I'm sure y'all can relate to getting this question ALL the time from stakeholders (mostly sales). The deficiencies of producing checklists or Harvey Balls are clear to pragmatic product marketers, but not always to other stakeholders. Anybody have a good response to these requests that leave the stakeholder feeling supported?
Already a good post on this forum re: this topic here: https://www.competitiveintelligencecollective.com/discussion/discussions/anybody-else-hate-harvey-balls
I've fielded this request far too many times, as I'm sure you have! My main approach has been to ask why they want it / how they want to use it. Ultimately I want to get to the root issue - a competitive deal they're trying to win, or coming up with a sales email to prospect into a competitive account, etc. If I can get to the root issue, and offer a different solution, the stakeholder (sales person usually) will be happy because the real problem has been solved, and I'll be happy that we solved it without a feature checklist, which wouldn't be as effective anyway. Then we can roll out whatever we came up with to the rest of the sales team to pre-empt more feature checklist requests.
I get this question a lot as well. I typically try to find out the nature of the request first. For example, is the feature checklist a request from the customer that needs justification for their own due diligence?
If the rep asking because of a competitive situation, I will setup a call to discuss the details with them to get clarification and the actual need. This allows me and the team to see if this is an actual need, or if they need to understand specifically what are capabilities are in a particular area. This helps to drastically reduce the amount of work on the PMM side, and gives the rep what he really needs.
Sometimes creating a feature comparison unavoidable and sometimes necessary, especially for a tier 1 competitor that we come up against on a regular basis. If there is a strong ask/need across the organization to understand the differences, then we will jump on it, and make sure to update it as often as possible. The goal should be to elevate the comparison to a capabilities level vs. a feature level when possible. For example a capability like Agile Project Management vs a feature like a Kanban board.