AMA: MURAL Senior Director, Product Marketing, Sean Lauer on Competitive Positioning

One of the key things to consider with any information provided to a sales team is making sure you answer two questions: * Why does it matter? * What should they do with it? When it comes to competitive intel, keep in mind the following factors to deliver value to sales: * Timeliness * Impact * Action Is the intel you are providing timely? Is it new and relevant or is it old news? If it's old news and most sellers are already aware, but you still think it's valuable, think about just adding it to background material as part of a more comprehensive update. Emphasize the intel that's going to matter most. Is it impactful? Is it something that will help win more deals or are you just adding more noise to their day-to-day? Sellers get a ton of information thrown at them and you need to make sure what you're sharing is worth their while. Make sure the intel you prioritize is something that can make them better sellers. Is it actionable? Is the intel you're sharing something that a seller can use in their sales motion to win more deals or is it just something that's nice for them to know? If it's actionable, make sure it's clear how they should use it. If it's not actionable, maybe just add it to background material as part of a more comprehensive update. 

Teams should be tracking win/loss rates vs specific competitors. This information is most easily gathered and tracked via the sales team (or possibly solutions eng) and stored in a system of record like Salesforce. Additional detail around win/loss reasons when in a competitive situation is key to measuring success. It's not perfect data and should be viewed through a lens of subjectivity. Is there a product gap vs a competitor that led to a win or loss? Was it a pricing decision? Was the seller able to position your product in a way that closed the deal? If PMM and product are prioritizing competitive intel and strategy (this does NOT mean just doing everything that your customers are doing), then you should see improving win/loss rates. 

That's definitely a challenge! There are a few things you could try to gain more insights: 1. Utilize your sales team to ask about a competitor in discussions with prospects and customers. 2. Hire a third party to do win/loss interviews with prospects/customers. They may be able to get more information that a salesperson might not be able to obtain. 3. Hire a secret shopper. I realize this can be controversial, but there are firms out there that will do this for you. It can be a great way to uncover insights about the competition. Or... you could just call yourself and ask if they sell it! Why not?

A competitor is anything that can be substituted for the value that your product offers. Sometimes, that's a product with a very similar feature set. Sometimes, it's a product that is designed for a different purpose, but people are using it (poorly) to solve for your product's value prop. And in some cases, a competitor may be nothing at all—the status quo. When you're trying to sell a product to customers that's in a new category, requires a new skill set, or is rooted in people doing things differently, it's easy for a customer to stick with the status quo. It's also something that's much more common in today's market with companies really tightening the purse strings when it comes to their tech stacks. The status quo is often the cheapest alternative, especially if a customer doesn't see the potential business impact/ROI of your product. 

The most important aspect of competitive differentiation is that it's authentic and resonates with the customer and/or user. From a core messaging standpoint, you first and foremost want to focus on the value prop of your product—make sure you have a clear and accurate description of the problem you are solving for people. If you happen to be in a competitive space with similar products, you want to make it clear why someone should use your product vs another to solve that problem. You should emphasize the things that make your product different and that you know your audience values. It's not often necessary to explicitly create a comparison with a competitor—focus on what you do well, what the customer cares about, and how your product solves the problem differently/better than any other solutions. When the customer goes to compare your product vs another, the differentiation will be clear. Enabling sales to speak to competitive differentiators is a crucial piece of the puzzle. It's not just important for salespeople to be fluent in your core messaging, they also need to be able to respond to prospect and customer questions and pushback. Beyond creating talking points and sales materials, you can also create more proactive wedge questions that sellers can use to position your product's differentiators in conversations. This also acts to de-position your competitors and increase the odds of winning or holding onto customers. The easiest way to know if competitive differentiators are working in the market is by looking at win/loss rates and doing win/loss interviews. Talking to sellers and talking to customers allows you to gather evidence from both sides of the equation. In an ideal scenario, customers are repeating back to you the competitive differentiators that you've identified and built into core messaging and sales enablement. 

Mural's PMM team has a dedicated team member for competitive intelligence, which helps us stay on top of our very competitive space. We also utilize Crayon to not only surface new intel, but also organize and create resources for internal teams. Intel that's gathered through other means (i.e. seller interviews, VoC, executive conversations, etc.) is added to existing resources as well. Valuable new information is shared out in real-time via a PMM Slack channel that relevant audiences are a part of. Those real-time updates are aggregated and added to existing materials regularly, but for anyone wanting to know the latest news as soon as it happens, the Slack channel is where they look. The downside to having a steady flow of new information is that there can be information overload. You need to determine what's most important to share immediately and what can be aggregated and incorporated into a later update. If it's deemed to be important enough to share immediately, make sure to include an explanation of what stakeholders should do with the information. Make it actionable so that it can be impactful. 

Ideally, your narrative should actually be doing the heavy lifting when it comes to differentiation. Features can easily be copied. As this question states, it often leads to products being essentially the same across a competitive set. The components of your narrative—the story and the reason why your product exists—can be the difference maker in conversations with prospects. What does your product stand for? What is the driving force behind your product strategy and the value you want to create for users/customers? You may have the same features as a competitor, but my guess is you don't have the same vision for solving your customers' problems. When that vision resonates with more customers, you'll find that it can make the difference between winning and losing. 

The most important resource for competitive positioning is battle cards. It's the best summary and most actionable document (or group of documents) that can drive impact quickly. Some important components of battle cards are: * Top competitor profiles (firmographics) * Quick dismiss responses to common objections about your product vs the specific competitor * Wedge questions to de-position each competitor * Recent news so sellers can stay up to date Beyond those core components, teams might also find it valuable to include other information in battlecards like: * Competitor narratives * Links to competitive materials * Pricing and packaging comparison * Competitive demos * Win/loss analyses Other documents that can be helpful in the sales process are: * One pagers that are specific to each competitor and why customers should choose you * Longer-form competitive narrative vs a specific competitor (or competitors) that allows for more of an in-dpeth positioning story * Quarterly (or some other pre-determined frequency) executive summaries to inform executive leadership about the competitive landscape and allow them to make better decisions At the end of the day, it's up to PMM to determine who their audience for competitive intel is and what resources are most valuable and effective for them. 

There's nothing that says gathering intel in standard ways isn't ethical or fair. There are definitely some tactics that might straddle the line and a few that go way over the line that should obviously be avoided. I would rely on approaches that are very common, ethical, and effective: * Win/loss interviews * Seller interviews * Analyst inquiries * Analyst category/industry analyses * Investor resources * Using competitor products (if possible) * Competitor websites * Competitor community forums * Industry community forums * Social media * YouTube * Media reviews This is just a start, but there are many ways to gather intel that will work no matter your product. Also, check out a product like Crayon that will help you supercharge your efforts if you have limited capacity.