Competing in Uncertainty, 10 Tips From the Vault, Aggressive Messaging

 Competing in Uncertainty 

tim rhodes competitive intelligence

As an avid talk radio fan and lover of podcasts, I couldn’t be more excited to release our first-ever mailbag episode! 

Adam was joined by Competitive Intelligence consultant Tim Rhodes and Klue’s own Brandon Bedford to answer questions submitted by the listeners. 

The questions ran the gamut from competing in recessionary times, to competing against incumbents, the best way to encourage intel sharing, and the best way to communicate spicy competitor intel. 

Here are two excerpts from the conversation:

“One of the things we’ve seen in times of market uncertainty is an increase in losses to the incumbent solution, almost double. We’re starting to see 35, 40% losses to the incumbent.” – Tim Rhodes

“People are more risk averse generally during these times. And so a lot of the enablement we’re doing right now is around enabling our customer-facing teams, to build a business case.”

Brandon and Tim go into depth about:

There were so many more questions to get to. But sometimes I need to crack my producer whip and keep things on time. 

And selfishly, all that means is we’ll have to do another mailbag episode in the not-so-distant future. 

Listen to the first-ever mailbag episode, and check out a recap of the episode here.


 From the Vault: 10 Objection Handling Tips 

10 Objection Handling Tips

Objection handling in sales is a necessary skill in any economic environment. 

It’s even more necessary when the outlook is uncertain. 

So on that cheery note, I wanted to resurface an old article from the Klue blog. 

Written in the listicle format, and featuring quotes from sales experts like Kevin KD Dorsey, Anthony Iannarino, this article lays out 10 Objection Handling tips you can start using today. 

Here’s a quick look at the 10 tips you’ll find in the article.

And read the entire piece to dive deeper into each tip.

10 best objection. handling tips


Coffee & Compete Community Corner

alex mcdonnell competitive enablement

If there’s one thing I love most, it’s parsing words. 

Hence why this post from Alex McDonnell caught my eye. 

The delta between ‘direct’ and ‘aggressive’ is tenuous — especially when it comes to positioning and messaging. 

But as Alex sees it, a few intentional word choices make all the difference. 

You can catch more excellent Alex McDonnell content on Dance Battle: The Competitive Intelligence Podcast.

Just head on over to the Compete Network and click on the “Shows” button at the top. 


Thanks for reading this week’s edition of Coffee & Compete. As always, please reach out to me and the rest of the team with your thoughts and feedback. 

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