deep on three.

this is such a good question. comp intel is not a one time activity. its ongoing. same with positioning btw. I separate 3 things: Information collection, information analysis and information dissemination. For the latter i recommend no more than 2x per year. Ideally around key events, like annual sales kick off or annual customer event. Why? Quite simply because Sales can't absorb more. They need to retain so much information as is that its genuinely difficult to absorb more. In terms of analysis I recommend quarterly. Public companies send out quarterly reports. its important to stay on top of those. For collection, this is a weekly exercise. Job changes. Key staff coming and going. Messaging update. But these events are blobs and may not indicate significant change unless they are tracked over time. Whereas a tree can be interesting (say a new CEO or a change in ownership) unless you focus on the forest (win/losses, innovation cadence, strategic positioning) you won't see the change over time