Build Competitive Intelligence to Improve Sales Win Rates

Competitive intelligence (CI) leaders can best deliver CI-influenced sales wins by arming sellers with up-to-date battlecards, product alignment, and a budget that supports success.

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Analyst Perspective

Build CI to improve sales win rates

SaaS markets are crowded with providers whose offerings are difficult to differentiate. The steady stream of venture funding going into start-ups adds to the mix, and agile development within both start-ups and at-scale SaaS providers sees product features changing weekly across all markets.

For SaaS sellers trying to stay aware of competitors without a sales-focused competitive intelligence team to help, the costs are too significant to ignore — lost commissions to the seller and revenues to the company when deals are gone.

SaaS providers can turn this around when product marketing breaks off the resources to ramp up a sales-focused competitive intelligence (CI) function. Working closely with sales, product management, and marketing, a dedicated CI function can stem competitive losses by focusing on the right types of data gathering, sales battlecard creation, and the right seller support strategy to improve win rates over key competitors.

While challenges include staying abreast of an agile-active set of existing and emerging competitors and their offerings, sourcing the right data and insights efficiently, crafting the right seller insights, and building the right communications and sales-support program, budget, and resources, the payoff is significant. The ROI from a sales-driving CI program can be significant when win/loss ratios accelerate.

Joanne Morin Correia
Principal Research Director
SoftwareReviews

What is competitive intelligence for sales?

Sales CI is:

• Gathering and analyzing information about competitors, such as their products, pricing, marketing strategies, sales tactics, strengths, and weaknesses.
• Using insights gained from CI to inform competitive sales strategy and tactics. Outcomes include developing more effective messaging and positioning, identifying pricing and packaging opportunities, and handling competitive threats.
• Providing sales teams with intelligence on customer needs, preferences, and pain points relative to key competitors to help them tailor their competitive positioning to win more business.
• Creating a deep understanding of the competitive landscape to inform sales about new and emerging competitors as they emerge.
• Conducting these practices ethically and within legal and regulatory boundaries.

Sales CI is not:

• The sole responsibility of sales teams. While sales teams are the primary users of CI for Sales, the process should be driven primarily by a dedicated CI function typically found within and highly collaborative with product marketing.
• About stealing trade secrets or engaging in unethical or illegal activities to gain an advantage over competitors.
• About providing tools for predicting sales outcomes or forecasting with certainty.
• A one-time activity. CI for Sales is an ongoing process that requires continuous data gathering and analysis to remain effective.

SoftwareReviews Insight:

A well-designed competitive intelligence program can help sales teams amplify your product and company capability strengths and overcome your weaknesses during sales interactions, making them more effective at winning deals.

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

• Insufficient funds for competitive intelligence staff, tools, and automation
• Dealing with large volumes of external data that may be outdated or inaccurate
• Lack of established processes for storing and sharing CI insights across the organization and making informed decisions

Success enablers require strong sales alignment on metrics, tools, and updates and creating a supporting budget for necessary staff, research sources, and tools.

Common Obstacles

• Insufficient expertise and inadequate in-house training for competitive intelligence
• Limited or no metrics to get your ROI for the CI evaluation.
• Absence of methods and resources for handling competitive intelligence data

The inability to compete effectively results in stagnant sales growth; missed market and sales opportunities, challenges in attracting talent, partners, or future investors; and the depreciation of company and brand value.

SoftwareReviews' Approach

• Learn how to compare the ranking of your product, brand, or company against top competitors using industry benchmarks and best practices.
• Gain insights into competitor performance at a level of depth that can benefit sales and other departments such as product development and customer support.

By ensuring that the CI function is properly resourced and aligned with Sales' strategic priorities, you can provide valuable insights into how to win against your competitor's products and services.

SoftwareReviews Insight:

A sales-focused competitive intelligence program is most effective when enabling sellers to improve their win rates against key competitors, stay abreast of changes in the competitive landscape, and be measured by CI-influenced wins.

How does competitive intelligence help sales?

While CI can enable success within many important corporate functions, applications of CI that directly impact revenue are considered the most important.

CI for sales: Equips sales teams with valuable knowledge about key competitors. Keeps sales up to date about the ever-changing competitive landscape. Identifies specific areas of competitive advantage, parity, and gaps. Empowers sellers to emphasize areas of competitive advantage and address objections related to gaps. Guides on how to tailor competitive pricing and solution packaging/bundling. Leveraging competitive information allows sales professionals to improve win rates over key competitors.

Source: Crayon, 2022

Obstacles to successful CI implementations

• Lack of executive support: Gaining buy-in and support from executives and key stakeholders is crucial for the success of a CI for sales program. If CI lacks value or relevance, it can be harder to secure the necessary resources, budget, and organizational alignment.
• Limited resources and budget: Implementing a robust CI program requires dedicated resources, including personnel, technology, and research capabilities. Constraints can hinder the ability to gather comprehensive intelligence and support ongoing analysis and reporting.
• Data quality and availability: CI relies on accurate, up-to-date information. It can be challenging to obtain reliable data from various sources and ensure its quality. Access to relevant market data, competitor information, and customer insights is required to generate actionable intelligence.
• Resistance to change and cultural barriers: Implementing a CI for a sales program often requires a cultural shift within the organization. Some employees may resist change to adopt new processes and tools. Overcoming resistance, fostering collaboration, and promoting a CI-focused mindset throughout the sales team can be challenging.
• Data privacy and ethical considerations: CI must adhere to ethical guidelines and comply with data privacy regulations. Balancing the need for competitive insights with ethical considerations and legal constraints can present challenges. Organizations must ensure their CI practices are conducted ethically and within legal boundaries.

SoftwareReviews Insight:

To remove barriers in competitive intelligence, one must address the main challenge of inadequate executive support by educating stakeholders on CI benefits, ensuring resource acquisition, making reliable data source investments, fostering a collaborative culture, and maintaining ethical and legal compliance.

Problems with having weak CI

A CI leader with a weak sales competitive intelligence function faces several problems.

Misunderstanding
Difficulty in understanding the market:
Without comprehensive knowledge of competitors' products, pricing, and marketing tactics, CI leaders may struggle to understand the market's competitive landscape, making it challenging to develop effective positioning over key competitors and properly help the sales team improve win rates.

Limited opportunities
Missed opportunities:
CI leaders with weak competitive intelligence will be surprised when new entrants or new products from existing competitors take deals away from sellers. This can lead to competitors gaining market share, resulting in lower revenue and profits for the company.

Inefficient resources
Allocation of marketing resources:
Without prioritizing which competitors and markets to focus on, CI leaders will be unable to size budget and resource needs to move the needle on improving win rates across all product markets and geographies.

No differentiation
Inability to differentiate the company's products:
A lack of tight alignment between the CI function and product marketing and management can lead to generic marketing messages and a product and company that are undefined in the marketplace.

Implications of limited competitive research

You can't afford to not invest in your CI team and resources.

• A lack of a complete and commonsense CI program, team, and strategy is a considerable business risk to your company's success.
• CI research funding and resources are critical to have in place before the product is created or launched. If not, your ability to sell in the market is hampered.
• Sales representatives will make up the information for clients; this considerably threatens your reputation and causes missed revenue opportunities.
• The market is changing fast, and without a modern CI program, there will be wasted dollars in other business areas to prop up weak CI and customer insights.

"Seventy-one percent of companies maintaining battlecards say these assets have helped them improve their win rate."

Source: Crayon, 2022.

Build CI research to improve sales win rates

Our approach calls for the proper selection of competitors and to research best practices to increase sales in a competitive win situation

Skills CI team members require

The exciting thing about this field is that various backgrounds make stronger teams.

The key is looking for a few core traits:

• Relentless researchers – Every member of your team needs to be a little curious, and prepared to dive deep into the backlinks to find the information they crave.
• Conscious communicators – Competitive intelligence is a long game; your team must be okay with holding back information until they have the whole story. It would be best to have methodical people who won't jump to conclusions based on one bit of intel.
• Effective synthesis – Building a functional competitive intelligence system requires skilled writers who can synthesize vast amounts of data into concise and impactful memos. Without the ability to synthesize research into meaningful insights, all the collected data becomes futile.
• Multi-department experts – These experts should be proficient in comprehending the unique information that matters to each department, aligning with their core competencies, goals, and needs.

Sales CI is a team sport

CI team budget items

The costs of building a CI team for sales are driven by the number of products/markets supported and the level of support.

Salaries and benefits: This is the most significant cost item, as the wages of CI team members will depend on their roles, experience, and location. Benefits like team size, health insurance, retirement plans, and paid time off must also be considered. A typical CI team may consist of a manager, a senior CI analyst, and a few CI analysts. Estimate: $300,000 to $800,000 annually.

Data and research tools: Access various data and research tools such as market research reports, subscription services, and competitive intelligence software. The cost for these tools can vary widely depending on the size of the team and the scope of their responsibilities. Estimate: 50,000 to $150,000 annually.

Training and development: The team is responsible for gathering and analyzing competitive intelligence; they will require ongoing training and development to keep up with the latest tools and methodologies. This could include attending conferences, taking online courses, or bringing in outside consultants. Depending on existing skills and knowledge, estimate $10,000 to $30,000 annually.

Other expenses: There may be additional expenses such as travel costs, office supplies, or software licenses that the CI team will require. Estimate $5,000 to $10,000 annually.

CI staff required

Best practice is one CI professional for each major competitor and region. You should have enough CI professionals to effectively support and collaborate with the sales team. The ratio increases with a heavier sales support model (e.g. deal or win/loss support) and broader geographical support.

What is your annual CI budget (excluding headcount)?

There has been a 110% increase of CI teams with more than $25,000 in budget over the past five years. CI teams have traditionally worked with little to no budget, but this is rapidly changing.

Source: Crayon, 2023

"For the average B2B software company, 66% of sales opportunities are competitive.

No wonder 86% of CI leaders at software companies say they enable their sellers with competitive battlecards."
Source: Crayon, 2023

Measuring the impact of your sales CI program

Setting clear measurements not only helps guide you toward solving the business operational problem you've identified, but also helps measure competitive intelligence team success.

Management better comprehends the CI team and sales research's impact and return on investment by measuring and analyzing crucial metrics. This enables data-driven decision making regarding resource allocation and strategic planning.

Examples:

Problem #1: Losing deals in the enterprise segment

Metric: Win/loss among enterprise prospects

Problem #2: Customer retention is moving downward, and churn is moving up

Metric: Renewal and churn rates

Pro Tip: Establish metrics before CI implementation and after CI baseline to evaluate the impact of CI insights on the cost-effectiveness of the sales process.

CI sources

A comprehensive approach to sourcing competitive intelligence data is essential.

"The intel you source from your coworkers is extremely valuable not only because it can inform strategy and tip deals in your favor but also because it gets your coworkers involved in the process – which helps drive culture change and adoption of CI." Source: Crayon, 2023

Customer feedback: Gathering customer feedback through surveys, focus groups, and social media can provide insights into customer preferences and behaviors. Gathering customer feedback and analyzing online reviews can provide insights into customer preferences, pain points, and how competitors are meeting (or failing to meet) their needs. This can help develop targeted marketing messages that resonate with the target audience.

Your sales team: Sales calls can be a treasure trove of information about how your prospects perceive your competitors. Listening to them gives you a direct line of sight into how they feel about specific product features, brand positioning, and pricing structures compared to your competition, the pain/obstacles they face when selling, and how you can help them do their jobs better and faster.

Competitor websites and social media: Examining the websites and social media accounts of competitors can provide valuable information on their products, pricing, marketing strategies, and customer engagement.

Online databases and resources: Various online databases and resources such as Hoovers, Owler, and LinkedIn can provide valuable insights into competitors' organizational structure, financials, and personnel.

Sales data and analytics: Analyzing sales data and customer analytics can provide insights into customer behavior, product performance, and sales trends. Sales calls can be a treasure trove of information about how your prospects perceive your competitors. Listening to recordings gives insight into how customers feel about specific product features, brand positioning, and pricing structures compared to your competition. Plus, you can get some great quotes for internal briefings. Capture the competitor products prospects currently use and who else they're evaluating. This can help optimize marketing strategies and research and allocate resources effectively.

Trade shows and conferences: Attending industry events and trade shows can provide opportunities to gather competitive intelligence by networking with industry professionals, attending presentations, and observing competitors' booths and displays.

Government and regulatory agencies: Government agencies may provide information on market regulations, industry trends, and competitor data.

Competitive intelligence software: Competitive intelligence software can help automate the processes for gathering and analyzing data on competitors. These tools can provide insights into pricing, product features, social media engagement, and other vital metrics.

Market intelligence vs. competitive intelligence software

3 CI Tools

Use SoftwareReviews to evaluate buyer rankings and reviews on your company and key competitors

Find out which of your competitors are loved, which are hated, and why!

Go to softwarereviews.com/categories. Click the software category by role, industry, or type in the search box. You will see the list of companies by product; pick a buyer's guide (Data Quadrant or Emotional Footprint). Select the companies and products you wish to compare, using this link, within the same category.
The head-to-head comparison tool of enterprise software allows you select and compare within the same category. Our head-to-head tool contrasts 63 aspects of the software and the vendor, allowing you to get into a granular comparison of your potential competitors.

• The Data Quadrant is a thorough evaluation and ranking of all software in an individual category to compare platforms across multiple dimensions and hundreds of data points from unbiased customer feedback.
• Vendors are ranked by their composite score based on individual feature evaluations, user satisfaction rankings, vendor capability comparisons, and likeliness to recommend the platform.
• The Emotional Footprint is a powerful indicator of overall user sentiment toward the relationship with the vendor, capturing data across five dimensions.
• Vendors are ranked by their customer experience (CX) score, which combines the overall emotional footprint rating with a measure of the value delivered by the solution.

Case study

Win/loss insights feed sales battlecards

Spend time with the departments searching for answers. Understand people's unique motivations and perspectives; you will impact them, so gauge their appetites for feedback.

Reinforce the importance of a culture of continuous learning and improvement.

INDUSTRY: Marketing and Sales
SOURCE: Primary Intelligence, Best Practice for Sharing Win-Loss Insights Across Your Organization," TruVoice from Corporate Visions, 2022.

CI sales battlecard design - KISS

*fear, uncertainty, doubt