Brandon Bedford for Product Marketing Community

Speaker: Brandon Bedford, Competitive Enablement Manager, Klue

Brandon Bedford: So my role is competitive enablement manager. And so my role very much started existing when we implemented our compete program. Um in terms of how has the team changed? I would say that our product marketing organization has been to scale up quite a bit because we're now able to specialize based on function and I can really focus in on competitive enablement. Were able to get more done both in competitive enablement, but even more broader across our product marketing team. So the specialization has definitely helped overall. I'd say one of the biggest impacts I've noticed um and I may be biased is that we're starting to see a lot more impact on later stage funnel activities. So, competitive enablement, of course is very valuable for the sales team in terms of win rates or close rates and impacting the revenue much more closer to the end of the sale cycle. Whereas, you know, arguably a lot of product marketing or other marketing efforts are more top of funnel activities. And so I think overall we are starting to see much more of an impact on uh, sales enablement, but also more directly towards revenue for the organization as well. Mm hmm.

Brandon Bedford: this is a great question and I'm gonna answer kind of in two parts. First is more specific to competitive enablement and then I'll add on some more answers around broader sales enablement when it comes to KPI S and Crm specific to competitive enablement. I think there's multiple fields that you can track um or pieces of data you can track. So first and foremost would be competitors in deals, right? And that one is pretty straightforward, which competitors are our is our sales team seeing in deals and being able to quantify that with crm data is invaluable, but going beyond the competitors in the deal, it's of course very valuable to look at revenue lost. Um you know, for many reasons, you know, you may have a competitor that the sales team is seeing very often, but we're winning against them a lot or um you were seeing them much more often in the smb so smaller accounts, but there's this enterprise competitor that we're losing a lot more revenue to, even if they don't appear as often. So understanding the actual revenue impact that a competitor is having is really valuable. Um and then of course, inherent to that is competitive win rate, which I think is a very specific metric when you look at wins against a particular competitor and by being able to break that down, you can actually see, okay, here are the competitors that we're hearing or coming up against here are the competitors that we're actually losing to the most. Um and I think that's a really important distinction and can absolutely help identify really specific and actionable opportunities to enable the sales team when I think about broader sales enablement. Um, your mileage may vary, it's going to depend a lot on your sales motion and what sales methodology your team uses. But, um, one that we use that clue is thinking about the stages of the sales cycle. You could, of course use, you know, your crm stages as you have them set up. But that also may differ for different companies. So the way that we think about it is, you know, there's the y change why now and then there's why us and those are three very different coaching opportunities. If we're losing deals early on the deal cycle, that would likely indicate that the sales team is unable to um, To really communicate why change from status quo, right? There's a great stat, I believe it was from salesforce, that over 80% of sales deals are lost to status quo, whether that's a competitor or if it's just excel or the old way of doing things. And so that's a very specific coaching opportunity. If we're losing deals earlier in the sales cycle. Now, the next one is why now, and that can be seen from a variety of metrics again later in the sales cycle, but also by, um, deals that are pushing to next quarter sales cycle length or days to close. If that's too long, then the sales team is struggling to communicate why they need to make that change now and then of course, why us, uh, you know, why our solution is better than the competitors. And as a competitive enablement manager, I'm perhaps most interested in the ladder. The third option, which is, you know, are we convincing or are we able to sell people on the problem and that they need to make a change? But we're losing them to an alternative to a competitor in this space. Now, of course, important to note that status quo is of course a competitor. And so when I think about competitive enablement, that's a great example of where competitive enablement starts to move into the realm of broader sales enablement because status quo is a competitor. It's an alternative option. Um, and so, um, that's the way I think about it is, you know, that why us cancer. And again, going back to my earlier response of looking at things like competitors in the deal competitors that we're losing too in our competitive win rate, I think are incredibly valuable for identifying sales enablement opportunities