AMA: Brex Product Marketing Lead - Spend Management, Jesse Lopez on Competitive Positioning

Simple answer: You treat your sales team like a customer. * Interview them to understand their competitive needs and challenges when articulating "value" or "differentiation" vs. competitors. * Co-create internal enablement and customer-facing assets with them to ensure content adds value to their process vs. more complexity. * Capture feedback on content, assets, and process by developing a sales advisory board. * Track competitive content and messaging performance by analyzing how your sales reps use your competitive intel. * Optimize competitive programs continuously to maintain relevancy and impact on your sales teams.

Customer interviews are the most beneficial resource to land "how" you are different vs. competitors and "why" it matters to your customers. Instead of focusing on three research methods, I will recommend three types of interviews you should consider when researching a competitor: * Switcher interviews: Interview customers who recently switched from a competitive solution to yours to understand what attracted them to your company and the key reasons for choosing your solution over the competition. * Churners who left to competitor interviews: Interview customers who recently churned from your company onto a competitor (typically, CSM teams collect this information) to understand what capabilities and/or benefits they sought with the switch. Understand what they consider your greatest strengths and weaknesses as a solution and the importance of those to their decision to churn. * Prospects interviews: Interview unbiased prospects who use a competitive solution to understand their perceptions about your company/product and what they consider the critical differentiators of their existing solution to others available in the market.

Three types of research should inform any competitive and market intelligence program: * Internal resources and intelligence, such as sales calls and win-loss analysis, are great for identifying high-level competitive and market insights. I typically use these resources to identify areas for further research (e.g., we usually lose deals to competitor X due to a specific capability gap) and differentiators to showcase in our marketing and selling motions. * Publicly available resources, such as competitor websites, news articles, analyst reports (e.g., Gartner, Forrester, IDC), and review sites (e.g., G2, TrustRadius, Capterra) should be the foundation of any competitive or market intelligence initiative as they help you identify "what" makes you different or better than your competitors. You should sign up for competitive and market newsletters to keep a pulse of your industry. * Complement your research with primary research when necessary to identify the "how" you are different and "why" that matters to customers. I recommend that you interview competitive switchers (customers switched from a competitive solution) or prospects who use a competitive solution to understand Tip: My advice would be to develop a comprehensive framework that you can use every time you profile a competitor or market to ensure consistency of comparison (e.g., positioning, value props, capabilities, features, claims, target audiences, etc.).

The biggest mistake I have seen marketing teams make when trying to differentiate their products from competitors is to "differentiate" by renaming industry-accepted terms and capabilities for the sake of being different vs. showcasing what is that you offer, how are you different, and why that should matter to customers. Another mistake I have seen many companies make is to believe a feature list comparison on a website suffices to claim you are different vs. a key competitor. Most customers do not purchase software or product for their features but rather for the experience and capabilities it offers.