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I’ve had the best success with easy to digest “competitive battlecards” for sales. The simpler, the better. They should give basic company info, pricing, and how to handle objections. For larger sales teams, these are a great reference point for them to use on the phone.   The ultimate goal of the battlecards should be for any salesperson - new or experienced - to be able to quickly articulate how you are different from the competition. If it doesn’t meet that goal, you’ve missed the mark.   The design of this is important. I’ve used a Google doc with a grid and also a vertical PPT slide - it depends on what your company is most familiar with. I would try to update these at least once a quarter.   Scrappy tip: If you’re in a pinch for time, use a service like UpWork to do the data entry for you - you create the framework, and they fill in the rest. For 5 competitors it should be no more than $100 if you pick a good freelancer.

This is a little meta, but the best advice I have is to treat your sellers as your customers.  What would you do to try to understand how to get a customer to use your product?  Do some research - via interviews, observations, surveys, etc, and learn their workflows, their gaps, their pain points, etc when it comes to how they use content to prep for sales calls (and for inside sales, while they’re actually on calls).  Then prototype (if appropriate), and get them to walk you through how they’d use it or not.  Only when you land on a format that’s useful should you cascade to multiple competitors.     It’s also important to note that sometimes, even though sales folks are asking for competitive intel, it’s actually just not a high priority thing to spend time and energy to create.  I’ve typically found that there’s only ROI on this kind of work when it’s hyper-targeted - at the top 2 or 3 competitors in a given segment, for example. Otherwise it’s information overload and your time might be better spent focusing on what your offering does well, vs. what others are weak at.

Timeliness and accessiblity are also key to providing value to your team.  * Providing a list of month-end/ quarter-end killshots speaking to the most up-to-date intel and positioning you have on focused competitors (maybe trending that month) is not only going to be acknowledged, but can boost morale and (product) confidence in your team.  * Creating a Slack channel or Salesforce group for competitive intel can be a great way to get new intel in front of people as it appears—and can be contributed to by CX, Sales, etc. not just PMM.  * Ensure you have one central location for battlecards, testimonials, interviews etc. so new Sales people (and PMMs!) can get up-to-speed easily, and can reference content at any time.  * Involve Sales leadership when battlecards are created or switch campaigns are launched so that they mandate that their teams utilize content created. It's in their best interest and will leverage ROI. 

Getting sales buy in on what type of information they want early on can be really helpful (it can also be useful if they change their mind later on). Starting with a proof of concept then circulating the first battlecard among sales leadership before you start building out other competitors.  Set a standard of how battlecards will be used. Normally battlecards are a strickly internal only resource. I would highly recommend you don't make the assumption that sales or other parts of your organization won't be tempted to share this information directly with a prospect or a partner. Word of caution, if you have partners that work with your organization that could also benefit from competitive intel be sure to have a discussion on how much of this information you are willing to share externally. While partners can be a great source of potential intel, if you share too much with the wrong partners you can be handing your competitors It's also important to establish with your sales team if they are wanting to have a base knowledge of a lot of competitors or going deep on just a few (I would personally say the latter tends to be more important for your primary competitors and then potentially building much more lightweight battlecards for competitors that come up less often).  From my own experience, it helped to include information on strengths, weakness, any known gaps as well as diving a bit deeper into any marketing talking points. For us, it seemed like sales knew the main points (ie: We are better at x) but couldn't get much deeper. When you make a claim, it is built on some feature that is important. So I focused on flushing out those details so our sales reps had more specific details they could answer. Helping the build the value on why something is important and being able know what feature is the real driver.  Once you have established your baseline of competitive intel, you will want to think about the ongoing upkeep. How often do things in your industry change? Do your primary competitors have annual conferences when they make announcements about the coming year? If they do this is probably the time you want to plan on updating your battlecards.  Keep your intel in a 1 place and keep in mind who might benefit from having that information. I personally use a folder in Google Drive that only myself or other PMMs can edit but others in the org can view. Chance are there are other parts of your organization that could benefit from understanding the competition. This can give you an additional way to measure success (or at least a wider audience).  Again in my own experience, building a solid foundation tends to be the more challenging part of the process (especially if you have more than 1 sales team that deals with different competitors or wants to use other information). Setting a schedule for upkeep based on how often things in your industry changes is what keeps the foundation you've built current, relevant and prevents you from having to rebuild the foundation in a few years. 

Real time competitive insight direct from buyers. Easy way to collect this information is via a win/loss interviews. Simply ask questions regarding who else they considered and why. Dig into areas such as brand, product, sales experience, pricing, culture. Sales teams always perk up when the data has been collected from the very buyers they are selling to. It gives them a strong frame of reference for how the market views their solution versus the competitition. It also may help to shed light on why a deal was won or lost. Good luck!

Agree w/ comments above. Easily digestible chunks of data presented in a battle card format (2 pages) is very effective. Remember to keep it brief and concise (e.g. 3 bullet points per topic). There's a conference in October that is focused on competitive marketing, including sessions on content and battle card creation. www.competitivemarketingsummit.com  

Great question and one that really hits home for me since I used to do competitive intel while sitting in the sales organization at Medallia. The best approach I've seen is first identifying the top content needed by the sales team by actually sitting in sales meetings and in front of customers. It's a great way to see where the gaps are in the messaging and content bill of materials that PMM needs to produce for Sales.  After getting some first hand knowledge, I typically work with Sales Engineers and Account Executives to build and test the content (1-pagers, demo videos, competitive battle cards). Getting cross functional stakeholders in the Sales org to jump in during the development process of the content is the best way to drive champions within the org.  Lastly, find ways to partner with your enablement team to help push out the material in the most sales-friendly channel. This could be through a Slack post, a weekly enablement session or a recorded video. I've also worked with my enablement partners to capture feedback on a rolling basis from the field once content is lanuched. One tool I've loved using to track sales engagement with collateral Is Highspot - the ability to track views, clicks, pitches at the content level really helps highlight which content is resonating the most with the field teams. This also helps with building content that helps drive business impact. 

As with any other sales content, find out how your specific sales team likes to consume content. This will give you an idea of the format, as well as the channels in which to share this information. This will also depend on your company culture. In my personal experience it's important to do the following: * Make it easy to find - so have a centralized location where you can point people to. * Share the links, and share it again, and again over time. * Have quick, TL;DR versions of all your competitive intel docs (but also keep detailed documentation if anyone wants to dig into something more specific). This can be in the form of battle cards or simple FAQs that you can publish internally * There are certain tools that allow you to publish information like this within platforms like SFDC or slack - where people already look for information * Create short videos and see if people find it easier to listen than read * It's not always enough to just create these materials. It often helps to do regular competitive readouts with the sales team so you can have a more interactive conversation and help answer specific questions.

This is a great question and one that generally takes refinement over time based on feedback from sales.  Here's what you can do to make sure your competitive intel is beneficial and leveraged by your sales team: 1. Conduct in-depth Win/Loss research - identify the key lost and won reasons that come up from your deals from the notes that reps are inputting into salesforce but also from win/loss interviews. You can hire a win/loss vendor to do this. I've personally worked with Clozd and Primary Intel and they've been great in accelerating these competitive insights.  2. Survey reps, listen to calls or simply talk to reps to find out what the most common objections are per competitor - remember to take a per competitor approach here since objections vary across the board.  3. Find reps who have successfully closed deals with those competitors and listen to their Gong calls and reach out to them to find out what worked and how they handled objections.  Gathering all this intel together, craft together a "Swords" and "Shields" playbook that outlines your "Swords" - what reps should LEAD with as competitive strengths against that particulary competitor accompanied by proof points and case studies, and "Shields" - how reps can handle objections with talk tracks, proof points and case studies. When you roll this out make sure you highlight the fact that the playbook was crafted based on data and direct feedback from them on what objections they're struggling with most. 

Competitive Battlecards are the best asset for sales but remember to KISS (keep it stupid simple). Sales are often pressed for time so how can you clearly pick apart your differentiators (vs the competitor), give the rep a compelling reason it matters, and even lay some trap setting questions. Depending on how competitive your market is, you may also want to add some more detailed resources: 1. An objection handling doc. If you have a lot of new reps or a more junior team, you may consider writing out scripts for each of the objection points. 2. Win library. Have a library of wins against the competitor with impact based results that show the details of why other customers chose you. 3. Training & enablement. The best enablement ive seen when dealing with competitors is role play based enablement. Teach your teams to have these conversations around objections in a safe environment before you send them out into real customer calls. 4. A pushback email. If you have aggressive competitors, consider giving your team some pre-baked email templates so they can respond to the customer quickly and continue the conversation about your product.

Love this question, because if sales doesn’t use your competitive intel then what’s the point of investing time at the expense of your other competing priorities. A few things I recommend: * Work with your sales leaders and sales enablement (if you have sales enablement) to determine the best format, channels, and cadence for competitive intel. Make sure it’s easily accessible since reps won’t waste time searching for it. What works best depends on your sales team and their preferences. * Make it actionable and easily digestible. For the most part reps don’t need in-depth capability comparisons, they need quick talking points - kill points, objection handling, quick customer win stories vs the competition, and proof points. Those talking points and sales plays should be the focus of battlecards and trainings. * Speaking of trainings, competitive intel isn’t simply about creating assets like batlecards or market roundups. Have live competitive shareouts or training sessions where you review sales plays vs key competitors. Make these interactive by bringing in reps who’ve won vs the competition to share their learnings and encourage discussion. * Beat the drum. Just because you shared competitive intel in Slack and other channels doesn’t mean it gets noticed and adopted. Reps are busy. Continue to remind them and lean on sales leaders to remind their teams about the valuable competitive resources they have available. And have a regular cadence for sharing competitive insights and holding competitive play sessions since the competitive landscape is always evolving. Like with anything - pilot, learn, and iterate. The first iteration won’t be perfect. Get feedback on what is and isn't working and continue to improve on it.

When gathering competitive intel, I find the most important thing is to have the goal for it clearly mapped out. Why does Sales (or product) want the competitive intel? What will they use it for? If you start from a clear understanding of how the intel will help, it is easier to provide useful information. I recommend being as prescriptive as possible with regard to how the info can be used to help your team achieve a goal. Assuming you have intelligence that achieves your stated goals, you may need to "market it". How can you drive awareness of new info? A newsletter? A webinar? Is there a piece of collateral / approach that has worked in the past? If not, ask your colleagues about their preferences and then test an approach. Test until you find something that works.  Generally, I recommend making competitive intel really easy to use. You may even want to build competitive intel into sales materials. This could take the form of a comparison between your product and competitors on key points. 

Hah! You kinda answered your own question here. Create competitive intel that is easy to read and applicable to how Sales will use it! Sales doesn't want a novel about each competitor. They want high-level bullets that help them understand how to put their own company in context of that competitor if it comes up with a prospect.  And most likely, competitors come up in sales conversations when a buyer is evaluating multiple options or if you're trying to replace an incumbent. Consider including some critical information that would help a sales person in these situations: where you're better, where they're better, how you win, why customers switch from them to you. The competitive intel sources I mentioned in another question will help you answer these.

This is a fun one. An aphorism we could coin here is that "Competitive battlecards are just like datasheets. Every salesperson desperately wants a new one, but nobody ever uses them."  The challenge is that most competitive intel and content is boring, too detailed to use in the moment, hard to find, and usually out of date. What that means is that great competitive intel is a content marketing problem at heart. It has to be relevant, it has to be interesting, and it has to be easy to consume. The most dependable way to figure out what works is to try a number of different things early, get feedback from sales, and then when you pick a path, measure utilization as best as you can. And then only update the docs that get used. I've personally found that there are three kinds of competitive content that have real impact: 1. Announcement responses 2. Onboarding / Sales Ramp materials  3. Negotiation tools / "CompHot" squads Announcement responses are my favorite because they're real-time, lightweight, and truly advance your and the org's understanding of what a competitor is actually doing. The scenario is: Tier 1 competitor X launches a new product or drops some PR. You digest it, read between the lines, and provide sales and customer success (yes, CS desperately needs compete info too) with a quick precis of the announcement: - What the competitor announced (headline and a few details, incl. claims) - What it means for your product or GTM (interpretation and implication) - Reactive messaging (when asked, how do we address this problem or use case, better) - If applicable, what call to action you offer customers and prospects Build these over time, and you'll quickly have relevant, interesting, and well-read libraries of content on your most active competitors. And you don't have to work that hard to build them. The other two times that sales is most likely to truly digest and internalize your competitive intel is in their first month on the job (the firehose phase) and when they're deep in a competitive negotiation. This is where you can both teach the most and have the biggest leverage. Invest everything you can in framing the market and competition in customer-facing employee onboarding sessions. The "competitive breakdown" in Sales Boot Camp is the highest-value investment you can make in compete. Especially if they're graded on it as part of their certification. The other is when commission is truly on the line. Set up a "CompHot" squad or special ops team that can drop into late-stage sales cycles with that last push over the line. You'll not only make a lot more money (and advocates for life from your top AEs) but you'll also learn what your competitors are really saying about you. 

I first start with really solid positioning, which should clearly identify how your offering is differentiated from other competitors in the market and lean into that. Second, I listen and shadow sales to see how often/why competitors come up in conversation. Then I can create appropriate messaging. Depending on your position in the market and how competitive the space is, you may go head to head in a more visible brand campaign, or if you're a category leader, you may keep an eye out and handle objections in sales scripts or through battlecards. 

First of all, it needs to be rooted in the day-to-day realities of sales and the conversations their having. If Product Marketing is coming up with competitive intel in a vacuum without input from Sales, then it will naturally fall flat.  As you should do with positioning, make Sales a key part of how you create competitive intelligence and what it needs to include. Most great sales reps and managers will already be doing some of this themselves, so start by learning what their doing. If you have a tool like Gong, go through calls to see what they're saying and using and talk with reps to learn how it's working. If you come across a really powerful piece of insight, you can embed a snippet from a call directly in your battlecard so Sales can hear it from one of their own.  Lastly a few tactical suggestions: * Root the battlecard, snippets, and intel in their language, not any 'fluffy' language. It will make it more turnkey as well. * Take any comparisons real users have made and leverage them. Prospects won't believe you if you just say "We're better! I promise." But taking someone's real words/voice can be incredibly powerful.

Like any good marketer, it's about knowing your end customer and how they would like to consume information. All sales teams are different and finding the right communication methods (format, frequency) is important to align on up front so that you can focus your energy on being efficient and effective. Here are some tips: 1. More is not always more - sometimes we might over correct for a lack of data/deliverables by creating information overload. Sometimes teams like sales might not "actually read and use it" because it's 1 of 100 things they are trying to absorb. Take a look at what pieces of training/collateral is used by sales and if you notice some are being well used and others are not, dig in on the why.  2. Listen on sales calls. Are they bringing up the right points about your product relative to competition? This is where you will find either blind spots around things like specific feature sets or pricing info that is lacking in your competitive intel. 3. Sync up with sales teams or leads to get feedback regarding what they think is missing. Also, going back to communication, be transparent with them about how maybe you don't think materials are being ultilized and try to figure out the why, together. 

Get them involved. Interview them to learn about their encounters with competitors. Here are things that I regularly ask my sellers. * Which competitors are coming up most in conversations with buyers? * What are buyers specifically asking about? * What assets would help you win more competitive deals? * Here's something that I put together. Is this helpful to you? When you build a genuine relationship with your sales team, you'll notice that adoption will rarely be a problem. They'll see their contribution to the intel that you're bringing forth and they'll see that you're working to make them more successful. Try to get in front of them on a regular basis. Most orgs have a recurring meeting for their sales teams. Use that as an opportunity to present a new asset, explain a new initiative, give praise to a seller for winning a competitive deal, etc. The more they know you and become comfortable with your role, the more successful you'll be.

In my experience, the best way to communicate with sales people is to speak with them. They are so busy, and I find they don't read emails from PMMs, especially emails not directed to them personally.  In my opinion, the best way to share competitive materials is in a short team meeting, through the sales engineering/solution consulting teams and by directly responding to questions they have (where you can send links to prepared materials).  It also helps to be very clear about your competitive differentiation, and have sellers share stories of how they've won. Hearing best practices from others in the field is important, as the field often has some of the best competitve intel. 

One practice we had to inform competitive positioning strategy and enablement was analysing Closed Lost reasons in deals where we lost to a competitor. Here's an example (sorry some details need to remain high level):  * We did a CL analysis and saw we were losing to our competitor for 1 of 3 reasons - a unique feature they had, pricing, and brand awareness/loyalty. * We then partnered with Account Managers and CS to find customers who had used us and the competition. We did customer interviews to get appraisals of each of the areas where we tended to lose deals. We also uncovered reasons why those areas weren't as important to some customers. * Using this (in addition to our other intel), we developed counter-positioning to 'turn our bugs in to features' focused on the three main CL reasons * But we also realised that other assets (like our ROI calc) needed to be adjusted for pricing conversations when this competitor was in the mix. 

Make it snackable. Make it easy to remember. Make it impactful. Show the impact of reps applying this to amplify awareness and usage. Reps spend their days diving into a multitude of different businesses with divergent needs, goals, and deal stages. The more adaptable, simple, straightforward your competitive intel is, the more likely it is to be leveraged and applied.  As a separate note (personal pet rock): use the term comparrison cards, not battle cards. Sales is hard enough without suggesting to them (implicitly) that they're in a battle (violent). We are in product marketing, words matter, choose the right ones. 

3 words - length, ROI, searchability.  Length: Sales reps and customers alike want things to be short and to the point. I like to keep it to a punchy header with 2-3 supporting bullet points if possible.  ROI: The benefit to the customer should be clear in the header. For example, "[Customer] saved an average of 10 hours per week and $250,000/yr by switching from [competitor] to [your company]".    Searchability: Sales will forget 90% of the things you present in enablement. Not to mention, new reps have possibly never seen enablement training on your material. I like to include things in 3 places - slack, cloud storage (GDrive or whatever you're using), and training (onboarding/enablement decks). This ensures your material is easily findable in a pinch. Bonus points for organizing your material with tags so reps can search by persona. 

I think of competitive intel like product managers think about their product.  The first step is to listen to your stakeholders (or internal customers) from sales, product, customer success and marketing to understand what they want and need in competitive intel. What are their gaps in intel? In content? How do they best consume the information and content you develop for them? What form factor(s) should it take? What cadence do they want it in? Once you have those insights, you can develop content that they will read...use...and LOVE. Another important factor is to think deeply about the competitive factors in your market and factor those into your intel and content. What trends or changes are occurring in your category? How do those change points impact moves that your competition is making? And, based on this, how do you plan to position your solution to competitively differentiate? One final point: Embrace the value of Iteration. The best intel content that I've seen breaks down large projects into smaller pieces so that you can ship to your audience quickly and get the valuable feedback that will guide your next iteration, and your next, and your next. Iterate often with competitive intel and content.

I think of competitive intel like product managers think about their product.  The first step is to listen to your stakeholders (or internal customers) from sales, product, customer success and marketing to understand what they want and need in competitive intel. What are their gaps in intel? In content? How do they best consume the information and content you develop for them? What form factor(s) should it take? What cadence do they want it in? Once you have those insights, you can develop content that they will read...use...and LOVE. Another important factor is to think deeply about the competitive factors in your market and factor those into your intel and content. What trends or changes are occurring in your category? How do those change points impact moves that your competition is making? And, based on this, how do you plan to position your solution to competitively differentiate? One final point: Embrace the value of Iteration. The best intel content that I've seen breaks down large projects into smaller pieces so that you can ship to your audience quickly and get the valuable feedback that will guide your next iteration, and your next, and your next. Iterate often with competitive intel and content.

Battlecards, training documentation, or whatever medium you choose to deliver this information should be built specifically for sales as the audience in mind. A couple quick tips: 1. Keep information concise and easily digestible. 2. Get real-time feedback from your sales team. If there is an example from a recent deal or prospect, this is gold. Sales teams love to hear from peers vs. objective information or research. 3. If pricing information is available, share it.  4. External facing documentation is something sales may push for in urgent, high pressure scenarios. If you are early on in garnering adoption of your CI program, it may be a good opportunity to personally support. Use it as an opportunity to expand the effort with a more standardized approach for objection handling & intel education across the org.

There are a lot of great existing competitive positioning frameworks out there. I think GTM maturity of the company and primary audience & execution priorities should be considered in designing your framework. I don't always stick to a proprietary framework, I tend to stay agile to my stakeholders. Some best practices: 1. Competitive enablement for sales should be a GTM priority. If the sales team is already adhering to a specific selling framework, I recommend aligning with their common methodology as much as possible to increase adoption. 2. For a more in-depth competitive analysis, aligning competitive comparisons to phases of the workflow of a product helps to articulate clear differentiation based on user needs. 3. Overall commercial competitive positioning should stay high-level and succinct. The more internal, forward-looking product strategy positioning is best staying separate as it is often complex and not the right message for all levels of the sales team to combat competitive concerns in the field. This divide is most common in scaling orgs with an evolving product-market fit.

1. Too many to count! I’ll give you a rundown of my top ones: 1. Keep the conversation focused on value not price: The more you focus on price, the more the customer will. The more you focus on value in your messaging, the more your customer will see your product as valuable 2. Get really clear internally about what this price change is supposed to do for you: Making sure everyone is on the same page of goals, non-goals, and expectations for this pricing/packaging change will give you the aircover you need to not spent too much of your time dealing with misalignment or internal concerns 3. Be clear that there is never perfect pricing: Messaging can’t fix everything. In almost every circumstance, there will be customers who are unhappy with the change, make sure your internal team is clear on that and doesn’t see customer complaint as only a messaging problem and get clear on what compalints are expected and okay versus cause for concern 4. Make sure your customer facing teams are well equipped: This means messaging and often a deck for sales, talking points for success, and macross for support but it also means making sure they understand the price change, they feel good about it, and they’re prepared for it. Just creating the materials is the start, but pricing is often made or broken by how customer facing teams feel and implement it 5. Focus on packaging more than pricing: The price may change, but the value comes from the features and functionality available to the plan. Make sure you’re really thoughtful about why each feature goes in each plan 6. Create messaging around each plan, not just the change: If you’re in a multi-plan pricing system (ex: Free. Premium, Enterprise) then your messaging work should focus on who each plan is for, what they should be able to do on that plan, why they would upgrade to the next plan, etc. The work is NOT just about making messaging for the change itself, it’s setting your pricing up for long term success 7. Capture and record learnings from each change: Future pricing and packaging changes are inevitable and they often happen every 18 months - 2 years in a company (sometimes more, sometimes less). Mistakes and missteps are inevitable and usually fine but you need to make sure you learn from them and put those learnings into a playbook for next time.

The first thing I do when considering a price increase rollout is research. Some of the key pieces of information you need to gather are: * Past average selling price (for an existing product or similar product) - you can get this from your RevOps/Sales Ops team if you don't have access to it yourself. * Past deals - so you can use them as before and after examples in your presentation to your pricing committee. * Competitive prices - sometimes Sales may have this from competitor order forms they've been shown during sales cycles or ideally your competitors list their prices on their website (rarer) or you can also ask industry analysts in an inquiry. They won't tell you the exact price a competitor charges but you can ask them for average market price and average discount. Same for partners, implementation partners or reseller partners may have competitive or market price knowledge they would be willing to share at a high level at least. * Last, if you can but it is sometimes more difficult than the above, try to gather what the market will bear by interviewing current customers or prospects and asking them what they would be willing to pay for a feature/product like what you are working on. Once you have the research, you can start to test it out. If you have the luxury, try getting a few key sales reps to work with you on using the new proposed prices as they sell a few deals even before you roll it out officially. I find this to be an extremely helpful step as it goes a long way towards getting buy in. You may need to try out a few options before you settle in on a price proposal. After you've decided on what price you want to propose, put together a good pricing proposal deck which should include the historical prices (quarterly and/or annual trends), before and after examples, results of the testing you performed, any market/industry data you've gathered, and your rollout plan (when and how you will roll it out, what will happen for existing customers etc). If you come prepared with the right research, this will go smoothly!

When implementing a price increase rollout, as a marketer, some best practices to keep in mind include: 1. Communicate early and often: Provide advanced notice of the price increase to customers, and communicate the reasons for the increase in a transparent and honest manner. 2. Highlight product value: Emphasize the value that the customer will receive from your product or service, including any new features, benefits, or services that come with the increased price. 3. Offer incentives: Consider offering incentives to customers who agree to the price increase, such as discounts, promotions, or added value. 4. Segment your customer base: Consider segmenting your customer base based on their willingness to pay and adjust your pricing strategies accordingly. 5. Monitor and adjust pricing regularly: Regularly monitor the market and your competitors to ensure that your prices are still competitive, and adjust your pricing strategies as needed. 6. Ensure a smooth implementation process: Plan and execute the price increase rollout in a manner that minimizes disruption to your customers, and ensure that all customer-facing teams are trained and prepared to handle any questions or objections. 7. Continuously measure and evaluate: Continuously measure and evaluate the results of the price increase, and adjust your strategies as needed to maximize its effectiveness and minimize any negative impacts on customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Do not try to justify or explain why you charge the way you charge but better to engage in a conversation and prompt the prospect to share with you their reasoning. Start with some silence and then explore the pricing objection. This will give you a better understanding of the specific concerns behind the sticker shock so you can more easily address them. You also want to probe into the conditions required in order to get a deal done so you can adapt terms or walk away. Here’s a great article with some more tips.

I'd start by evaluating a few things:  - How have you positioned yourself? Are you positioned with lower-priced competitors?  - What's your ideal customer and does this customer fit that criteria?  - Are you actually priced too high for the value you provide?  Let's take each question in turn:  How have you positioned yourself? Positioning is essentially the context that you put around your product. Who are customers comparing you to? How do you compare to those products? When do you win?  If you're consistently losing solely on price, there's a good chance that you're in the wrong context. Maybe you're putting yourself in a context where the value isn't clear. For instance, maybe your value proposition is that you deliver white glove service but you're competing against solutions that are all self-service.  What's your ideal customer and does this customer fit that criteria? Continuing with the example above – let's say that one of your differentiators is that you deliver white glove service. In that case you'd want to target companies that have the right size of team and enough revenue to pay for that service. Otherwise, they won't be willing to pay for something that doesn't apply to them. Is the customer you're speaking with in that segment? Are you actually price too high? Here's the toughest one – you need to honestly evaluate if you are, indeed, priced too high. You can do this a few ways, but the best is a pricing and packaging sprint that will include customer interviews to determine which features people value and why, and evaluation of competitive pricing.  Pricing is one of the hardest parts of a business to get right because everyone (customers included) will have different opinions on how it should be done. The best thing to do is consistent customer interviews including win/loss analysis to give you data to use in making decisions and changes.

1. I’ll start by saying that if you’re consistently hearing that feedback, your job as a PMM is not just to come up with messaging to handle the objection but also to make sure you’re getting to the root of the issue, really understanding that feedback, and bringing that to the larger pricing leadership group to keep a pulse on how pricing is received and, over time, decide if you need to make a change or stay the course. You’re not always there just to figure out the messaging, your insights can and should be influencing strategy. 2. Getting off my soapbox to answer the actual question. My main advice is to get out of a price conversation and into a value conversation. I think the easiest answer is to focus on the value that your tool provides to an organization. Can you get clear on the ROI that your product provides, what tangible business results and value it brings to teams who use it? And, more importantly, can you make sure that the value you’re citing solves a real world need for your buyer? If you can get that messaging put together and clear, you can use it to have a real conversation with a buyer on how much value someone can get out of using the product, and, in many cases, that helps to bring down the objection around price. I will say, this ROI messaging work needs to be really thoughtfully done, not pulled together in a few hours. It needs to stand up and be credible and sometimes requires you do to real research and business value studies to get to the answer. If you’re in a crunch where you need messaging now and don’t have time to do the full ROI work, my advice would be to create messaging that focuses on how your product solves real pain that your target customer feels and the value props that back up how your product solves those pain points. Start there and then keep building that ROI message.

When faced with the common objection "Your prices are too high!", as a marketer, you can employ the following strategies to overcome this challenge: 1. Address the customer's concerns: Acknowledge the importance of price and show empathy towards the customer's perspective. 2. Highlight product value: Utilize marketing materials and messaging to emphasize the value that the customer will receive from your product or service. Emphasize its quality, features, benefits, and any additional services that come with it. 3. Offer budget-friendly options: If the customer's budget is a concern, suggest alternative products or services that offer similar value at a lower price point. 4. Promote current promotions: If you have any ongoing discounts or promotions, use them as an opportunity to drive down the perceived cost of your product or service. 5. Foster customer trust: By being transparent about your prices and the reasons behind them, you can build rapport and establish trust with the customer. Show them that you are genuinely interested in finding a solution that meets their needs. Ultimately, as a marketer, it's important to understand that not every customer will be a good match for your product or service, and it's okay to politely decline if the price is not a good match for the customer's budget.

At HubSpot we have a “master” positioning guide that exists for every core product and is shared on a central wiki that everyone can access. This positioning guide helps inform the work of marketers, sales enablement, and many other customer-facing teams. To ensure alignment we work closely with these other teams, such as sales enablement, to build assets like “Demo Like a Pro” that carry our positioning and messaging and transform it into an actual sample demo from a sales rep. This is just one example, but we typically carry this across departments to ensure messaging stays consistent.

Generally, product marketing creates messaging guides for new products, features, pricing, campaigns, company positioning, etc. While develop the messaging guide, we typically solicity input from other teams and individuals including product management and other marketers like communications/brand, demand gen and marketing leadership. As the messaging gets near final we do a final review with sales enablement, our sales advisory council (a handful of individual reps and saleas managers) and finally with sales/revenue leadership.   We then roll-out at one of our weekly or bi-weekly all sales meetings and/or share at the team lead meetings for more in depth Q&A and objection handling. Typically, the messaging guide comes with supporting customer facing slides, talk tracks, etc. We re-inforce through an on-line learning tool to make sure folks internalize the messaging.

I mentioned in another post that I have come up with a structured process for messaging development. with my team of product managers and product marketers, I work through a series of questions that force us to define and articulate our differentiation. This results in a number of messaging framework and source messaging documents that we hand off to the Marketing and Sales teams. We see these types of documents as foundational - the North Star for how we tell our story. Other marketing teams extend that messaging into demand gen campaigns, and our Sales teams pick up our pitch decks and marketing collateral to present to prospects. Ensuring commercial team alignment is tricky because it's fundamentally about dissemination (Confluence, newsletters, G-Drive, etc), training (both live and on-demand), and repetition (going on sales calls and using it over and over again). Messaging guides are a critical product marketing deliverable - they are foundational -- but a series of hands-on training and reinforcement on a per-deal-level are required to get a larger organization on-board.

In my view, the whole point of messaging guides is that they are shared as widely and as openly in your organization as possible. We actually keep a "launch tracker" document (google sheets file) that has the latest on every launch we're planning. This document is publicly available and very widely distributed. We link to the positioning guide for the new product or set of features there. In addition, we've built really strong relationships with counterparts in Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success, so we are regularly communicating across a wide number of forums (team trainings, slack channels, in person meetings with leadership, etc) and share or point to key documents like messaging guides in these meetings. Unfortunately, in my experience, there is no 'silver bullet' to communicating to large audiences - having lots of channels and repetition is really key.  I think the other thing to keep in mind is having your messaging guide be a format that is really easily digestible. We use a format that actually summarizes the goal of the campaign or launch really nicely upfront, then gets into the messaging, and towards the bottom goes into more of the nitty gritty research on the market, trends, competition, etc. We've gotten good feedback that the format is pretty easy to consume, and I think that goes a long way in getting the message out there. 

One thing I try not to do is share content or messaging without walking the person I want to get feedback from through the context and purpose live on a call/zoom. Sending something over for feedback without the right context can be disastrous...especially if they share with others and expand any confusion/dissent to others.  I will typically walk them through a google slide or doc with what we're trying to move towards and then offer them the opportunity to provide feedback live or in the doc once they've had some time to think about it.  Always try to prove why the messaging you're recommending is the right approach with proof points...these can be based on surveys, customer/analyst feedback, A/B or some testing framework, market movement, etc.  If your internal teams see the context for why you're moving in a specific direction and the proof points that support what you're trying to do then it will go a long way in getting their support/alignment. 

What I’ve learned from great leaders who are able to inspire and motivate is to gain consensus before you walk into the room. This is pretty much how I have shared messaging guides internally to ensure alignment. If you are really starting from scratch, hosting a workshop to hear everyone’s opinions works well. If you are adding value to something that already exists, have 1:few meetings to get specific feedback on voice, tone, choice of words, etc. Then, share it more broadly at a team meeting. Then share it with all leaders in Rev org. Then share it with C-level, backing up how much consensus you’ve already built and the alignment that’s been established.

We are still working on refining our process here, however, our usual process is to attend the commercial team all-hands to notify them of any new messaging guides and materials and then we record a more in-depth Loom video that walks through the messaging in more detail and with more nuance. We house these looms in a Sales Library in Notion. By recording it, reps and CSMs can review it more than once if needed in their own time. It also doubles as great onboarding material. We have a system to ensure everyone consumes the content.

This is a great question. Overall, product differentiation is key and one of the roles I really enjoy within PMM is having such a pulse and influence on what differentiates your product in the market - but it's not enough to just be different, it needs to matter to your customer and it needs to come to life in your marketing. This makes me think about my time at Old Navy where denim was our largest product category year over year. (Stick with me, this will translate to tech too, I promise). There are countless options for jeans and within the value fashion category, a few key competitors we had our eyes on. On factors like quality, fashion, value, preference on washes - we were head to head with our competitors. This is why our campaign work was critical to help break through. But in our latest focus groups as part of ad campaigns, we captured insights from customers that they really loved how newer cropped styles made them feel confident "showing off their ankles" as a transition to Fall. We were able to take this insight as key input into our creative brief and overall helped reinforce our positioning as the accessble fashion destination for denim. My point is, you might find that within your competitve set your product might have a large hurdle to differentiate in the category - you should always push 100% to build the best differntiated product for your customers - but equally important, it comes back to your customers and finding the greatest value to them and reinforcing it in your GTM strategy/approach.  

The narrative is a huge part of positioning. That's what frame your product's actual capabilities and determines which criteria are relevant or irrelevant. That said, I don't quite accept the view that we just have to cope with a world where our products are the same as competitors :) For sure, things move fast and no product differentiator can last forever... but we should be looking to take market positions and build capabilities that are unique and not rely only on narrative. 

Don't use corporate jargon and you're already 90% ahead of everyone else (if I had a nickel every time I read a company referring to their product as "industry-leading" or "robust"...). How do your happiest, most successful customers describe your product? Use those words. Don't use different words for the sake of being different. Be CLEAR about what your product does, the pain points they solve, and show screenshots. Talk to customers, read product reviews on G2, TrustRadius, etc. You'll notice patterns and might even be able to copy + paste their exact words in some cases.

You can't rely only on the narrative. But a strong one, especially one that frames up the problem and value you deliver as different / outsized, is critical to competitive success. But you know what else you need? Claim chowder. Proof points. Quantified impact. What actual results has your product proven to deliver? Weaving these into the narrative will help to make it more real, tangible, and create a sense of urgency for your audience. 

If you are relying on narrative differentiation alone, then the problem to solve is creating differentiated solutions rather than finding different stories to tell. Use competitive intel as a lever to get product, GTM, and operational strategy. Once you have that in place, you'll have differentiated offerings in the market, which is a foundational (and necessary) part of your narrative.

If you are relying on narrative differentiation alone, then the problem to solve is creating differentiated solutions rather than finding different stories to tell. Use competitive intel as a lever to get product, GTM, and operational strategy. Once you have that in place, you'll have differentiated offerings in the market, which is a foundational (and necessary) part of your narrative.

I like the positioning doc to address your audience need, how do you stand out / differentiated, what do you provide and white space. For example, if you have customer need, you can easily come up with the FOR and WHO; if you have white space, you can fill in the UNLIKE; and if you have unique capabilities, you can communicate the PROVIDES and ONLY. It really draws out that CRITICAL THING that defines your company or product.

Posted this on another similar question, but on the competitive positioning point specifically, I think there's a 'turn' in the narrative toward the end of the story where existing solutions can't solve the problem completely and it's good to have specifics on how your solution is better. But you never want to lead with the competitive view because that tends to cause a lot of friction between yourself and the customer. The goal is that the customer realizes you're a better approach to where the world is going and through that lens, the discussion narrative is all around jointly figuring out the best way to solve the problem. ---- As for messaging frameworks, a couple to try out. Here’s a combined messaging source doc that I use every time I start working with one of our portfolio companies. Inherited from Citrix days and then adapted over time. Hope it’s helpful! The second one is one I've been working on for a year and am sharing with the Sharebird community before publishing for feedback. The core idea is that I've that that a lot of messaging focuses too much on product/benefit and not enough on fitting the narrative into a broader context of how a customer views their world, their priorities, and setting the table for the new world. Interestingly, there are all kinds of tools for salespeople to essentially become a consultative partner to their customer - Command of the Message, Challenger Selling, etc. As marketers, we don’t really have a single framework to help us build a narrative in the way that these sales frameworks do. The net of the issue is that we don’t stay focused on answering the 3 big ‘why' questions that a rep needs to answer to close a sale: 1) why buy anything, 2) why buy now, and 3) why buy you. The idea is that if your messaging/story can answer these three questions better than your competition, customers will buy from you. Over the past couple years, I’ve been working with a couple dozen startups here at Unusual Ventures and see the same problem at play with our founders. So, I wrote a new messaging guide that we’re going to be publishing (for free) called “Three Why Storytelling”. It’s a simple storytelling framework that nets out 6 steps to crafting a story that wins customers: Why Buy Anything 1. Start with an authentic founder insight 2. Align on shared view of impact Why Buy Now 3. Connect problem to business urgency 4. Show current solutions to be ineffective Why Buy You 6. Frame new approach to solve the problem 7. Prove unique offering and value Is this rocket science? No. You’ve probably seen each of these concepts in various forms all over. But this framework strives to simplify and codify the building blocks of a story that, when laid out together, form an airtight, irrefutable narrative that is purpose-built to lead customers to your solution as the best choice. By the way, if I had to pick one ‘Why’ that is most underrepresented in messaging, it is most definitely Why Buy Now. We are conditioned to think in problem/solution terms. But the reality is that there are two types of problems - big problems (we’re moving from on-premises software to SaaS) and urgent problems (my business units are going around my IT team and signing up for SaaS apps like Dropbox and Concur, cutting us out of our core function!). Big problems are market-focused while urgent problems are customer-focused. Companies that obsess on Why Buy Now typically have a solutions marketing mentality that starts with the customer initiative and works back to product vs. the other way around. Here’s the draft .pdf of 3 Why Storytelling. Would love any feedback! 

My views on competitive positioning are largely stolen from Andy Raskin. Rather than repeat that which I've "adopted" from his writing, I'd suggest looking them up (LinkedIn great place to find a lot of it, and links to the rest). The persona framework is pretty simple: consider the relevant stakeholders, determine what incentives they are responding to and implicitly discuss your product in the context of those incentives.

At its most basic, messaging is about answering 3 key prompts: * What is the problem facing the market today? * What solution (generally) will help solve this problem? * What does your product do to help solve it? To me, competitive falls squarely underneath that third bullet point. It's one thing to list the entire list of features for your product, but the real exercise in messaging is to find the differentiating features (i.e. what makes your product different from "the other guys"). Therefore, it's important to map your key capabilities with the competition to understand where that white space is, because that is where your messaging focus should live.

Once you are clear on the value proposition of a product/feature and/or a positioning statement for the company or product, you are ready to pull together a messaging framework that your cross-functional stakeholders (from marketing to product) can leverage.  In terms of a messaging framework, I have found that formats vary by company but all fundamentally cover a combo of key elements based on what your teams require for a successful launch (ideally delivered as a 1-sheeter or 1 slide format): * Product name/quick descriptor * Target audience (your best-fit prospective customer and the more specific, the better!); include primary (and secondary if applicable) business goal - new customer acquisition, or existing customer adoption/renewal/retention? Your persona work, if any, would also fall into this category. * Target market/geo (as-needed) * Pricing/packaging (as-needed) * Value proposition or position statement (internal language); your competitive positioning/greatest advantages should be covered here and “proven” in the reasons-to-believe or key benefits section. What are your actual competitive advantages? Who or what are the actual alternatives to your solutions for your “best-fit” customers and how will you or your product solve the need better? * Short and sweet elevator pitch or tagline (external language) * Reasons-to-believe and supporting evidence (external language) OR Key features/benefits/value statements and proof points/claims (external language) Pro tip: Do the pre-work to get approved proof points ready to use! Value claims that directly support your key benefits or reasons-to-believe will amp up the strength of your messaging, and third-party validation claims including star-ratings and/or reviews will often show lifts in trust and conversion

Competitive research is a critical step before you even start your messaging and positioning exercise — I see it as an input rather than an output. I have a few favorite messaging frameworks and usually combine my favorite elements into one. Geoffrey Moore's classic FOR...WHO...PROVIDES...UNLIKE...ONLY framework (not sure where this originated) is a solid start for messaging.  For personas, we build cards that cover demographics, sensibilities, responsibilities, pain points, motivations. There's no wrong way to do it but for enablement and internal education, it's best to distill into something easily consumable.

I use a pretty simple framework for messaging - namely, the messaging house. I typically focus on the following sections of the house (top to bottom): Brand prop, product description, customer context (the problem), Needs and wants, 3-5 value props, Benefits & features that address needs and wants(How does it work?) Competitive positioning is a great foundation for supporting messaging. FInding the intersection of the unfair advantages of your product/service and the items your customers' value (I.e. speed, flexibility, security, etc) is a great way to build lasting messaging. 

I honestly customize the framework for each company I work for, but over the year’s I've built my own since I never found anything existing that I really loved. If you want an example, message me and I can share an example. Competitive positioning is always part of the initial messaging development work, and then I do always have a section in my messaging docs on competitors to talk about competitors at a glance (and unique differentiators), which then links to more detailed competitive intel docs.

I borrow from the typical ones mentioned on Sharebird (the box one? mind's failing me here) and modify them based on what I'm messaging.  Re: competitive positioning, I break it down by 3 segments at a high level and against key value props how we stack up.  * Who are incumbents * Top direct competitors * Adjacents in the space I try not to get too much in the weeds on features so we focus on benefits. Detailed comparisons are more used as sales enablement.

There are a few different messaging and persona frameworks I have used for different purposes. Here are a few of my favorites.  Positioning Statement - this is typically the foundation of any product/GTM positioning.  * [Target Customer] For: describe who you're targeting your product at * [Statement of need or opportunity] Who: describe the pain or opportunity you're offering the target market * [Product name is a product category] List your product name and the product category it belongs to * [Statement of key benefit] That: describe the benefits of your product for the target customer * [Competiting Alternative] Unlike: describe how your product differentiates from the primary competition (this doesn't necessarily have to only include other vendors but it could be differentiating from the status quo) First Round had a solid blog on crafting positioning statements a while back- https://review.firstround.com/three-moves-every-startup-founder-must-make-to-build-a-brand-that-matters The other framework we're using is around product/company positioning with a 3rd party consultant which is organized in the following way  * Market Category * Statement of Differentiation * Message Pillars 1, 2, 3, etc. - supports the statement of differentiation and should have mulitple levels of detail depending upon the context...mapping to product/company capabilities * Big Idea - "No Software" from Salesforce is the canonical example here  For personas, it's key to map out the personas that are involved in your deals..typically this will look something like this: * Buyer/decision maker * User (if not buyer)  * Admin (if not user) * Technical evaluator * Champion (if not buyer)  Obviously, this is for more of an enterprise sale vs. a PLG model where buyer is user, tech evaluator, champion, etc. I also recently read the Challenger Customer (same authors of the Challenger Sale) and that book has an interesting view of personas.  Once you define personas, I would map out the following for each: * Description of persona  * Titles that map to the persona (persona & title should be different)  * Role in buying process (listed above)  * Skill set mapping as it relates to your product (business & tech acumen, etc.) * Goals * Pain points * Success measures or motivation * Real life examples of the persona (can be linkedin profile) 

There are a lot of great frameworks out there and they all have common elements. I recommend reviewing a few and customizing to what’s relevant and actionable for your company. I like to include: * our differentiated POV * positioning statement (internal-facing) * tag-line * brand personality * value pop * 25/50/75 word descriptions * 3 messaging pillars with core message, use case, business benefits, and proof points under each * high level persona descriptions and messaging by persona Competitive positioning needs to be at the heart of your messaging. It's the key input that you build your messaging around. Positioning is the strategy and messaging is the execution — the words and narratives that bring your competitive positioning to life and have it land with your personas.

I dont think we should ever mention competitors directly in our messaging. Sure, you can address it directly in response if a prospect brings them up. But proactively naming competitors puts you in a defensive position and gives them undue attention. This usually doesn't work to our advantage. You could position it more generally like: Unlike (category descriptor) platforms, (our product) helps you solve for x. There are a handful of good frameworks out there. But I found that none of them perfectly fit your need for a particular company and product portfolio. So I build my own custom one inspired by other frameworks. My own previous custom frameworks at a different company often don't work at a new company entirely. The best frameworks are customized to your need, and the time spent on those is well worth it, in my experience.

We develop personas in three degrees depending on the need: lightweight, qualitative, and quantitative (statistical). Each of these populate a similar framework: demographic details (job title, geo if applicable, age range, etc), responsibilities/needs/jobs to be done, challenges/pain points,  Worth mentioning that a companion framework, the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), is often created to establish firmagraphic targeting to complement.  Competitive insights are typically not included in our persona frameworks (though I hold space for exceptions here in rare cases - i.e. if credentialing on a certain product is part of a job responsibility). Instead, generally, our competitive insights are cultivated and applied in conjunction with the above. From a Challenger model, we aim to reframe the problem, introduce new/improved impavt as a result, and ultimately reveal value. 

My team and I use a Message House framework that covers the following elements: * Solution/Product Naming * Tagline * Positioning Statement * Short and Long Descriptions For the Positioning Strategy, we use a modified version of April Dunford's Obviously Awesome positioning canvas. The canvas, we have found, invites us to be more critical and thorough in our positioning strategy. It includes: * Competitive Alternatives * Unique Attributes * Value * Who Cares A Lot We inform the messaging framework with the positioning canvas, filling in the following elements: * Target audience (personas, ICP) * Unifying message * Pain Points (up to 3) * Solutions (up to 3) * Key messages (up to 3) * Competitive differentiators * Proof points/Customer references It can be quite comprehensive, but when the thinking is crisp, so is the end result -- differentiated positioning and clear, resonant messaging. As you can see, Competitive Positioning is woven through all of this work and strengthens the overall messaging strategy.

My team and I use a Message House framework that covers the following elements: * Solution/Product Naming * Tagline * Positioning Statement * Short and Long Descriptions For the Positioning Strategy, we use a modified version of April Dunford's Obviously Awesome positioning canvas. The canvas, we have found, invites us to be more critical and thorough in our positioning strategy. It includes: * Competitive Alternatives * Unique Attributes * Value * Who Cares A Lot We inform the messaging framework with the positioning canvas, filling in the following elements: * Target audience (personas, ICP) * Unifying message * Pain Points (up to 3) * Solutions (up to 3) * Key messages (up to 3) * Competitive differentiators * Proof points/Customer references It can be quite comprehensive, but when the thinking is crisp, so is the end result -- differentiated positioning and clear, resonant messaging. As you can see, Competitive Positioning is woven through all of this work and strengthens the overall messaging strategy.

The end game is for customers to choose your solutions and brand over the competition, so the most meaningful KPI is your win rate against against different competitors when you encounter them in deals. To measure that, you need to make sure your sales team is documenting who they encounter in each opportunity.  As a personal KPI, you could provide a quarterly or even monthly analysis and update with actionable insights and recommendations regarding competition. In my experience, a lot of real-time and one-off competitive intel gets lost. Product development cadence and process is just different than marketing and sales. Documentation and timely injection of information are really important when introducing insights from the marketplace into product development. You can also set some goals across the customer journey--admittedly, some of these are boxes to check as opposed to metrics to measure. Top of Funnel: Including competitive differentiation in your primary brand messaging and properties (websites, marketing campaigns, social, etc., wherever you think prospects are gaining awareness and familiarity with you). You can measure your SEO and web performance against close competitors. Middle of Funnel: Including competitive differentiation in the materials, campaigns and other plays used to get prospects engaged with you and especially in product education materials. Bottom of Funnel: Enabling the sales team with battlecards, objection handling, rip-and-replace customer stories, and updating sales materials to reflect what has been learned. 

Ultimately, the change in win rate against that particular competitor before vs. after your CI project.  There are sub goals and metrics to unpack here:  * QoQ change in the competitor features & functions, and messaging * The pace at which your product team is able to ship against new intel * PM survey results on the usefulness of your CI program This may be a controversial statement, but after seeing CI programs run out of Product, PMM, and Ops at different companies, I think the actual research work belongs in Product -- they're the true owners of what's being scoped and built, and should be invested in delivering a better product. PMM can stil own the pricing/packaging/messaging piece.

This really depends on the actual goal of a CI program, but here are a few ideas: For the sales team: * Competitive win rates (pre and post intel) * Sales confidence on competitive pitching (This is something you can measure using surveys at a regular cadence like quarterly) For the product team: * Feature parity if that is what you are focused on * Competitive differentiation - if you really need a metric you can create a percentage scale and see how that changes over time For the marketing team * If you have competitive materials or webpages - measure engagement and conversions

1. Sales confidence - While not a metric measured in SFDC, you can work with enablement to craft a pre and post sales confidence metric to assess how confident reps feel in navigating competitive conversations.  2. Competitive win rate - You're likely already measuring win rate, but competitive win rate will give you a direct KPI to measure the improvment in closing competitive deals.  3. [ Product specific] Reduction in lost deals due to product capabilities - To measure this metric you'll need to be tracking lost reason and have a drop-down for reps to choose "product gap." 

Another great question, thanks! I have been in a few roles where my job was to provide market data, competitive intelligence etc to other teams (CEO, Product, Sales etc) within the org. These teams would use this information to make strategic decisions, use them in sales presentations, etc but to put a common metric on providing competitive intelligence was hard. So we would send a quarterly survey to other teams within the org to participate in an anoynmous survey asking them about the usefulness of the competitive intelligence my team was providing. Think of it as a CSAT or a NPS survey to measure if they found your services helpful, will they come back to you etc.

It's great to see companies putting more emphasis on measuring this. It's definitely a challenge, but if competitive investments aren't measured, it's less likely they'll be appreciated or incorporated into key processes. The ideal measure of competitive intelligence is win rate. Measured on a quarterly basis (and at the close of a quarter) it can indicate if the organization is competing more effectively in qualified opportunities. It's important to note that like most PMM metrics, win rate is complex and can be influenced by many factors: sales training, market factors, product delivery, etc. But, when measured consistently you can see lift over time. The counterbalance to this is that it's directly connected to the company's top line. Higher win rates drives more revenue drives more investment in sales, marketing, and product. Also, by tying this to opporunities, it gives you any necessary leverage to get competitor data directly into CRM. "Oh, you want to know if we're improving our win rate against Competitor X? Well, there are only 5 opportunities tagged with that data out of 1,000 open opps. I need every opportunity tagged with competition by the time we get to Stage 3 to know how to prioritize this." Depending on your market and stage, you can get more specific. Win rates in a given segement, or versus a specific competitor or tier of competitor. 

Love this question! I'd think about it in terms of outcomes, and effectiveness.  So I'd look at metrics like: * Competitive Win Rates * Usage - To be clear, I like to look at this through the lens of whether the usage of a particular piece of competitive content is impacting the sales cycle and not just pure usage of content.  * Product Feedback/Usage * Retention Depending on the size and stage of your company, you may also have things like: * Competitive SEO - If you use a tool lke SEMRush then you'll be able to track competitive search positions and rankings compared to where you are, and how it's trending over time. * Brand / SOV - This is very high-level, but if you work for a company that is well-known or intently focused on building brand it's a metric that is likely tracked.  Since you mentioned your company tracks every project I think this can also depend on the maturity of your CI program. But work backwards and start with the outcome you're trying to drive, and then determine what needs to be measured to achieve that objective.

For the Sales side, you can look at: - competitive win/loss rates - win rates of deals that used competitive support or resources vs. did not - ultimately, market share over time But for the Product teams or overall company distribution of intelligence, it's tough, because it's not as close to a specific outcome. May need to look at more qualitative measures like positive feedback from your Product teams, saying that your CI helped them make a specific decision faster or more confidently. Good luck!

Competitive win rate is a great north star goal. But it can be challenging to accurately impact that in a positive way in a short amount of time. A couple other KPIs I've used in the past and that I recommend: 1. Competitor confidence (from the sales team) 2. Project-based contribution If you can increase the confidence of your sales team when it comes to competitors, you can infer that it will positively impact your competitive win rate. So every 6 month, I send a survey to my entire sales team and ask them to fill it out. Here's what it looks like: 1. Name 2. Team (e.g. XDR, Account Executive, Customer Success, etc.) 3. How long have you worked at *company*? 4. How confident are you competing against Competitor X? (1 - 5) 5. How confident are you competing against Competitor Y? (1 - 5) 6. How confident are you competing against Competitor Z? (1 - 5) 7. How often do you use competitive collateral like battlecards, one-pagers, etc.? 8. How impactful has our competitive collateral and training been for you? 9. What would help you win more competitive deals? (open text field) If I've done my job, the answers to 4 - 6 should go up over time, and the answers to 7 and 8 should be "very often" :-) I can't tell you how helpful this has been for me in guiding what I work on with my programs.  And then in terms of project-based contributions, try to find big projects happening in your company. This could be a website revamp, launching a big new product, revamping employee onboarding, etc. Figure out a way to get involved. If you're revamping the website, maybe look into advising on compare landing pages. If you're launching a new product, make sure the team is equipped with what the landscape offers that's similar. You get the idea. All of these things positively contribute to how your organization goes to market.

Competitive win rate! This requires reps to record (and for your CRM to have a field for) competitor (existing -rip and replace - or exploring - head to head). This is the most direct way to see if you are moving the needle against your core competitors. Secondary metrics may include things like analyst and review site achievement (i.e. G2 ranking) or traffic and search relevance for comparrison pages (i.e. a competitive landing page). This answer is highly dependent on which data exists in your CRM - if competitor is not trackable, secondary metrics are a good proxy / directional indicator. 

Terrific question! A few metrics that are key to competitive intel: Competitive Intel 101 Metrics 1. Sales engagement -- Is your sales team using the competitive content that your team is developing? If you use a sales enablement platform (we use Highspot), getting this data is much easier. Set your OKRs on increasing sales engagement with this type of content. 2. Sales satisfaction -- This is a more qualitative measure, but very important. Find out whether your sales team feels more confident in the conversations they have with prospects and existing customers. If you want a more quantitative measure, consider sending an NPS specific to your competitive intel to your sales team on a quarterly or bi-annual basis. Advanced Competitive Intel Metrics 3. Impact on sales success -- Once you've established your foundation with #1#1 and #2,#2, you can take it to the next level by measuring the impact of competitive intel content on closed/won and accelerating the sales cycle. You can do this most effectively if your sales team uses an enablement platform that associates content with sales engagements. 4. Impact on product roadmap & GTM strategy -- At its best, competitive intel can influence product roadmap and go-to-market strategy. I recommend qualitative measures to gauge success. Look at the degree to which company strategy is informed by your competitive insights. Last KPI: Great competitive intel makes a product marketer an MVP across the company. Count how many high-fives you get from sales, product, customer success, and marketing. If the number is going up-and-to-the-right, you're doing something right.

Terrific question! A few metrics that are key to competitive intel: Competitive Intel 101 Metrics 1. Sales engagement -- Is your sales team using the competitive content that your team is developing? If you use a sales enablement platform (we use Highspot), getting this data is much easier. Set your OKRs on increasing sales engagement with this type of content. 2. Sales satisfaction -- This is a more qualitative measure, but very important. Find out whether your sales team feels more confident in the conversations they have with prospects and existing customers. If you want a more quantitative measure, consider sending an NPS specific to your competitive intel to your sales team on a quarterly or bi-annual basis. Advanced Competitive Intel Metrics 3. Impact on sales success -- Once you've established your foundation with #1#1 and #2,#2, you can take it to the next level by measuring the impact of competitive intel content on closed/won and accelerating the sales cycle. You can do this most effectively if your sales team uses an enablement platform that associates content with sales engagements. 4. Impact on product roadmap & GTM strategy -- At its best, competitive intel can influence product roadmap and go-to-market strategy. I recommend qualitative measures to gauge success. Look at the degree to which company strategy is informed by your competitive insights. Last KPI: Great competitive intel makes a product marketer an MVP across the company. Count how many high-fives you get from sales, product, customer success, and marketing. If the number is going up-and-to-the-right, you're doing something right.

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)

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)

There are many stakeholders when it comes to competitive intelligence and aligning messaging and product strategy with competitive differentiation. I have found an effective model where PMM is the the driver, although any of the contributors could also drive. Regardless, it is a joint effort across at least PMM, PM, Presales and Sales Enablement (some larger enterprises like IBM have dedicated, centralized competitive program offices). As the driver, PMM can focus on arming the sales team with up-to-date tools (e.g. battle cards) to win, ensuring marketing can land us in competitive evaluations, and ensuring the roadmap continues to reinforce our competitive differention.

Ideally, your brand positioning pillars are unique enough individually or in combination with each other that competitive positioning is baked in. Effectively enabling sales is about educating them on the landscape and competitive buckets (read answer above re: putting all your competitors into distinct categories you can more generically position against). Then when it comes to your Tier 1 competitors, it's all about training the sales team and making battlecard content super easy to find. Bring the energy, show them a side-by-side demo if you can to give them confidence, and personalize your competitive differentiation for each sales role (e.g. SDRs need a one-liner, Senior AEs may need you to explain product differentiators). That, combined with compelling assets, is a winning strategy. You can measure effectiveness of competitive positioning at different stages of the funnel. For example, if you have competitive landing pages you could A/B test messaging changes to see if there's a lift in conversion. Further down-funnel (this takes more time), you can do before-and-after analysis of competitive win/loss rates.

I believe competitive research should always be part of the process when you develop your core messaging, but it’s important to not get too hung up on your competitors, you can easily lose sight of what your own customers care about. (Also, who is to say that their messaging is better than others?) I usually build a competitive positioning matrix where I will have at least 2 rows for each competitor: “We help you”, and “so you can” (But use what version works best for you)--- and then go through competitor websites/content/materials to gather what statements they use to answer each of those. This helps to look at your competitors’ positioning in a more uniform way. Then add a column for your company and your own statements - and in the simplest, easiest way this should give you an idea of how you differentiate at a high level. Enabling sales on competitive intel is a whole topic on its own, but here are a few tips on how to do it effectively: * Make it easy to find - so have a centralized location where you can point people to. * Share the links, and share it again, and again over time. * Have quick, TL;DR versions of all your competitive intel docs (but also keep detailed documentation if anyone wants to dig into something more specific). This can be in the form of battle cards or simple FAQs that you can publish internally * There are certain tools that allow you to publish information like this within platforms like SFDC or slack - where people already look for information * Create short videos and see if people find it easier to listen than read * It’s not always enough to just create these materials. It often helps to do regular competitive readouts with the sales team so you can have a more interactive conversation and help answer specific questions. And here are few tips on how to test if it's resonating with your buyers * Run test campaigns against your control messaging across different marketing channels to see how it performs (Paid, Social, Email, website A/B tests, Sales pitches, etc.) * Talk to your sales team, run pilots, listen to gong calls, sit in on sales calls, etc. * Test in-product messaging * Run quantitative studies, interviews, focus groups, etc * Test it with analysts.

Competitive differentiation should make up the pillars of your messaging and value proposition. The reason being is that most markets are crowded and customers can choose from many alterntatives, so your differentation needs to be clearly articulated across the buyer's journey. To understand your competitive differentiation you can conduct buyer persona research, closed won research, analyze Gong calls with high ACVs, speak to reps and customer success teams, and really hone in on determining 1) What pain points are you solving for your buyers and 2) What makes you the "only" one? (see onlyness test here ) A couple ways to know if your messaging and value proposition is landing with your buyers 1. Market research messaging testing  2. A/B Test is through marketing channels (paid, email, website)  3. A/B Test it with SDRS in their outreach sequences 4. Present it to your customer advisory board (or similar) to see if it resonates 5. Test it with Analysts 

Competitive differentiation is what forms your positioning and what you build your messaging around. With how crowded every market category is now its essential to nail your differentiation and then communicate it through your messaging and the rest of the go-to-market. Enabling sales effectively requires making the competitive information actionable and easily digestible. Whether you’re creating battlecards, sharing competitive updates in Slack, or leading a competitive play sales training distill it down to the key points and bring it to life with examples with what worked in deals. Finally to test if your messaging is resonating you can: * Test copy across competitive campaigns and landing pages * Look at competitive win rates before and after competitive enablement * Sit in on sales call or listen to call recordings to see how competitive messaging points are resonating * Ask industry analysts for feedback

The answer here is in the question. My approach to differentiation starts with understanding why the product or service you're responsible is uniquely suited to a specific customer. And then focus on what makes you great, not what makes others less good. Too many companies (including a few I've worked with) focus too much on the question of "how do we compete against X competitor?" This creates a backwards-looking mentality and you're always in reactive mode. I will say it's my favorite thing to compete against someone who's more concerned about me than I am about them... they can chase my message all day, and all I have to do is worry about making customers wildly successful. Way more fun. How do you know if it's working? If sales are up, win rates are strong, average deal size is up, and the competition is starting to talk about you more? It's working. 

Competitive positioning is a key component of defining core messaging. If we sit down and come up with copy on how to best describe our offerings, a key step is to compare that against how competitors describe themselves. You’ll likely be hit with an unpleasant surprise that about half your copy has already been used directly or indirectly by competitors. Some words might be well-adapted lexicons that prospects associate competitors with. Developing your positioning and messaging without this key insight would lead to bad outcomes. I always try to find words we can “own” in the prospect’s mind when associating the value to our products and brand. These words should be unique from the competitor’s identity and still be aligned with the prospect’s language. We try to stay away from feature differentiators and focus on how we help customers solve the problem in a better way. The most effective forms of training for sales are role play sessions combined with learning materials as everyone learns and retains information differently. Salespeople in different segments (SMB, MM, Enterprise) may need different forms of enablement to drive meaningful results. Testing your messaging with potential target buyers from interviews or tools like Wynter is the best way to confirm if your positioning is on-target.

Great question! I'll start with saying Klue has a phenomenal blog post on this topic I'd encourage you to read. But to your question, most will try to differentiate off features. In most cases this will lead to a conversation about value -- and in a crowded market is really difficult to truly differentiate in this case. There are some tactical things you can pursue to drive differentiation: * Social Proof * Lean-in to aspects of your solution that customers rave about! I've seen this be everythign from the sales team/process, to customer support team, implementation, education, and more. I call all those out just to say it's important to think outside our product as well. * Competitive content - while it's tactical, if you have a comparison page it enables you to tell a story about how your different -- and not just about features. * Brand - This is the ultimate differentiation, but it's not an overnight fix. Consider what's unique about the attributes of your company, and lean-in to building your brand around that which will give prospects a clear view of your company.  Beyond the above, it's really about storytelling and messaging. Instead of just thinking about how your product is different from compeition, think about the changes your prospects are experecing in their day-to-day and tell a compelling story around that -- and then educate them on how to win, with your product.

Our competitive differentiation is central to our overall company/product positioning. They're almost the same thing. We have a high-level view of our position in the market vs other categories of tools, and a deeper view of the specific capabilities that make us unique.  Enabling sales is a constant function of updating self-serve resources, delivering training, and sharing major intel. good luck!

With messaging, the one thing that I always push my team to think about is what’s unique to Shopify that no one else can own. Can someone slap their brand on top and say the same things? If so, the messaging and positioning is not good enough. We want to ensure that we are sharing what is most valuable to our business and that no one else can claim.

I have a few lenses that I look through for competitive differentiation: 1. The Positioning Canvas -- I mentioned this in an earlier question, but it's worth repeating the effectiveness of April Dunford's Obviously Awesome positioning canvas (must reading for any Product Marketer). With this methodology, you and your team will go through an exercise of defining 'competitive alternative' -- the task here is to identify what customers would use if you did not exist AND to look inwards at what unique attributes you have that your competitors do not. Highly recommend using this as part of your competitive differentiation exercise. 2. Company Strategy -- Many people think competitive differentiation is limited to product. It's not. I like to look at competitive differentiation through a combination of (1) product strategy, (2) GTM strategy, and (3) operational strategy. Often, you can find -- or create -- differentiation in one or multiple of these areas. One way I've put it all together is to develop a 'Buyer Consideration Attribute' map and workshop strengths and weaknesses vis-a-vis competition on the most important attributes. <-- Informed by Blue Ocean Strategy (another must read) Once you have a good thesis on competitive differentiation, it's time to document it and enable as many relevant teams as possible. Not just sales. Product management and engineering needs these insights to inform their roadmap. Marketing needs these insights both for messaging strategy and in determining other GTM elements like channel, audiences, and more. And then, yes, Sales and customer success needs easy-to-understand and easy-to-take action enablement so they have 20/20 vision of who they will be up against in deals and so they know how to navigate conversations....and win deals.