Ben Ronald · Oct 1, 2023

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The only constant is change

When was the last time you were in a strategy meeting and heard, ‘Let’s just keep things the exact same way we’ve been doing them so far’?

It’s a sentiment that probably doesn’t come up in your competitors’ meetings either. Just like you, they’re always tinkering, scheming and trying to improve. 

Norman Guadagno, Chief Marketing Officer at Mimecast, says underestimating the competition’s capacity to change and evolve is the biggest mistake executives make.

“Too often executives – and others – fix a particular image of a competitor’s capabilities in their mind and then operate based on that image. But competitors are constantly evolving and what was true last quarter might not be true this quarter.”

Predicting the other guys’ next move is no small task. But you can unlock directionally valuable competitor intel and insights through:

• Conducting war gaming exercises (get our template)
• Interviewing customers that churned to a competitor (another template)
• Presenting intel from win-loss and churn interviews to your executive team (here’s another one!)

As Professor of Economics and author John Horn puts it:

“If you’re not contemplating what your competitors are up to, it becomes impossible to effectively differentiate against them.” 

Norman and John know that the key to success is differentiation, and the key to differentiation is competitive intelligence and enablement. 

And that’s exactly what Norman will be speaking about at Compete Week 2023. 

Come check out his session, Distinctive and Differentiated: Building a Strategic Foundation to Win in Your Market, and plenty more in November.

Save your seat at Compete Week 2023

Three compete content tips from HubSpot’s manager of competitive intelligence

Jessica Davis joined the Competitive Enablement Show this week to talk about what it takes to create world-class compete content for sales reps. 

Here are her three biggest tips:

“First, don’t make reps do any extra steps. Ask yourself, are we giving reps what they need in the format they need it?  Is the content actually ready, or are they going to have to do some mental gymnastics in their head?”

“Number two, make sure your talking points are supported by data or statistics — a review, a quote, a number. It just makes things so much more powerful and amplifies your content a ton.” 

“And then third is no matter how good your content is, if you’re not making sure that it gets into their hands and that people are using it, it doesn’t matter. If you’re not shouting from the rooftops, here’s my content, use my content, putting it in front of reps as much as you can. It doesn’t matter how good it is.

Dive deeper into these three tips and much more all on this week’s episode of the Competitive Enablement Show

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