Paul · May 8, 2022

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‍ Sometimes the Needle is the Hay  ‍

Everyone is looking for the needle in the haystack. The silver bullet. The magic elixir. 

But what if the magic elixir isn’t the potion itself, but the cup the potion is served in?

What if the silver bullet isn’t the ammunition, it’s the trigger? 

And what if the proverbial needle in the haystack — the one that enables your team to win more business — is actually the hay? 

The biggest mistake in all three metaphors — and the thinking that underpins them — is the assumption that there is one amazing solution acting as a panacea for all your business woes. 

In reality, the kinds of insights that unlock and enable teams to win more business are found across several different data points. 

That’s why the modern way of competing requires: 

• Collecting relevant external data
• Machine learning to filter out the noise
• Categorizing, grouping, and curating the insights that matter to your team
• Enabling your teams to use those insights to beat the competition and win more deals. 

We call it Competitive Enablement (CE). 

And it’s how organizations everywhere are finding the needle in the haystack (or finding out that the needle is actually the hay), faster and better than ever. 

To illustrate this metaphor, our social media specialist Grayson tracked down $49 worth of hay from a friendly local farmer and shot this video. 

For more great Grayson content, check out what $80 worth of stuffed animals looks like here. 

⚡️ Enablement is Everything ⚡️

Competitive intelligence (CI) is important. But competitive intelligence alone is not enough. 

That’s because all too often CI programs stop and call it ‘mission accomplished’ at the collection stage. 

Worse yet, the competitive intel they do collect is static, quickly becomes outdated, and gets confined to decks and docs tucked away in hard-to-find locations. 

Getting unstuck from this poor state of affairs is not magic, it’s Competitive Enablement. 

Here are three reasons why Competitive Enablement > Competitive Intelligence:

• It filters out the noise that comes with collecting mounds of intel, leaving only the most actionable insights
• It centralizes competitive intelligence and brings it to life
• It presents intel in a way that benefits the entire organization, helping Compete experts get a seat at the table.

I dove into these reasons and more in the latest article up on our blog.

In it, you’ll find my best case for why Competitive Enablement is the new way of competing. And a couple of quotes from industry experts along the way.

Coffee & Compete Community Corner 

I’d like cordially corral you into the Coffee & Compete Community Corner: CCCC.

(We’re going to need a better acronym than that.) 

Coming off of two jam-packed days at SCIP IntelliCon, the biggest takeaway from Klue’s attendees was just how amazing the community of Compete professionals really is. 

And as always, we endeavour to showcase the amazing folks that make up that community.

So in today’s CCCC, we’re featuring one of our favourite CE professionals: Highspot’s Ashleigh Eisinger, sporting one of our newly minted Coffee & Compete mugs. 

Thank you Ashleigh for everything you do for the profession — and for being a friend of the Coffee & Compete newsletter!

Make sure to check out her LinkedIn profile and catch her appearance on the Competitive Enablement Show. 

Coffee & Compete Community Corner Calendar

And now for the Coffee & Compete Community Corner Calendar (CCCCC  )

What are you up to on May 18th? Nothing? Great!

From 12-1 pm EST you’re invited to check out a webinar featuring Klue’s own Jason Oakley, hosted by our friends at the Product Marketing Alliance. 

Jason will share some of the work we’ve been doing at Klue to build this new category we call Competitive Enablement. 

You can register for the event and find more details here.