Competitors are friends, not food

Product marketing managers (PMMs) typically own or heavily contribute to competitive intelligence at most B2B SaaS companies. Understanding the competitive marketplace is absolutely critical to business success.

Comprehensive competitive intelligence strives to understand customer perceptions and behaviors that contribute to your company’s wins, losses, and churn - as well as understand when your company isn’t shortlisted or even considered in the first place.???

For this article, I’m not going to focus on losing business when a customer or prospect decides to “do nothing,” “loses budget,” or builds a custom solution in-house. I’m also not going to focus here on losing deals to cheaper, low-function alternative approaches. (e.g., “I’m not going to buy your analytics tool, we’re just going to keep using spreadsheets.”; “We’re not going to buy your performance management software, we’re just going to use Google Docs.”)? All product marketers know that these are real reasons for losing, and your messaging and sales enablement should include objection-handling scripts to counter these decisions.???

Instead, I want to focus on the competitors with a face (and a logo!): The vendors that have put a bullseye on your back and want nothing more than to be the leader in your market. (How dare they!)

Competition is necessary. Competition is fun!

There’s a reason anti-trust legislation exists - to protect consumers from price-gouging and to provide incentives to vendors to continue to innovate and improve customer experiences.??

Your goal is to attract, win, and delight customers.? The delight part has become even more critical in the subscription economy where you make or break your business on renewal rates.

Your goal is not to beat the competition. Beating them is simply an important step to the most important end: delivering such a great solution that solves your customer’s needs that they can’t help but renew and tell their friends.

So yes - keep your eye on the ultimate goal. But I’m not saying to relax and ignore the competition.?Your competitors are stealing your business. They’re copying your product strategy and your marketing. They’re badmouthing your company and spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) everywhere!? That. Is. Awesome!? Let the games begin!

I love product marketing because I love the challenge.? If you’re a PMM for a presumptive market leader with no real competition, you’re not all that necessary, are you? ?Don’t get me wrong - there’s plenty of lovely content and copy you can crank out, but where’s the adrenaline rush? Where’s the feeling of pride when you know you’ve created a GTM strategy and narrative that’s changing the way customers, industry influencers, and the overall market perceives you?? Don’t you love earning those high fives (real or virtual) from sales reps when you helped close that monster deal that left the competition scratching their heads??

PMMs are often the tip of the spear in developing and driving cross-functional support for a competitive strategy, and I wouldn’t have it any other way!??

The do’s and don’ts of an effective competitive strategy

Let’s embrace healthy competition.? Here are a few recommendations on how to do that:

• React effectively.? Partner closely with sales enablement to ensure sales reps know how best to respond to new competitive products, features, pricing changes, funding or acquisition news, and other announcements.? Refresh competitive battle cards continuously so reps have the most up-to-date insights when they’re in a competitive situation.
• Anticipate. This one is tougher to maintain without a dedicated competitive intelligence team, but anticipating a competitor's next steps requires keeping a close eye on them.? By monitoring at minimum your top competitors' press releases, customer win stories, content, blogs, job postings, and event themes, you can learn what’s most important to them.? Are they talking a lot about a customer problem where they don’t have an obvious solution?? They’re probably building one!
• Capture credible FUD (internally). The word credible is critical here. Identify and document any public, first-party reports of flaws in competitor’s product, customer service, adoption, or overall customer experience directly from former or current customers, media or analyst sources, or crowdsourcing sites like G2 or Gartner Peer Insights.? Hearsay is not credible. These issues are to be shared with sales reps so they have them in their back pocket, to be used only when appropriate to win a deal.
• Refer to trusted sources to deliver FUD for you. Has your Analyst Relations team shared that Gartner or Forrester has concerns about a competitor?? Suggest your customer speak to those analysts. Did the Wall Street Journal or another trusted media source express concerns?? Share a link and suggest your customer evaluate to ensure they are comfortable with the news.??
• Never focus on why they stink, focus on why you’re great.? Introducing negative messages about the competition appears petty. Customers feel uncomfortable hearing it because it is petty. Are you really the most credible source of trusted insight for a prospect when discussing a competitor?? When your sales and marketing teams proactively discuss a competitor, you’re pretty much telling the world to be sure to check them out as an alternative to you.?Proactively bringing up the competition in conversation, pitch decks, etc only draws prospects' attention to the competition and feels of desperation that you need to explain why you should be considered too.?You automatically place competitors as #1 and you as #2.
• Respond to competitor questions professionally. PMMs must create scripts to help sales reps respond to questions about competitors when asked.? Believe it or not, the best response will start with a positive: “A good team of people”, “They’ve done some pretty interesting things.”? Leading with a positive will be intriguing to the customer who expects you to immediately eviscerate the competition, and will make them more willing to consider your feedback on their actual weaknesses.? Which is when you position the competitor in as small a box as possible. What that box looks like will be fully based on your greatest strengths and their greatest perceived or proven weaknesses. Some examples: “We’ve heard from some prior customers of theirs that they are most effective for companies with less than X employees (or less than Y apps, etc).”, or “A nice starter option if the price is your only consideration, but as your requirements grow more complex many of their customers outgrow them pretty quickly.”
• Give competitors due credit (Internally).? Chances are your competitors are not clueless dopes, wearing blindfolds while throwing darts to come up with ideas for their roadmap and GTM strategy. If you’re lucky, they’re pretty damn talented and keep you on your toes. Be inspired by their innovation. If they have happy customers, find out why. The best competitor will occasionally make you say, “Holy crap, why didn’t we think of that??” Why is that good? Because it inspires and challenges your organization to do more than just keep the lights on, and keep innovating.??
• Be gracious. You’re competing with a company, not its people. ?When professional athletes on opposing teams shake hands and give each other hugs after a hard-fought game, we applaud. We require our kids to shake hands with the opposing team after a game all throughout their childhood. Why? It’s called good sportsmanship.? It means fighting the good fight, but always being respectful. Never forget your competitors consist of hard-working people doing the best they can for themselves and their families. ? And we’re all a close-knit community in B2B tech, chances are you may be working with a competitor in the future!