Great. You’ve identified your direct competitor, established CI goals and metrics, and probably spent a few hours gathering competitive intel.
What follows is transforming that raw data into actual deliverables (aka sales and marketing assets) and feeding them to the right stakeholders.
By far, the most common CI deliverable is the battle card, a sales asset that packs short insights about a specific competitor with the goal of “depositioning” them. Your sales team will love these cards, as long as they’re not too overwhelming and formulated word for word to be consumed right before a sales call.
While there’s no secret recipe on how to craft a battle card, an actionable one should include the following sections:
Your competitor’s profile
Quick dismisses to disqualify the competitor early on
Arguments for why you win and why you lose
Objection handling answers
A list of landmine topics that put your competitor in a bad light
For more information on how to create more inclusive battle cards, Klue has already written extensively about a battle card framework.
Battle cards aside, other popular CI deliverables are product sheets—1:1 feature comparisons between your product and your competitor’s product—and executive slide decks to inform executives about the long-term strategy.
How many you can deliver will largely depend on your marketing team’s size and budget. This is only half of the story, though. Equally important is how and when you deliver them.
5. Share insights with key stakeholders
Competitive intelligence has no value if it sits in a corner and doesn’t impact stakeholders.
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At the final step of the CI program, your job is twofold: (1) identify your stakeholder’s preferred communication channels and (2) increase the frequency of delivering competitive insights.
For the first endeavor, ask your stakeholders how they communicate. Sales reps may be more inclined to hang out in Slack channels, while executives probably rely heavily on email. Always meet them on their turf to ensure that information is consumed on time.
As for the second one, consider sharing competitive insights during daily and weekly stand-ups. According to a study by Crayon, businesses that do so frequently have seen a direct revenue impact; in the study, 69% of the respondents share competitive intent daily and 72% do so weekly.
Ultimately, sharing competitive insights is an ongoing process that will reinforce the adoption of a CI program and guarantee its success.