Paul · Jul 17, 2022

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  ️ Enabling Product Teams with Competitive Intel  ️

Datto’s Dustin Ray breaks competive intelligence into three categories:

⚔️ Tactical Intelligence – How are we enabling sales to sell today?
 Strategic Intelligence – Who will we compete against in 3-5 years? 
️ Operational Intelligence – What’s our product focus for the next 1-2 quarters?

Enabling product fits into this last category. And according to Dustin, it’s a category that doesn’t get enough love. 

“I think the reason product gets left out is because they’re at an operational level. We know tactical is going to be enabling sales. We know strategic is at the very top level.” 

A CI professional of over 10 years, Dustin says that organizations are very familiar with the ins-and-outs of tactical and strategic competitive intelligence. 

Filling the intel gap in operational intelligence and enabling product teams with it is the next frontier. 

And what kinds of intel do product teams crave? It’s all about comparisons. 

• How do we compare to our competitors?
• Where do we sit in the market landscape?
• What should our GTM strategy be? 
• How should we plan our product roadmap?

Finding the answers to those questions for your product team is the first step. 

But to really be effective enablers of product, there’s more to be done. 

Learn about that and a whole lot more on the latest episode of the Competitive Enablement Show. 

  Build. Better. Battlecards.  

When I joined Klue a year ago, I told Adam I wanted to learn more about battlecards. 

He said to me, there is only one place to go for that kind of knowledge. 

Spend time with David Washer. 

Much more than an above-average softball player and an avid Simpsons fan, David is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to battlecards. 

Thanks to picking his brain multiple times about what makes a good battlecard, I’ve learned a thing or two (or three):

• Your battlecards need to tell a story — they can’t just be a bullet point list of strengths and weaknesses
• You need to know your audience and tailor your card content to their needs
• The absolute best intel comes from internal knowledge sharing

I thought it unfair to be the only one mining David’s profound knowledge of battlecards, so we decided to release him into the wild for the next edition of the CE Show LIVE. 

Make sure you register for this month’s Competitive Enablement Show LIVE to hear some battlecard magic from David himself. 

If you’ve got specific questions around battlecards or topics you would like to see covered, email me and let me know!

Coffee & Compete Community Corner

TWO awesome CI professionals in the Coffee & Compete Community Corner? 

With a deadly duo like Highspot’s Ashleigh Eisinger and Justin Topliff getting up to no good, it’s impossible not to include them both. 

I also couldn’t agree more with the sentiment of this post. 

Life’s way too short to and confusing to be serious about it all the time. 

So go on, have a bit of fun every once and a while.