Jeffrey Vocell

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 ...

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...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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!

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...

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...

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...