At my company we have a Slack channel for competitive intelligence. PMMs are the ones mostly posting, but our sales team, product owners, and services team members are in there as well. They can also post about things they're hearing/finding out on their end. Based on the engagement that we get on that channel from other team members, we have been able to better figure out what kinds of things they are most interested in hearing about.
We are experimenting with a feature within a 'sales toolbox' mobile app. This app traditionally is a spot to house marketing collateral, talking points, etc. for salespeople. We recently added a feature to that app that allows salespeople to communicate back to the marketing team. This covers everything from the effectiveness of specific marketing materials, to the most frequent/urgent competitive threats.
My answer is the least scalable option: regular 1-1s with reps! When I ran CI in-house, I started doing these for key deals only. But I soon found that the conversations were so fruitful for both of us that I did them with almost every rep in the company once a month. I would offer tailored support on their active deals, and they would feed me the latest intel from the field + their experience using the positioning I had equipped them with. A powerful cycle.
Beyond that, I’ve found it important to present CI enablement/battle cards with comment box (Using a content management system that allows for this). This frames the asset as a conversation, which will continue to evolve, rather than a fixed deliverable. And reps can answer each others’ questions that way too.
That create a nice passive channel for feedback, but I’ve found it’s so important to straight up ask for that honest feedback on the enablement material. Chatting with reps about active or recently closed opportunities has helped me empathize with the demands on their role. Through those conversations I’ve gotten a better understanding of the content, formats, and channels that reach reps — and which are likely to be ignored or forgotten.
@Alex McDonnell - Thanks for sharing your approach to this. Have you ever thought about how you might scale these methods if you had a much larger sales team, say 1000 reps instead of 30-50? For instance, you obviously can't get coffee with 1000 reps on a regular basis, but I wonder if you could meet with a few reps on each team to get a decent sample size. Or maybe you could get 10 reps together for focus groups on a regular basis. Just curious if you've given that any thought.
@Jonah Lopin - I agree with @Alex McDonnell . In my experience, 1-on-1 interviews with reps prove most valuable, both for CI and the reps. We prefer to keep our sales reps outside selling and focus groups with 10+ sales reps often leads to less engagement and wasted time/effort. We try to get a healthy mix by region, size segment, etc.
@Christine Friscic we integrated our Crayon battlecards with our sales enablement / content management tool, Showpad (we did this in Highspot, as well, before we switched to Showpad). This is the main hub for our sales teams to access up-to-date collateral and really boosts the viewership of our battlecards.
Interesting @Andrew McCotter I didn't realize you could integrate with Showpad (we use it, too!). I will have to look into that. Then there would only be one tool that we are trying to get sales to use :)
I started by identifying CI Champions through highly engaged Sales reps. Once I had the core group nailed down, I setup monthly meetings to discuss CI related information they have gathered from their own / team members' conversations with customers, and to share back key insights I got from the Crayon platform.
Our sales team is very large, so I have started a pilot group to test/develop the battlecards before looking to role out more widely. I then get feedback on how it is progressing through the monthly CI Champion meetings.
We have a few "listening" mechanisms we use. First, we have a "listening post" feature which internal folks can access using our internal collaboration site; it's basic and has a template which is filled out in order to provide valuable market and competitive intelligence -- from a competitor's advertisement at a tradeshow all the way to specific details learned via a competitive situation -- and everything in between. This content is then curated, synthesized and produced/communicated in the most appropriate manner based on audience. Second, we utilize "post-Best & Final presentation" surveys to collect feedback from sales and client executives in near-real time (immediately after the presentation) regarding their competitive opportunities. We also use various other surveys to solicit and product field intel. Lastly, we created an "insight syndicate" of various internal SME representatives from specific departments/business lines in order to align and collaborate regarding all things CI so there is consistency and visibility across the organization.
Hi @Christine Friscic . We created a Chatter group called "Competitive Intelligence" and the usage has spread like wildfire. Not only do we post breaking news surrounding our competitors but the sales teams are also using it to collaborate on deals, share competitive intel, and more. The PMM team then takes that information and adds it to Crayon and our battlecards. We also keep a running list of each employee who has worked at our competitors that way we have additional people throughout the organization that we can chat with and utilize when we stand up task force groups surrounding sales initiatives.
Are you using Chatter within SFDC? Similar to @Steve Tomas note above, we have been working to utilize the chatter function in SFDC with only moderate success.
Great discussion on this thread! One additional (admittedly simple) idea: use engagement & usage analytics as a proxy for feedback.
I'm naturally geeky and analytical, so this one appeals to me. At Crayon, we use the performance analytics on each Battlecard to get a sense of whether that Battlecard is useful for the sales team or not.
One way to look at the stats on each Battlecard is in terms of the absolute #s. What percent of your Sales team has accessed the Battlecard in the past 30 days? Your team is voting with their eyeballs! Of course you have to look at absolute Battlecard engagement relative to the frequency of that competitor showing up in your funnel, because you might not expect 50% of your sales team to look at a Battlecard for a competitor that only shows up in 5% of your deals.
The other way we look at the stats is to see how a Battlecard is trending over time. Is it getting more or less engagement/usage over time as you make improvements to it? This gives you a sense of whether you're truly improving on that resource as you iterate.
These stats are another good input, but I’m careful about inferring too much. My goal when enabling sales is to equip them with positioning that they can *internalize* and then contextualize for the customer at hand. They shouldn’t have to re-read the battlecard every time they face a competitor! So declining battlecard usage might even signal a good thing - Sales is getting more confident with the positioning.
However, your materials should always be evolving, and so you would expect reps to check in regularly for that reason. Mixed signals.
Good point @Alex McDonnell! Like all metrics, Battlecard adoption metrics are only a piece of the puzzle. But I do think steady/increasing usage of Battlecards is something to strive for.
I think traditional, static Battlecards tend to have declining usage as the material gets internalized by sales, but to the extent the Battlecards are updated regularly and/or contain dynamic content, you would expect to see more consistent usage.
Of course you'd also see steady/increasing usage, even with traditional static Battlecards, if your sales team is growing rapidly.
The other thing that I think leads to more steady/increasing Battlecard usage over time is having multiple Battlecards for each competitor, and having those Battlecards be purpose-built for different funnel stages and sales situations. As the content becomes more nuanced and advanced, even reps with really strong track records against a particular competitor seem to come back to reference materials on a regular basis.
This is a much harder thing to achieve than what it seems at first glance. A lot also depends on the size of your company or any company really and also the geographic footprint, so basically whether the company is present in multiple geographic regions (if that is the case things are much much harder).
But on the whole from having seen this go right and wrong in dozens of companies, the best way to think about it is via the following 3P + 1 framework. So People, Process, Perseverance (not the 3P marketing toolkit...)
People meaning awareness generation and why doing such an activity matters. Typically some ROI needs to be shown in the medium term. People will contribute when they see value for themselves in return (things like I am helping you gather all this insights, what will I gain from it...).
The second point is process and typically that links with a system in place to capture and disseminate the insights and info acquired.
The 3rd P, perseverance is linked to fine-tuning the effort and continuing despite any likely issues that will arise, because nobody can get it right with the first time or in the first year...there is always room for improvement.
Finally the +1(!!) is having a sponsor at a very senior level to do such activity, as it requires time to do it and time is precious for all.
I hope this helps put things in perspective, the practicalities of it once people are onboard and there is sponsorship for such an activity are manageable...Really this is a HR and Culture project more than anything else regardless of the company or the market
At my company we have a Slack channel for competitive intelligence. PMMs are the ones mostly posting, but our sales team, product owners, and services team members are in there as well. They can also post about things they're hearing/finding out on their end. Based on the engagement that we get on that channel from other team members, we have been able to better figure out what kinds of things they are most interested in hearing about.
We are experimenting with a feature within a 'sales toolbox' mobile app. This app traditionally is a spot to house marketing collateral, talking points, etc. for salespeople. We recently added a feature to that app that allows salespeople to communicate back to the marketing team. This covers everything from the effectiveness of specific marketing materials, to the most frequent/urgent competitive threats.
Hey @Christine Friscic! Good to see you here.
My answer is the least scalable option: regular 1-1s with reps! When I ran CI in-house, I started doing these for key deals only. But I soon found that the conversations were so fruitful for both of us that I did them with almost every rep in the company once a month. I would offer tailored support on their active deals, and they would feed me the latest intel from the field + their experience using the positioning I had equipped them with. A powerful cycle.
Beyond that, I’ve found it important to present CI enablement/battle cards with comment box (Using a content management system that allows for this). This frames the asset as a conversation, which will continue to evolve, rather than a fixed deliverable. And reps can answer each others’ questions that way too.
That create a nice passive channel for feedback, but I’ve found it’s so important to straight up ask for that honest feedback on the enablement material. Chatting with reps about active or recently closed opportunities has helped me empathize with the demands on their role. Through those conversations I’ve gotten a better understanding of the content, formats, and channels that reach reps — and which are likely to be ignored or forgotten.
@Alex McDonnell - Thanks for sharing your approach to this. Have you ever thought about how you might scale these methods if you had a much larger sales team, say 1000 reps instead of 30-50? For instance, you obviously can't get coffee with 1000 reps on a regular basis, but I wonder if you could meet with a few reps on each team to get a decent sample size. Or maybe you could get 10 reps together for focus groups on a regular basis. Just curious if you've given that any thought.
@Jonah Lopin - I agree with @Alex McDonnell . In my experience, 1-on-1 interviews with reps prove most valuable, both for CI and the reps. We prefer to keep our sales reps outside selling and focus groups with 10+ sales reps often leads to less engagement and wasted time/effort. We try to get a healthy mix by region, size segment, etc.
@Jonah Lopin 1-1s with a sample across teams would be approach in that case
@Christine Friscic we integrated our Crayon battlecards with our sales enablement / content management tool, Showpad (we did this in Highspot, as well, before we switched to Showpad). This is the main hub for our sales teams to access up-to-date collateral and really boosts the viewership of our battlecards.
Interesting @Andrew McCotter I didn't realize you could integrate with Showpad (we use it, too!). I will have to look into that. Then there would only be one tool that we are trying to get sales to use :)
I started by identifying CI Champions through highly engaged Sales reps. Once I had the core group nailed down, I setup monthly meetings to discuss CI related information they have gathered from their own / team members' conversations with customers, and to share back key insights I got from the Crayon platform.
Our sales team is very large, so I have started a pilot group to test/develop the battlecards before looking to role out more widely. I then get feedback on how it is progressing through the monthly CI Champion meetings.
We are using Salesforce chatter with limited success. we set up a separate chatter group for CI and adoption has been slow to catch on.
We have a few "listening" mechanisms we use. First, we have a "listening post" feature which internal folks can access using our internal collaboration site; it's basic and has a template which is filled out in order to provide valuable market and competitive intelligence -- from a competitor's advertisement at a tradeshow all the way to specific details learned via a competitive situation -- and everything in between. This content is then curated, synthesized and produced/communicated in the most appropriate manner based on audience. Second, we utilize "post-Best & Final presentation" surveys to collect feedback from sales and client executives in near-real time (immediately after the presentation) regarding their competitive opportunities. We also use various other surveys to solicit and product field intel. Lastly, we created an "insight syndicate" of various internal SME representatives from specific departments/business lines in order to align and collaborate regarding all things CI so there is consistency and visibility across the organization.
Hi @Christine Friscic . We created a Chatter group called "Competitive Intelligence" and the usage has spread like wildfire. Not only do we post breaking news surrounding our competitors but the sales teams are also using it to collaborate on deals, share competitive intel, and more. The PMM team then takes that information and adds it to Crayon and our battlecards. We also keep a running list of each employee who has worked at our competitors that way we have additional people throughout the organization that we can chat with and utilize when we stand up task force groups surrounding sales initiatives.
Are you using Chatter within SFDC? Similar to @Steve Tomas note above, we have been working to utilize the chatter function in SFDC with only moderate success.
Great discussion on this thread! One additional (admittedly simple) idea: use engagement & usage analytics as a proxy for feedback.
I'm naturally geeky and analytical, so this one appeals to me. At Crayon, we use the performance analytics on each Battlecard to get a sense of whether that Battlecard is useful for the sales team or not.
One way to look at the stats on each Battlecard is in terms of the absolute #s. What percent of your Sales team has accessed the Battlecard in the past 30 days? Your team is voting with their eyeballs! Of course you have to look at absolute Battlecard engagement relative to the frequency of that competitor showing up in your funnel, because you might not expect 50% of your sales team to look at a Battlecard for a competitor that only shows up in 5% of your deals.
The other way we look at the stats is to see how a Battlecard is trending over time. Is it getting more or less engagement/usage over time as you make improvements to it? This gives you a sense of whether you're truly improving on that resource as you iterate.
These stats are another good input, but I’m careful about inferring too much. My goal when enabling sales is to equip them with positioning that they can *internalize* and then contextualize for the customer at hand. They shouldn’t have to re-read the battlecard every time they face a competitor! So declining battlecard usage might even signal a good thing - Sales is getting more confident with the positioning.
However, your materials should always be evolving, and so you would expect reps to check in regularly for that reason. Mixed signals.
Good point @Alex McDonnell! Like all metrics, Battlecard adoption metrics are only a piece of the puzzle. But I do think steady/increasing usage of Battlecards is something to strive for.
I think traditional, static Battlecards tend to have declining usage as the material gets internalized by sales, but to the extent the Battlecards are updated regularly and/or contain dynamic content, you would expect to see more consistent usage.
Of course you'd also see steady/increasing usage, even with traditional static Battlecards, if your sales team is growing rapidly.
The other thing that I think leads to more steady/increasing Battlecard usage over time is having multiple Battlecards for each competitor, and having those Battlecards be purpose-built for different funnel stages and sales situations. As the content becomes more nuanced and advanced, even reps with really strong track records against a particular competitor seem to come back to reference materials on a regular basis.
This is a much harder thing to achieve than what it seems at first glance. A lot also depends on the size of your company or any company really and also the geographic footprint, so basically whether the company is present in multiple geographic regions (if that is the case things are much much harder).
But on the whole from having seen this go right and wrong in dozens of companies, the best way to think about it is via the following 3P + 1 framework. So People, Process, Perseverance (not the 3P marketing toolkit...)
People meaning awareness generation and why doing such an activity matters. Typically some ROI needs to be shown in the medium term. People will contribute when they see value for themselves in return (things like I am helping you gather all this insights, what will I gain from it...).
The second point is process and typically that links with a system in place to capture and disseminate the insights and info acquired.
The 3rd P, perseverance is linked to fine-tuning the effort and continuing despite any likely issues that will arise, because nobody can get it right with the first time or in the first year...there is always room for improvement.
Finally the +1(!!) is having a sponsor at a very senior level to do such activity, as it requires time to do it and time is precious for all.
I hope this helps put things in perspective, the practicalities of it once people are onboard and there is sponsorship for such an activity are manageable...Really this is a HR and Culture project more than anything else regardless of the company or the market