March 19th AMA with Joe Booth from SecureAuth

Thanks for your question, Alex! CI's impact on sales can be measure in a few different ways. In my experience we look at Win Rates by competitor. Tracking this over the course of every quarter or month will show trends and impact.

As for rep confidence, CI only empowers reps when you are being transparent. You have to arm your reps with the truth about the reason you win and lose. Once you know why you win, you can get laser focused on qualifying the right deals.

There are many tools out there that you can use for Sales Enablement. Training reps on the right CI is critical. You can give them your strengths, differentiation, qualification questions, objection handling, etc. Once you provide them with the right info, tools like Chorus, MindTickle, SalesHood, Gong, and an assortment of others, can help build confidence, reinforce knowledge, and hold reps accountable.

Thanks for your question, Kimberly!

There are really good tools out there like Crayon and Klue. These help aggregate CI into one central location and can even go as far as building battle cards for reps. Really cool stuff.

What I find most impact is having a good process and reliable cross-functional teammates for gathering CI and putting it into action. Here's how we do it at a high level:

-Review all the data: This can be public or private information. Private information comes via Win/Loss notes form your internal sales team, specifically on why they are winning or losing deals. Public information is sourced form competitor's websites, review sites, analyst reports and the Partner network.

-Compare the data: Once you gather the data, it's time to compare notes and look for trends. For example- Are the reasons your reps telling you that you win deals the same things the partners are saying? Do they align with the analyst comparisons and testimonials on review sites? The more sources, volume, and time that you can collect data, the easier it will be to see trends.

-Validate the data: Once you have your data collected, analyzed, and identified trends, it's time to validate. Talk with your Marketing team, product team, field sales, partners and customers to see if the CI you've developed matches their experience and perception.

Put it into action: After you have validation, it's time to put the CI into digestible content so the field can use it when they need to. This can be in the for of battle cards, playbooks, internal or external content, etc.

This is a holistic approach that is data driven and cross-functionally validated. No black box here!

Thanks for your question, @Ellie Mirman!

Sharing W/L data is a very important part of an effective CI program. Take a look at the framework I outlined above for @Kimberly Bauer. You'll see that the second half of the process is all about getting information distributed. Once we have info validated from multiple parties, it's time to take the data and put it into digestible content for the field.

CI content needs to be relevant, actionable, and timely.

Let's break those down a bit:

-Relevant- Content that is too generalized doesn't do anyone any good. It has to be something specific that the reps can use. Given my experience, I'm able to anticipate what sort of CI content reps will need. So the material we build it relevant to the types of asks we anticipate will come in. For example: Reps need honest answers on why we win and lose to certain competitors. They need objection handling. Reps need customer stories and use cases of why a customer chose use over the competition.

-Actionable- Reps need information and content that they can use. Not just links to interesting articles or arbitrary feature comparisons. Take the data that you know is accurate and put it in a format that they reps can understand and immediately apply to deals. Depending on the type of content, it may be very detailed, like a case study, or high level comparisons of relative differentiators. I try to be as parsimonious as possible by giving as much as necessary and as little as possible. Given the circumstances, reps will be looking for different types of content.

-Timely- All of us live busy lives and have forgotten more then we will ever retain. This same fact applies to CI. We can't expect reps to remember something they saw once or twice during their on-boarding period or at the random sales training. That's why it's important to train reps on where to go to find information WHEN THEY NEED IT. Build good content that is relevant and actionable, and make sure it's easy for reps to find in the moment of truth.

Let's talk about frequency. At my current organization we follow this model for distributing CI:

-Initial on boarding- We offer instructor led new hire training in addition to an elearning series for newbies. CI has tracts in both of those.

-Weekly CI post- Every week, we post in our #CompIntel Slack channel relevant links to articles, web pages, or testimonials about our competition. We also provide commentary one how this might impact business and then @mention individuals that we think should pay attention.

-Weekly Sales All Hands- Every week we host a Sales All Hands to discuss a variety of tops. CI is featured if there's something relevant, actionable, or timely.

-SKO- Beginning of the year and mid year, we all get together. CI always has at least 30 minutes in one form or another. This can be direct head-to-head comparisons with our competition, or it can be a deep dive on how we can qualify better deals that play to our strengths.

-On-Demand- We have a elearning platform and content management system that has a variety of resources for reps to utilize when they need them.

Now I'll answer your question about the mix of W/L data vs qualitative (interview). We use W/L data and always validate our findings with various sources. Check out my full reply to @Kimberly Bauer to see how I go about that process.

I'm extremely passionate about this one. Here's the guidance I offer my reps:

-Technology moves rapidly. You'll never be able to have a 100% accuracy on feature comparisons.

-Never rely on historical data to win deals. Feature comparisons go out of date quickly.

-There's a right way and wrong way to answer the customers/prospects question of "how are you different than competitor XYZ?" The wrong way to so say "XZY can't do this or that." The right way is to phrase it like this, "Customers choose us over XYZ because..." and give specific examples.

-Every company has their own version of why they are better than their competitors. It can quickly turn into mud-slinging. Every marketing department, product team, or CI team that builds ones of these comparisons is going to have it skewed to their strengths and paint themselves in the best light. this can confuse customers, leave reps exposed to impossible to answer questions, and cause you to loose credibility.

The reality is that in today's competitive landscape, the top 3 companies in each space are high indistinguishable from one another in terms of product and service offering. Sales execution and relationships are still what win deals, not feature comparisons.

You can't work in vacuum. All of the content you build should evolve over time based on feedback from the field and changing market conditions. Set 15 minute calendar invites for your reps to get feedback. Or sit in on their team calls and ask them what they need to be more effective. Sometimes the reps will offer great guidance, sometimes they will ask for stuff that already exists, and sometimes they will ask for collateral that you shouldn't waste your time building (like a feature comparison). Use your interactions with reps, customers, partners, and other stakeholders to get feedback, intel, and as an opportunity to show that you can add value.

Thank you, @Joe Booth!