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Training Sales to use Competitive Intelligence | Colby Kennedy, Product Marketing Manager, Reputation
Interviews

Training Sales to use Competitive Intelligence | Colby Kennedy, Product Marketing Manager, Reputation

Adam is joined by Colby Kennedy, Product Marketing Manager @ Reputation, to share his best tactics for training sales to use competitive intelligence during a deal. 

In the episode, we talked about the starting point for Colby’s competitive program, what he’s done to translate raw intel into concise, usable competitive content for salespeople, and the strategies he uses from his teaching background to train end-users to become more comfortable using competitive intelligence.

You can follow the podcast here.


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What is ‘The Competitive Enablement Show’?

Welcome to the Competitive Enablement Show. On this podcast, host Adam McQueen is joined by experts in the competitive intelligence industry to talk about innovative strategy, tangible advice and tactics that work, and building a competitive program that impacts the bottom line.

Episode Transcript

Adam: [00:00:08] All right, today we are joined by Colby Kennedy, the Product Marketing Manager at Reputation. Thanks for joining us.

Colby: [00:00:54] One hundred percent, man, thank you very much for having me. Adam, it’s my birthday today, so shout out to me and everyone else.

Adam: [00:01:03] Yeah, we specifically timed it so Colby would get to enjoy his birthday on a Friday recording a podcast with myself.

Colby: [00:01:10] I’m glad I did.

Adam: [00:01:15] So today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about a couple different things, but we’re going to talk about how you get support for your competitive program, how you transform all of this intel that you’re receiving and actually transforming it into usable, competitive content and then how you actually train your sellers and other end users into using this competitive information at their disposal. So, before we get into the training of sales and kind of transferring ontel into content, I want to talk about getting buy-in first, because I think that’s kind of the initial start point, right?

Colby: [00:01:49] Absolutely. One hundred percent. Yeah.

Adam: [00:01:52] What what are some of the ways that you got your team or decision makers on board for your competitive program?

Colby: [00:02:01] I think it’s quite likely that those people who were in the brass or in leadership positions have a sales background. That’s usually how they get up there anyways. And so anything that’s more scientific, the better. And the more data you can show, the better. So if you can come to them with a fully formed program, ideas, thoughts and data visualization, the better. Right. Specifically, if you could show how much money you’re using losing based on bad competitive intelligence and how much you stand to gain with good competitive intelligence, that’s going to go a long way because they’ve got so much in their minds. You can give them a snapshot. If we crack down on poor competitive intelligence losing all these deals, that’s going to go a long way, right? It’s going to affect the bottom-line. So anything that could be demonstrated with data visualisations is a big deal and getting them involved as early as possible to avoid, like sticker shock. If it’s going to take an investment, then better to get them involved super early and before you get to them, come with as much data as possible. Getting them involved really also helps the creation of the program so it can help lock in goals. So you’re both on the same page when it does come time down the road after you have invested to show your data. Right. So, you know, this is what we’re both working toward.

Adam: [00:03:37] What did it look like in your case when you first presented sort of this landscape, or what the competitive landscape is looking like, where threats are coming from, and how that how that got your executive on board early? I like that idea of getting them on board early, because you have them in there at that early stage before the programs even really launched, then you can have them really be hands-on in terms of the direction that it takes.

Colby: [00:04:02] Yeah, definitely. I mean, this is a lot of stuff we did with Salesforce. We did a ton of won-loss deals over the past year. And so some of the things we found out were like win rates of big deals versus small deals. And, hey, we’re doing great with this size, but not with that size. So we need to bump that up or, you know, which competitor we won or lost to the most, how much ARR was being lost overall. And for a competitor to say, hey, we’re losing, I guess, against a competitor we’re losing this much money. So we stand to gain this much if we invest in this and start cracking down on competitive intelligence. That went a long way. The size of the deals won versus lost, breaking down by vertical. What industries are we doing well in, what are we not doing well in? One thing that was broken down, was the top five won deals by competitor. So this is the five biggest deals won and lost to competitor A, B, C. And that way we can dig into how we’re comparing to that specific competitor, who’s working on those deals, interview them, do some research focus group type stuff, questionnaires where we dig into it. This gives us a lot of direction on where we stand to gain from cracking down on competitive intelligence, and then also one thing we took away was Salesforce hygiene and data quality. How often are people naming the competitor? How often are they actually doing that? What are the closed won or loss reasons due to competitor stuff.

Adam: [00:05:58] The idea of data hygoene in the CRM. Every conversation I have with our internal teams here is like, we need that fixed, we need that fixed. In Salesforce, you mentioned you’re identifying those threats to the business was deal size. You mentioned those big deals and how you’re performing, was that something where you really put a lot of your attention?

Colby: [00:06:32] We’ve just put a lot of attention, I guess, on where we had deficiencies, so whether that was a vertical, ideal size or competitor where we just didn’t have a lot of information. I mean, and that was what was great about the analysis, it really was able to push us and just highlight places that we had deficiencies and in the places that we were doing well, we could interview sales reps and see what’s going well here. Why are people saying yes to this, but not to the other? And then we can go find that out. So, I mean, it really just pushed us, not specifically like big or small or whatever, but we just found different pockets of where we could improve and we were able to move it. To where wherever needed focus.

Adam: [00:07:17] Did did you have to prioritize? You’ve got like deficiencies across different verticals, different deal sizes. Was there sort of a checklist of like these are some of the areas that we need to improve? Did you have to prioritize them? How did you kind of map out? How are you going to take that chunk by chunk?

Colby: [00:07:35] I’ll tell you how we mapped it out Adam, based on some cold, hard cash. That’s how. Where are we losing the most money? That’s where we map it out. So, I mean, yeah, easily. It was like where we are and how much are we standing to gain by, like, improving this area. I mean, it’s pretty simple, right? If it’s competitor A, B, C, or these verticals, or this deal size and that’s where we’re losing the most money, then let’s focus on that. So and that’s again, going to resonate with the brass and that bottom line. So that was pretty easy as far as how to prioritize. We get to that. There’s a lot of places we can improve. We can get in small ones later. Let’s focus on where we’re losing money.

Adam: [00:08:16] That totally makes sense, and I want to kind of transition no. All of this, it doesn’t matter if sales as one of your primary end users aren’t actually using the intel or the content is at their disposal. So before we get into the packaging of the content, what are your early steps to getting credibility with sales, getting their trust and buy in as well?

Colby: [00:08:42] Yeah, well, before you go that, I do want to say to take a step back when you’re talking to the higher-ups and the leaders of the company and you’re trying to create the program, especially from scratch. It’s also important to integrate the competitive intelligence program with the overall company direction and goals. Because salespeople in the field and everybody else obviously is trying to shift with whatever the company is trying to do, whether that’s a rebrand, whether that’s focusing on a different product, whether that’s moving into a new sector or whatever. It’s important to have the competitive program reflect that. So, like, if your company is. Mainly, they’re competitors right now, sell products A, but you know that the company wants to shift more to, A, focus on Product B, then you need to proactively look at the competitors that would be selling Product B. So that way you’re more proactive rather than reactive. You can go ahead and have a plan and strategy to go up against these competitors of the future, even though you’re not going to against them a lot right now. So I think that’s really important to integrate competitive intellige cewith the company direction and the company goals. I think that’s really important. But as far as getting sales in there, getting credibility with them and getting their buy-in, that was pretty easy because they were all like really psyched about it. They were all really excited.

Colby: [00:10:11] So that was easy for us. But I think several things that would go a long way to get people to buy in for sales is having leaders like brass, like C-Suite level people present solutions and programs and having sales leaders do the same. Present the program, make them active participants in creating and presenting and kicking off the platform because people who are in the fields listen. Same thing with like leaders from the field speaking. Salespeople tend to listen to other salespeople. They’re like, they get it, they understand what we’re dealing with on the front lines every day. It’s not somebody who doesn’t understand what I’m going through now. You can still be behind the scenes, pulling all the strings, telling the sales leader exactly what to say, like this is what direction we’re going in with this program. But it’s great if it comes from their mouth. If their own sales leaders or leader are saying so, having those people present, if you have a big meeting, field meeting and you’re like, we’re going to kick off this new competitive program or whatever, it’s great to have those people who you’ve already spoken to before. Help present the solution or help say, hey, guys, this is something we’re going to kick off and we’re going to dig into, so pay attention rather than, ah, a marketing or product person or whatever, just trying to force it into their brain and they’re subconsciously tuning you out.

Colby: [00:11:52] That was also just awesome to have quantified data about what the field needed, what they thought, where they went for stuff. So like some of the stuff we surveyed them on were confidence levels against specific competitors or in specific situations. Right. Hey, you’re up against competitor A, B, C in this situation. How concerned are you? Not confident at all to neutral, to very confident. And that really was illuminating into what competitors people were like, oh, I got this. I know exactly what to say. I know exactly how to deposition them versus other ones like where I’m lost. So that’s, again, just more focus on where to put our efforts right now. We also found out where they go for info and assets. It was the wild west where people are just Googling stuff at random. It’s deeply helpful as well to find out where they’re going to get competitive stuff. What types of info are most useful: is it common objections? Is it product stuff? Is it some kind of boilerplate on how to deposition each one of the competitors or whatever, you know, common problems facing competition? And then one thing I think that was really important was having an open-ended question about what they want from competitive intelligence or problems they’ve had in the past or what they keep facing. That open-endedness can really be helpful because there are just so many nooks and crannies, especially if you’re in the SaaS platform and you do a bunch of different things.

Colby: [00:13:25] I think one last thing that would help is having the brass present, having sales leaders present at surveying the field before you even present a program or tell them where to find and get stuff. Those three things are helpful, but also presenting competitive intelligence as a Use Case format. So not just ‘here’s where this stuff is, here’s where it helps’ and not just ‘You know, oh, we’re going to invest in this technology and kick this competitive program off,’ but actually approaching it as ‘hey guys, if you’re in a meeting with the prospect and they bring up competitor A, B, C or they say, but you guys don’t do blah, blah, here’s how we can deal with it, you know, because that just brings into their world, makes it easy for them to visualize.’ Here’s how I would use this stuff. I can’t wait to use it now in the real world. So presenting a use case format I think would be really helpful.

Adam: [00:14:44] Those are those are all really good points. From the internal survey you’re talking about, it almost hits these three things as well. It hits what kind of content you have that you create, there is also what you need to do from an operational standpoint. I like that when you’re mentioning where you actually go right now, not just about how you feel about competitors, where you get tripped up, but where are you going for answers. Also kind of that strategic standpoint, like, I think confidence on competitors as well, ties into what you’re mentioning in the initial stages when you’re outlining your landscape and what your main threats are to execs. It’s just another data point to kind of bake in when you’re presenting that case early on.

Colby: [00:15:30] Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Adam: [00:15:33] Let’s get into the actual creation of the content here, and if I if I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard from product marketers say that the biggest difficulty is getting all of this information, all of this intel now coming in, but what’s that process like of morphing it into usable content? If I had a dollar every time someone had told me that, like, I wouldn’t have student loans anymore.

Colby: [00:15:57] Yeah, right.

Adam: [00:15:58] But unfortunately, I still do. What does that look like for you, how do you kind of tackle that initial task of, ‘OK, I’ve got a ton of information coming in, what matters, and how is this going to be used for sellers?’

Colby: [00:16:16] The best way to do it is to remain as high level as possible and as accurate as possible as possible, high level and applicable. One way to maybe get those two things high level and applicable is bullet points on what, when, why, where, who and how of competitors, of certain situations, of whatever you want to say. So. As simple as things like not having stuff be just bullet point stuff, put like a word minimum on your own. Because we have battlecards that have a ton of information in them, but they could have so much more information. But you just want to make it as consumable as possible, not more, particularly not more than two or three pages. In a battlecard, just bullet points, maybe six of them per section or something like that. I think interviewing reps has gone a long way into showing me what’s going to actually be helpful, what’s actually going to be applicable and how to pull out a bunch of information that was actually going to help. I think for version one of something, if you’re creating an asset or a collateral, I put everything in there, put everything in one, put all the information. Then start trying to chisel down just from that whole paragraph.

Colby: [00:18:02] What’s the one bullet you could pull out of there? That this is the essence of what we’re trying to say. This is what we’re trying to do and this is what people are actually going to use with actually looking for. You know, you use have to do your best at trimming the fat and it can be hard at first. But it’s better to have too little information, but the information is accurate and it is actually useful, then too much information where people are going to look at it, and don’t even know where to begin. It’s like the Matrix is coming down. I’m not even going to like this, you know? So I would go I would air on the side of, like, actually usable too little than too much.

Adam: [00:18:48] Do you have an example of this trimming the fat?  What are some suggestions or examples you’ve done to cut that mass amount of information into that little, I think what you said, the essence of what you’re trying to convey.

Colby: [00:19:10] Yeah, I mean, I think a couple examples of what is in Klue itself. But so there’s several ways and that’s a huge thing for us, for our company, because I’m only one person. I’m not in sales meetings all day with, like, actual prospect, blah, blah, blah. So there’s tons of insights that there that they can throw in that helps me a lot, keeps me more up to date. This not just like the press release or something. And so there’s all these different ways I go for one of them in my new hire training, which I do monthly, by the way, monthly new Argenti. I think that’s very important. I go one way and I literally demonstrate to them step by step, click by click, and I do it several times on the train. I don’t go the other way. I just use the most popular way and refer to the other ones, like you can check on the resources slide. There’s other ways to do that. Another example differentiator is obviously a big deal for you, for products and for competitors. And so depending on the deal, there’ll be a myriad of different a different differentiators, depending on what products are up for sale, who are going against what the situation is in the enterprise market.

Colby: [00:20:24] All this stuff, there’s these different differentiators, but there’s five big ones that are kind of umbrella that we can pretty much apply to any situation. And in that training, I have to go over those whole five. I just know who won the most important one. And then I just kind of refer to the other ones and like, let them live in, like, slide deck or in addition to that and say when you have time, go look at these other ones. This is the most important differentiator for us. This is where we’re starting the conversation is this differentiator. So that’s going to be hard because you’re going to want to be like, what about these differentiators? And if they’re talking about this product, then we can bring up this, this and this and these just like granular details of like how we’re different or better. And you just can’t present all that up top. You need to make that exists in a place that they can find it themselves. But not present that on the field and to call or whatever, because it’s just going to go in one ear and out the other,

Adam: [00:21:25] It’s like you’re boiling the ocean at that point, like it’s just such an inefficient process. And I think it’s interesting as well. When you talked about the actual content of the Barakaat content, you mentioned like distilled those down to bullet points, bite sized chunks and even like linking them. So, like, you have some information. If you want to learn more, you click into the card, like you go to something else relevant to your competitor. And you’re also using not in terms of like enablement. Training is let’s not just show everything. Let’s not show every little thing on every little competitor. Here’s our entry point. And repetition like this is just repeating that initial differentiation over and over again, how you access it and how how you use it as well. I think it’s

Colby: [00:22:08] Like I mean, both with presenting, like just teaching and then also with the content itself, however dumb you think it needs to be, it needs to be done to be that even more simple than you think is like you’re inundated with it. Right. You’re the person you’re thinking about, the symbol that you’re writing, the simple day. So you’re like, oh, this is dumb down. This is like pretty streamlined. This is pretty easy, not as salespeople. Not to the field,

Adam: [00:22:34] Not to the pros.

Colby: [00:22:35] Yeah, that is people that come in every now and then and read the stuff. They’re still overwhelmed by what you do is very dumbed down. You go even dumb. I mean, you got to like as simple as possible. And I get more into that than the actual teaching of the content as well. But. But you can still have great details and stuff, but I would have it. In. A document or someplace where they can access it and do their own self education, rather than when you’re going through a new hire training, you’re trying to kick off a program, you’re doing what you’re presenting. You’ve got to be as simple as possible, you know.

Adam: [00:23:18] Honestly, it’s good advice, even for someone like myself in a content role, in a marketing role, as you’re so familiar with everything, that between the competitors, you’re just like in the weeds a lot more than you realize. I think a lot of the time and words will make sense to you. Phrases differentiation makes sense to you. But and if you zoom out and take that lens from someone that’s completely new, someone that’s, like you said, like a potential buyer, that that’s in a demo. Some of that stuff is going to go right over their head. So the idea of dumbing it down, it resonates a ton ton with me as well, casting my own role. Also, you talked about in terms of the content using using prompts, what do you what do you mean by that and how does that look?

Colby: [00:24:04] Yeah, I mean, I used to be a teacher. I taught like kids through adults. And I know a lot of people. And there’s not a whole lot of difference between teaching adults working in corporate America or Canada or wherever and teaching like children. There’s not a lot of difference. People still like try to be reticent, not speak up or don’t do their homework or like catch them like not listening. We’re all absorbed into a different window up or something like that. So there’s not a whole lot to say. So when you come into a training situation like my new hire training, I do monthly or you’re like, know, presenting something, it is absolutely essential that you get people active, that they’re not just sitting there. You know, eyes glaze over as you go into your one hundredth hour of why this product is different than the other product or whatever. So it’s really, really important to use engagement in training. And when I do that is through problems like here’s a sales situation. Let’s go into that. Right. A couple of things I’ll say on on like kind of teaching or presenting or trying to get that training going is I never go more than 40 minutes, hopefully keep it to 30. You know, once again, to the sales. People’s attention span is notoriously short and they’ve got other things are going on. So if they don’t see value immediately, there’s whatever I’m doing out in the another window and going on, you know, so I would not try to go for it minutes or try to keep 30 once again, keep it as dumb as possible.

Colby: [00:25:46] And so. Like for up from one thing I’ll say is like, here’s our problem, here’s four bullet points, right? You’re up against competitor ABC. The one pain point of the of the prospect is this one objection is this and another objection, is that right? So based on that, where are we going? How are we going to respond to pinpoint one? How are we going to position, you know, company ABC, competitor ABC? How are we going to respond to this? Objection. Why not? Right now, it’s really important that you don’t push people off the cliff before you teach them to fly. You’ve got to do example’s exhaustive examples slowly and practice second examples first. Practice, right? So I would go over a prompt with them and say, OK, here’s the situation and is that even the situation is super stripped down to it would never be this direct in real life, but for training purposes, this really helps them get their mind wrapped around the situation and the ways in which they might use in the collateral that you have worked so hard to create for them. Right. So we’re against competitor ABC. Objection. One objection to this is what we’re interested in here, the pain point. So go to the battle card and show them, hey, I’m over here in this part of the battle card. And I know that they’ve said objection, a series of our will respond to that. Right. They think that prospect, ABC is better in this area.

Colby: [00:27:26] So I’ll go to the battle card and literally show them on the screen. This is what I’m going to find this and I’ll say blah, blah, blah, then write that that direct. But it’s not that straightforward after you’ve done that and shown them, I would repeat that process with the prompt. It says, hey, we’re against competitor ABC. There’s a couple of objections, a couple of points. You know, Joe Blow, how would you respond to objection? One right here. Here’s a hint. It’s in this section of the battle card. And have them go there themselves and find the answer, and you can be it’s OK to be like that. Simple and straightforward is like, here’s the objection, here’s your who’s we’re going against, here’s the area. The Vatican told me the answer. It’s fine for you to do that. And it be that simple because that’s how simple you need to make it before they start getting it in their head. Oh, live. When I’m out there in the field, I’m going to call somebody. I can pull out a card and find I can kill you and no decision that’s been made. Another thing I’ll say is. Under no circumstances should you say so, who would like to answer this question? Like you like absolutely. Your a teacher, you are an authority figure. They are students. You need to direct them. I do not call them. I do not just say like, well, who would like to answer a question? I say person. First name, last name, please answer. Here’s this this pain point.

Colby: [00:28:57] And it may seem some people starting that might seem comfortable talking to their colleagues. Whatever people will respond to assertiveness and expertise and end just like. Authority like that, they will respect that and they will appreciate it after they will be. That was really that was really constructive session when we were in the U.S., the prompt and said, hey, Susie. Q Can you please answer this? And here’s the better card and blah, blah, blah, that that will help people do that. And I’ll go through several props and we’ll go through respond to your objections or pay points or whatever it may be. And if they can’t find the answer, even even though you literally pointed them right there to where it is, then you might open up to the field, say, hey, could somebody help her out? And because you’ve gone through so much effort to show exactly how easy this is to find the answer or to use the collateral, whether it’s a Kilshaw, whatever, then people feel a little bit more comfortable. Asking, raising their hand or speaking up or what you know, and one thing about this, this works great. If you’ve got a group that is twenty people, twenty five people lower than that, maybe start getting a little bit too big. You got a hundred people on this call. Whether you might do instead of direct engagement like that is poll the audience. That’s one thing you can do is like, hey, we got to open. Here’s a multiple choice question on competitive intelligence. What do you guys think it is? And then people can answer in there and be like, yeah, that’s correct.

Colby: [00:30:41] The answer is C and here’s why. Whatever, you know, another know you can do it. A real large group is role play. Role play works very well. You know, person from the company is going to be a prospect. Person B from the company is going to be a rep and just very straightforward. And the the the person playing the prospect is like, oh, I have a I don’t know, you guys seem expensive or you guys it seems too complex. I’m not really interested in this part of that, but I don’t see how it pertains to me and have the other person role play and have them pull stuff up on the collateral or use that and go into it, you know, so that really works. Well, if it’s a big, big group, people can take away things from that and it puts it in their world. And one thing I’ll say as far as like. People. Need to be better teachers and better public speakers. It’s just leaving pauses in your speech to let things sink in. Leaving policies in your speech to let things sink in makes a huge thing so many people just have like just an absolute flat line. Cadence, manages policy, falls flat out. People get bored and they just stop paying attention, even subconsciously makes up your cadence, makes up your volume, picks up your speed, you know, and leave those pauses in there that helps people like stay awake and focus

Adam: [00:32:03] From from my journalism background is actually feeling comfortable. And sitting in those pauses is when you elicit the most engagement and the most insightful responses. Humans have a tendency, especially if they’re not comfortable, like you mentioned, as in a teaching situation, to want to fill in those gaps with butts or carry on to the next point and keep moving on. But feeling comfortable in those moments, in those pauses is actually where in this podcasting situation or talking with customers and any of those situations, you really get the best responses and the most the most out of those moments.

Colby: [00:32:44] No, definitely. I mean, I think that’s you know, it’s going to feel weird at first if somebody is starting to do a big presentation or whatever to to leave those pauses in there. But it can’t be I can’t stress enough how important it is now. Effectiveness. That’s when you start stop talking. That’s what there’s like a break on. Like they start paying attention is like, oh, I need you know, there’s something required of me here, some clicks in their brain. When you leave some time in there, you know, when your voice stops becoming white noise, that’s when people start paying attention. And that really. Yeah, it makes them pay attention a lot more and get more out of it.

Adam: [00:33:22] So I’m curious as well. So one thing I’ve heard and this is meant as a compliment, is that sales are the best B.S. detectors in the company. They can sense when stuff doesn’t doesn’t doesn’t meet the sniff test for from year end. I know someone in charge of competitive like it’s paramount that you are very the devil is in the details, that you are on top of that. But how do you in terms of these enablement sessions and you’re talking about love engagement, how do you handle maybe if there’s skepticism on the sales end?

Colby: [00:33:58] Scepticism on the sales

Adam: [00:34:00] Questions, they’re poking the poking and prodding at some of the maybe the intel and the prompts that you’re providing,

Colby: [00:34:06] Right? I honestly. I’m just saying it’s like an oracle who could do no wrong. Of now getting paid. I have a deal. I really haven’t had to deal with a whole lot of people being like, what? Because I am, I guess, the authority on it. That said, I have had people come to me and say, hey, I think you need to update this. This is out of date on a specific competitors. Oh, my God. And I asked very graciously, I say, like, thank you so much. And I think one thing that goes is really getting out ahead of it. Now, the thing about it is I’ve told I’m told it feels like I’m one guy. I’m doing everything I can and monitoring everything and updating battle cards and reconnaissance and stuff all the time. But at the other day, I am one guy, but I’m not sitting in sales conversations with prospects and clients on a daily basis. And there’s so much out there that I need to have from the field that is not just like public information. I mean, like they’ll find like pricing information in a meeting that is not just going to be on their website. So as far as like, hey, them poking and prodding or showing skepticism, I would try to get out ahead of it and say I’m doing the best I can. I can vouch for most of this information. That said, I absolutely love the feedback. If you see anything that is addition, subtraction or change and I need your help specifically, I need your help because you at the end of the day, are going to be privy to information that is just not public domain is I can’t be in every sales meeting all the time or anything like that. So for them showing skepticism, I would just be upfront, say I’m doing everything I can. I can do a lot of it. I need your help to keep me honest and keep everything up to date because stuff’s always changing. And I’m not in those meetings.

Adam: [00:35:59] Do you have examples of. That competitive content in in your own experience, is there been some lessons you’ve learned in terms of going from creating bad content to good content?

Colby: [00:36:14] Yeah, I mean, I think. I mean, with Sky being the nature of it is bad content. The thing that comes to mind for me is too much or the wrong information, and then also out of date, information is always changing. They’re always messing with product offerings or what’s current or the space they’re moving in or what their messaging is. That’s always changing. So you can stay on top of it. And being current, that’s one that’s one thing that makes it bad. Then it’s bad. It’s like something that doesn’t resonate with the field, doesn’t help or is just there’s just too much information. For example, on the opposite side of that, good content would be sure actionable. And it doesn’t do the job of sales. It’s sure naturally it doesn’t do the job of sales, meaning the job is filling in the blanks and color commentary and creating a narrative, right. For example, good. See, I would say our product A is better than their product A because of X, Y and Z. Then the rep comes in, they create the narrative, they talk about how this business needs, they personalize it to that pain point, all that stuff. And at the end of the day, CGI is not sales enablement and the salesperson is the person that’s going to create that narrative. Tell the story of how the company and the products can benefit the prospect, their client and personalize their pain points. So busy, all that stuff, so you can leave all that out of the sky. The CIA needs to be a little bit more straightforward and simple. Our product is better than their product because it because of explains it.

Adam: [00:38:06] And what about in terms of the intel that you get, where are the best sources you find to create good content? What intel is kind of noisy at times. And where have you found like, oh, this is a goldmine for competitive information?

Colby: [00:38:23] And our question, I mean, obviously, you know. It’s not necessarily noisy, but like a competitor’s website is a great place to start. It can only take so far because by its very nature, just kind of high level, it doesn’t have exact details, but it’s a great place to start the website. I think that and I’ve kind of set up for the field itself and interviewing people like just checking on your Salesforce, CRM or whatever and seeing who just won or lost a deal against a competitor that you’re trying to focus on. Go sit down and interview them and just say, hey, what went well, what didn’t go well? What could we get over what what what made us win the deal or whatever as as it pertains to. That’s a great wealth of information and will help you create actionable content for the field, just literally talking to them, interviewing them. Another thing is a lot of companies will have like frequently asked questions, page or resources pages or something like that. They’ll get deeper into their product. And so then you can gists. You know, sift through that and find that way. A lot more details about how products stack up against each other because on the websites, a lot of times it’s kind of like the products generally more or less do the same. It’s when you start digging deeper, you can actually start positioning as far as like, well, there’s this new this or this or whatnot.

Adam: [00:39:53] Yes, this is like a foundation. It’s a good starting point. But to get to the next level that you mentioned, it like to be positioned

Colby: [00:40:00] As a website. Good starting point, talking to the actual reps himself, interviewing them better, deeper. And then also there’s some like resources pages on the website and there’s some, like, frequently asked questions, pages, and sometimes those get more granular and that can actually boil.

Adam: [00:40:19] Ok, that’s that’s great. Did you have any other kind of words of wisdom? I think there’s been a lot of a lot of good takeaways from this. But in terms of that, I really love the stuff you’ve been talking about, about teaching cells to use your content. Is there anything else that we might have missed that you want to bring up here?

Colby: [00:40:37] One thing is I do recommend, like we do do our trainings with anybody. Some people have been there like a day and some people have been there like, you know, almost six weeks or something like that. But having everyone go through, you know, about forty five minutes by training and doing the engagement, because when you break it down with, like a monthly new hire thing, usually it’s in between 10 and I don’t know, 20, 20 about people or whatever. It’s very manageable. And you can get in smaller class size that’s going to take your teaching turn smaller class size so you can have that engagement where you have the prompts and how people interact with them. I’m in a situation how would I use the collateral of S.I? So doing Nouhad training, depending on size of company, would obviously be doing the training was really helpful and also just over communicating. Just I mean, just literally brute force cramming into people’s heads about what’s coming up, what’s important, where to find stuff, you know, not letting them forget about you, so just hammering it home over their Google beats and live meetings and podcasts and webinars and internal newsletters and whatever it is, really just honestly can’t go wrong, just like repetition. And just like putting it in people’s heads, because then honestly, the onus is on them. They don’t know something. You’ve gone overboard in trying to get it to them, that’s all. But, you know.

Adam: [00:41:59] All right, Colby, that was that was awesome, I’m sure we’re going to have you on again soon, probably for your next birthday, maybe probably sooner. Actually, this this is your present. And this will be a present for all of our listeners. So thanks for joining us.

Colby: [00:42:13] Yeah, absolutely, man. Thank you guys very much. And have a great day.

Adam: [00:42:17] We’ll catch you all next week. Thanks.


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