Market Research

You asked exactly the right question as the best messaging is all three (consistent, creative, and differentiated). Getting there isn’t easy. I try to break it down step by step. I start with differentiated. What’s different about us that’s valuable to our customer? Then creative: how do we express this in a creative way? Finally, consistency: now that we’ve figured out a creative way to express our differentiated message, let’s make sure it’s the same everywhere and everyone in our company can recite it back to us. Case study: What good is bad data? At Segment, one of our key differenti...

Depends largely on how long the company has been in business and how many products it has in market. Brand positioning or purpose are useless if they haven't been validated in the market, and counterproductive if they no loger reflect the future of the company, so be careful relying on them (for a longer, better explanation of all of this, see "Andy Raskin"). As far as product-level messaging, the best approach, in my experience, is to look at it from a problem-stakeholder-incentive angle:  What problem is being solved?  Which stakeholder(s) must be convinced to buy?  To what incent...

Yes - I think there are 3 things you need for good messaging: 1. A clear understanding of who you're targeting. The target persona, not the vendor is the "hero" in your story. Product marketers too often make their product or company the main character. 2. A clear understanding of how your product is differentiated. What are the 3 - 5 specific things that you do differently from competitive/existing solutions. 3. A compelling brand/company vision. What is your broad POV on the market? How is it different (note this is different from product differentiation) If you h...

We have our brand messaging and corporate messaging which ties to our company purpose and we use it as our north star and map all related messaging to that. It’s important to work in an integrated way so that messaging is consistent and aligned across the company and the products we sell. We spend a lot of time creating our Messaging Template - a source document our PMM team uses and that we send to all cross-functional partners so they can create content and copy aligned with our messaging. Once our Messaging Template is created and in a good shape, we create the related 1st call deck fo...

I do believe in having a north star to help guide all your messaging. Having a clear brand and positioning DNA which is the overarching narrative for your entire company, will help ensure there’s consistent messaging across the entire business and that all positioning is helping tell your company's bigger purpose and mission. Your company’s messaging DNA should be the foundation from which you build your product positioning. You can use your brand DNA foundation as a north star to guide your feature or product-based messaging. A strong brand DNA foundation will include the following: * ...

I did an AMA a while ago that went into detail on how to build differentiated messaging - this talks about a 7-step process that I have created and adapted for use over time with different companies I have worked for.  You can read more about it here: https://sharebird.com/ama/surveymonkey-director-of-product-marketing-sarah-din-on-messaging

To build consistency, it's critical that everyone in the company believes and uses the brand positioning and mission. For example, at Instawork, our CEO walks through it at every all-hands and uses a recent customer example to highlight how we've delivered (or failed to deliver) on our value prop. It also informs our plans, so what we build aligns with the overall company promise. Where we can differentiate is how we message to a particular audience. Being a labor marketplace, we work with both businesses and workers. Our business segments span two very distinct industries and range from S...

Answer one: Iterate, iterate, iterate. Answer two: Yes, brand positioning and product positioning are inextricably tied.  A statement that sounds bold but shouldn't be: Product marketing should drive brand positioning. It's the why of what we do, it stems from the problems we're solving, and builds on the uniquie approach you're taking to solving the problem. Brand positoining also resonates down and drives how we build what we build, how we interact with customers, and how our product (and our experience overall!) makes our customers feel. So, the best messaging comes from trial, er...

Yes, I believe in tieing positioning up to overall company positioning. The way I've described it before to other team members is it's a scaffold -- the foundation is the company positioning and messaging, and stemming from that is platform positioning and messaging, and then product positioning and messaging. These all should latter up to the overall company positioning. As with everything, there are caveats -- if you're a part of a company that is making a huge shift, or entering a completley new market, then messaging naturally won't ladder up perfectly but that's more of a exception ...

There's a lot to look at, but here's an overview: Company & Product Insight: * Company Stage/Size/Growth - This speaks for itself, but where is the company, what size, and how quickly are they growing. Ideally you should have a sense of the company size you prefer so you know where you fit. * Social Proof - Case Studies, and reviews on sites like G2 and TrustRadius are priceless * Analyst Reports/Position * Product Usage & NPS * Values & Culture - Not only what the company itself says their values are, but what do employees say on sites like Glassdoor? * Financial Metr...

In my opinion, the most important factor is the stage of the company. Their stage of growth and the maturity of the product marketing function will define the type of work you have to do. Being the first PMM leader at a company in an earlier stage will mean you will have to balance priorities and wear more hats in a much different way than more established, later stage companies. No choice is correct, it's all about your preferences. 

If your sales reps are already having daily conversations, you’re in luck! It means they aren’t short on time with their customers and giving you 20-30 minutes shouldn't be a big deal.  You might have the best chance positioning the market research ask as something that can strengthen the relationship with the customer. If they’re already taking the time to meet with your company often, they likely are heavy users of your product and would value the opportunity to provide input into your strategy. Even if you’re trying to do research on messaging, rather than collect product feedback, yo...

I would start with getting information from Sales first. At Square, I rely very strongly on Account Managers to get a sense for the needs and attitudes of larger merchants. I'll talk to them directly first and then will try to partner up with them on specific conversations to close very specific knowledge gaps. Try to coordinate with your Sales / AM counterparts to make the 30 - 45 minute call with customers productive for everyone. 

I love this question, partly because it allows me to address what I consider to be one of the great misconceptions of product marketing-related research. In my opinion, and experience, your engagements need not be with existing customers and, in fact, sometimes it's better if they're not. When I was consulting, rarely would I talk to my clients' actual customers when helping them build personas. Why? Two reasons: 1. The questions I had applied equally to customers/non-customers. 2. No existing bias to creep into the conversation. Conventional wisdom says that it's important to unders...

I am hoping that some of my other answers have made this clear, but in case they haven't - market research, just like everything else in Product Marketing, is a team sport. The more you can show the value of this kind of research (i.e. how it will help sales win more deals), the easier it will be to recruit sales to join that team. From there, you can find a process or cadence that works for everyone to ensure that you are getting the engagement you need without stepping on any toes. But there is an even better solution to this - you can get sales to do some market and competitive resear...

Honestly, with the rise of tools like Gong you don't even need to necessarily ask your reps to join in on customer calls. If there are specific questions you want to ask you can always ask your rep to weave it into the call, or ask your AM or CS rep to schedule a call with an existing customer to aid with the market research. As long as customer calls are recorded in Gong you can always use that as a vehicle to go back and listen (and take advantage of some of the cool analytical features that Gong has!)  If you have a particular set of questions you want to ask, I would recommend starting...

If your company uses a tool like Gong.io that is the most non-intrusive way to glean insights from sales conversations. It's a great tool that lets you search key topics in an easy way.  If Gong isn't an option to you, then work through your sales team. Be intentional about which customers you’d like to speak to and be clear about why you want to speak to them. Always get permission from your sellers to reach out to their customers. Depending on the stage of the deal cycle the sellers may or may not want you to be involved so it doesnt disrupt the sales cycle. You have to be ok with that, ...

Join the conversation. As a PMM, you should have a seat at the table in any customer conversation. You bring a different perspective to the discussion and can often ask different questions than your account exec can.  One thing that's important is to separate these customer conversations from "market research." Due to their in-depth nature, sales and customer conversations are more qualitative than quantitative. Listen, ask questions, understand their existing conditions and frustrations, and lean into what's not working for them. You'll also hear the traps any competitors have set for y...

Good question. As with everything, a lot of the answer is it depends. If you have a customer marketing team, I hope they're doing some level of "air traffic control" and have a sense of which customers are being reached out to with specific asks (i.e. beta requests, market research, company speaking opportunity, etc). If not, I'd work with Sales and CS to ensure you're talking to the right customers, and on the right cadence. Come-up with a list of customers you're going to reach out to and collaboratively share it with them ahead of time, and then set the appropriate expectations wit...

The sales team have so much knowledge and one of the biggest risks for an organization is trapping this information in a silo. Work with your sales ops team to determine whats to disseminate this information strategically throughout the organization (for example, adding fields in Salesforce where necessary). Listening to Gong recordings is a great way to glean customer sentiment and feedback without being interruptive, and it never hurts have valuable 1:1 time with your sales team.

It's incredibly important! Not just the individual win/loss/churn reports, but aggregate data as well can be a foundation or validation for decision making.  In past roles I've used this data to focus programs around: * Competitive Intelligence - This one is obvious, but one key output has been more intense focus around how to win against specific competitors. * Content - Hearing why some prospects chose a competitor and the picture they paint can be exteremly useful. It shoudl spur ideas for positioning, and content alike. But historically I've used it to fuel blog posts, we...

A few key documents that you should have: * Research Document - For me, this has always been internal and been a way for me to store insights, data, or any resources on a competitor -- or aggregate set of competitors. This doc is never shared broadly and is just used as a starting point to collect information. * Competitive Battlecard - This should be the central resource where everything your sales and CS team need lives. * Competitive Messaging Spreadsheet - I like to create a compettiive spreadsheet that tracks all the key H1s and messaging for homepage and/or core ...

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 slid...

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 compe...

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 locat...

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 o...

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 b...

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 s...

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, liste...

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 a...

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 ...

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 ther...

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 ...

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 earl...

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 rep...

This is a great question and top of mind for me right now.  For your executives, their primary goal may be to get into a Forrester Wave or Magic Quadrant. Yes, that would be the ultimate win, but it can be a long game AND there are many other ways to measure success over the life of a program. There are two buckets of goals to measure success:  1. Drive awareness, pipeline, deal acceleration of your solution (outbound): I measure this through research mentions and perception audit. Analysts publish regular vendor guides. These are not evaluative but are important ...

Analyst relations programs are best run as a partnership between PR/Comms teams and PMM. The PR and Comms teams will be helpful in driving longer term thinking and time horizons. How do we start to influence the narrative in the market today for the future, how do we position the company today for where we want to be in 3-5 years, those type of questions. For PMM, the value is in getting feedback on how you’re positioning products for buyers today, and driving awareness especially for enterprise buyers (CxOs) with the analyst community on what you have to offer. The best way to really do it...

Great question. First of all, make sure you set expectations up-front that results will take a while to see. Overall count the incremental wins, and show the milestones your crossing as a way to share that progress. Have a great conversation with an analyst where they told you a key piece of insight? Share that amongst your executives and PMM team.  Also, make sure you -- or your executive team -- are regularly talking with analysts. If you're responsible for AR, or have an AR team, you should be meeting with various analysts (not just the core group who drive reports!) regularly. As ...

RSS feed fed to a slack channel that I review each week. Also, I have alerts setup for key competitor pages (home, pricing, etc...) that notifiy me of any significant changes.

Google Alerts are a great way to keep up on content that your competitors are posting. I have a weekly digest email that's delivered to my inbox with my top 6-7 competitors.  If you have the resources, the big three analyst research firms are also a great way to stay on top of it. A big part of Forrester, IDC, and Gartner's offering is compettive intelligence. Just be aware, these engagements typically cost anywhere from $30,000 to $100,000 per year.  Depending on your space, G2Crowd or Capterra can also provide good insight into your competition.  You can also use services like Responde...

Depending on the outcomes desired (360* view of competition, product knowledge, pricing, positioning, etc.) there are a lot of different way to stay on top of a lot of different data points. In addition to using Google/ RSS Alerts: 1. Integrate as much intel into your current processes as possible - If your customers have to provide a cancellation notice, set a default checkbox to select if leaving to a competitor, and provide a text box to elaborate - Track migrations or transitions from another product to yours during onboarding and offboarding - Set keyword trackers on sales calls if us...

In addition to the above, I also like Owler and LinkedIn Sales Navigator for keeping on top of news and updates. I allocate one team member to focus on competitive and then that individual curates the updates for the internal audiences as appropriate. We make sure to share the right level of information with sales and we also make sure to keep product on their toes in terms of letting them know about all of the innovations are competitors are launching.

This depends on the necessary level of detail. We use Google Alerts + an internal Slack channel for ongoing monitoring. As for in-depth analysis, Crunchbase, Angel.co, G2Crowd, Capterra, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and competitors' websites can be useful.  Also, check out this blog post: http://max2c.com/competitive-intelligence-tools/

1. Automate as much of the research / data collection as possible. (I'm biased, but I think Crayon does the best job of capturing competitive moves across millions of sources.) Honestly, this should be "outsourced" to technology because it can do a better job at a fraction of the cost (think of your time) and time (enabling real-time analysis and action). 2. Prioritize what you find. Not everything will be critical, so take a tiered approach - by groups of competitors (tier 1, tier 2, indirect competitors, emerging competitors) and by type of update (acquisition vs. new ebook). This will...

Something like Talkwalker Alerts is free like Google Alerts and much more flexible. If you are ready to get serious, something like Crayon from Ellie (above) or Kompyte can be helpful.  That said, I've found that in tech it's often a problem of too much information and a noise over signal problem. There is something inherent to tech that requires a lot of information sharing in order to run the business. The near constant self promotion often requires sharing roadmaps, updating documentation, constant press releases, Techcrunch articles etc. and means there is often a ton of information ...

Once you get the insights (from the different methods that the other answers have already shared), it will help to crystalize important changes in competitive deck so that sales and other customer-facing team members have access to the key competitive data points. This could be done through one single slide deck or having different assets to compare Features, Pricing, SWOT, etc. 

In B2B: Make sure your sales team is activated to share information with you. Much important competitive information will not be public, and your sales reps are in the best position to hear about and gather new data. Just keep in mind that you don't need to react the same way they do to new information (they're likely to overreact to a perceived competitive threat).

@Ellie Mirman has the right idea, in terms of broad, general principles to apply. My personal bias is against following every release and customer move because it sets one up to play a capability-level, reactive game. Personally, I think it's more important to observe commonalities among competitors, so that you can use your marketing to attack those particular traits and position yourself against an entire category (instead of competitor-by-competitor). 

I'll start by saying - having a solid competitive positioning framework with a few buckets for your entire universe of competitors helps immensely. I think this is the only way to build a competitive function from scratch with a lean team. e.g. Competitor X, Y, and Z fit into Category A and can generally be positioned against this way, Competitor Y fits into Category B and can be positioned against that way. The next step is using the right tools and automation to stay informed about top competitors. One easy (and probably obvious) way is to subscribe to social and RSS feeds mentioning c...

Here are some ways I've tackled this with my teams: 1. It is important to establish a cadence for your competitive research. How often is actually achievable based on your resources/bandwidth? Do you have a dedicated CI person on the team or is your team smaller where this is part of your overall scope? and how often is good enough? This will vary based on your internal structure and org needs. 2. Do some passive research. Use Alerts and RSS feeds. Sign up for competitors’ marketing newsletters or blog content, etc. This enables you to keep tabs on an ongoing basi...

There's no silver bullet here because this really does involve setting aside time, especially when CI is not the only part of your job. You can set aside 1-2 hours once a week to do deep dives into your competitors website, PR/news, social media, etc.  There are a few automated ways to do this leveraging sophisticated tools like Klue and Crayon that will track your competitors every move (from news, PR, website changes, social media) and alert you to those changes. They can integrate with slack so you can get a competitive daily digest(or whatever frequency you decide). They have various f...

Similar to an earlier question: (1) define and tier your competitors, (2) determine the competitive assets you need, (3) set your cadence, (4) invest in a Competitive Intelligence platform, and (5) block off an hour or so weekly to review competitive updates. For competitive intelligence to be fresh, relevant, actionable, and accessible you need the right tools. PMM has too much on their plate to stay on top of all the competitive moves. If competitive intelligence is important to winning deals, as it is across B2B SaaS and most other spaces, then invest in a competitive intelligence platf...

This is going to sound like a product management (not marketing) answer, but if things are truly moving that quickly -- new competitors, new use cases, new feature requirements -- the best way to stay on top of competitors is listen to your customers first. Many times, companies are too focused on what the competition is doing and forget what's most important: solving your customers' problems as effectively as possible. We had this problem at Box early on. On the surface, the market we were in had a very low barrier to entry. It seemed like we uncovered a new "free storage" service every...

There are many ways to stay on top of competitive intel. If you have the budget and a clear use case, use a tool like Klue to help gather intel, and disperse it in your existing channels. Other ways I always used are the following: * Use your frontline teams - open up communication channels with your sales and customer success teams. They can gather invaluable information every single day from direct conversations. * Use gong - we live in unprecedented times of access to data and insights. Set alerts on gong for competitor names or lexicons indicating competitors. Have someon...

Oftentimes the day-to-day of changes can be "noisy", so try to not get too caught-up in the everyday changes. If a competitor is having a major product launch, or doing a complete rebrand -- then absolutely spend time digging in and processing the news and how it impacts your company/position.  But overall, I'd carve out regular time weekly and monthly to digest the noise -- and ensure you earmark time in your calendar for any of those high-profile announcements. That way you don't get pulled in to the day to day changes and can focus on executing at a high-level. Good luck!

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

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

You'll want to create materials that you can package up and disseminate via a central hub like Highspot, Seismic, Showpad, Confluence etc. When you roll this out make sure you lead with "what's it in for them?" (faster deal cycles, higher ACV, etc)  It depends on who you're trying to enable (AEs, AMs, technical sales engineering) but typical effective competitive positioning materials include: 1. Battlecards 2. Swords and Shields (offensive/defensive plays) supported by customer stories and proof points 3. Product differentiation deep dive (but be careful not to turn this into a feature...

This requires a few different tactics depending on the size of your sales team. YMMV based on culture, sales leadership, enablement structure, but it's a good place to start.  One thing that's constant, though. Establish a one-stop shop for all competitive materials (Folder in sales portal, intranet page, doc, etc.) and relentlessly point people to it. Publicly, privately, etc. Wear out your Cmd-C/Cmd-V keys to paste this everywhere. Ultimately, you're building trust in your team that you know what's up, what's changing, and they should trust YOU before they trust the internet.  1. Sm...

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

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

It depends on the competitive dynamics in your market. Are you the market leader or a new emerging alternative? What are the important buying factors in your market and with your buyers? Is price a primary buying consideration (hint: it often is not unless you make it that way)? It's always important to understand how direct competitors and/or alternatives are tackling pricing. You need to determine what your differentiated value is and how you want your brand represented in your market.  Are you the premium, high quality fully featured solution? Do your customers and the market see you ...

A truly successful pricing and packaging exercise can't be completed in a vacuum which means competitive positioning must be included in the discussion. The main reason is that you don't want to create EXACTLY the same pricing and packaging approach as your competitors but you also need to be aware of how customers are already being asked to buy. In addition, the competitive positioning will help to determine if the product has already moved to a commodity or is still being priced and packaged in a value-driven approach. This last piece is particularly important because if your product / or...

Your pricing inherently reflects the value of your products, and since competitive comparisons will inevitably come up in deals, you have to translate all your competitive research and market understanding into a compelling set of content and enablement for your Sales team so they can sell the "value"/better position your priducts throughout the life of your deal. If this happens primarily when pricing is being discussed, I'd argue that it's a much harder to successfully navigate.

Positioning (which by definition is competitive positioning since it carves out a place in the market where you are the clear winner) is your strategy. It defines who you're for and how you'll win.  As a result, not only pricing and packaging but your marketing strategy, product roadmap, partnership strategy, etc are designed to deliver on that position.

The truth is most pricing problems aren't pricing problems. In fact, they are rarely pricing problems. They are just the causal impact of poorly understood and/or communicated positioning of a product leading to a lack of conviction and a whole host of downstream issues. Pricing cannot be set without the Positioning being clearly thought through.pricing is intimately connected to Positioning.  Knowing the positioning will help you answer the following questions: 1. Is your product a 'tool/widget,' or is it a 'platform'? 2. Is it a vitamin or a painkiller? 3. How is it uniquely differ...

Pricing and packaging are positioning. They're the most concrete way you are defining the value and TCO of your solution relative to the pain a customer is feeling. But it's important to remember that they're only one tool in your toolbox.  Pricing relative to competition can signal a premium product in a commoditized market. Or it can indicate a value-driven sale as a disruptor. Certainly free or freemium is the most aggressive disruptor approach (though not always the most successful).  Packaging is a layer deeper and is a great way to demonstrate that you understand how your custom...

They go hand in hand. You need to keep a pulse on your competitors pricing & packaging so that you can adjust or create promos/spiffs to support your sales team when needed. That said, you don't buld your pricing & packaging process based on the competition. You should undersand the market - conjoin anaylsis, willingness to pay, price elasticity, value metrics your buyers assign your product and capabilities that are seen as table stakes versus a broad or niche value driver. You should use this market data (buyers, customers, competitors etc) and your short term business goals to determi...

I think competitive is one aspect of overall pricing and packaging, but it shouldn't solely dictate how you price or package your product. There are exceptions of course, and if your competitor is the defacto market standard then aligning it more closely to competitors is likely necessary.  Overall, focus your pricing and packaging on your customer, target segments, and unique differentiation. Then ensure it's not wildly off from competitors. A tool like Klue or Crayon can also help you track when competitors make updates to their pricing page (if there is one public-facing), so you c...