Competitive Inheritance, HBO’s Brand is Better, Competitive Confidence

💪 Making the Most of Your Inheritance 💪

“Inheriting competitive content may feel like a good thing at the start. But in reality…”

Building a competitive program from scratch comes with a host of challenges. 

Just ask Alex McDonell, Chris Agnoli, Clara Smyth or any of the other compete experts who’ve had to build something from nothing.

But stepping into a Competitive Enablement role with an already-existing compete program brings with it a new set of problems. 

Is this content reliable? Is it up to date? Is it even effective? 

Klue’s Competitive Enablement Manager Brandon Bedford doled out four major tips for overcoming competitive inheritance hurdles.

Tips I will now share as part of our occasional series, The Klue Diaries: Competitive Musings from a Competitive Expert.

🔍 Take inventory. Discover where content lives today. It might not be all in one place. 

✏️ Speak with the Curators. Who wrote this content? Understand why they created the content. 

📖 Speak with the Consumers. Who is reading this content?

🗺 Create a roadmap, and share it. 

You could always scrap all the old content and start from scratch. 

But you’d risk throwing out the proverbial baby with the proverbial bathwater. 

So have a process for auditing existing compete content, keep what’s good, scrap what isn’t, and update what can be salvaged. 

Check out Brandon’s full LinkedIn post for a deeper look at his four tips. 

“Netflix is a utility. HBO is a place you come for guaranteed quality programming every single time.”

That quote marks the second time I’ve quoted myself in an edition of Coffee & Compete. (Adam says I only get one more so I better make the next one count) 

In case you missed it (ICYMI) our most recent edition of Klue’s VERSUS Series dove into a slice of the streaming wars in HBO VERSUS Netflix. 

I got to join Adam as a guest on the Competitive Enablement Show to break down the biggest takeaways from the written piece, provocatively entitled Why HBO Max Will Dominate Netflix Within 10 Years.

Too long; didn’t read (Tl;Dr), Netflix moved first and reimagined what consuming TV and movie programming would look like in the digital age. 

Then, Netflix got into original programming and started competing with studios like HBO, which had made a name for itself by producing iconic TV series like The Sopranos, Sex and the City, and Game of Thrones. 

But then HBO, along with Disney+, Amazon Prime, Apple+ (the list goes on and on), started competing on Netflix’s turf. 

So now, you’ve got a highly saturated market, with a bunch of cord-cutters who are beginning to wonder why they cut the cable cord in the first place when they’re spending upwards of $100 a month for several subscriptions.

My take? 

Consumers will start choosing only 2 (at most 3) streaming services. 

And if you have to choose between Netflix’s throw everything at the wall and see what sticks approach, and HBO’s unrelenting commitment to producing quality content, the latter will win out. 

Check out a recap of the podcast episode here. And check out that same page for links to the episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 

 ⌛Timing is everything ⌛

So you’re a Competitive Enablement expert and you’ve built a compete program. 
And whether you have an enthusiastic leadership team or not, you need to start proving the results and worth of your program asap. 

Too often, Enablement leads and PMMs reach for “influenced revenue” as a metric to show their impact. 

Frankly, attributing a competitive enablement program’s success to things like win-rate, deal velocity and deal sizes, at best, leaves a lot to be desired. 

As the salesperson in every good infomercial says: 

“There must be a better way!”

That better way is to run a Competitive Confidence Survey to measure sales’ confidence in your compete program, and against your competitors. 

By reporting on improvements in competitive confidence of your sellers as a whole — and against specific competitors — you can add a layer of quantitative data and context to the competitive story that you tell to leadership.

These results prove that you are enabling reps to win more competitive deals. 

And winning more competitive deals? That’s how product marketers can truly influence revenue.

“But Ben, how do I get started?” 

I’m glad you asked. 

Head to our Resources page and download your Guide to Conducting Competitive Confidence Surveys.

You’ll get some great sample survey questions, best practices on how to run a survey, and thoughts on how you can put the results into action. 

And for a deeper look at the secret to boosting sales confidence (told you we had a secret for you), check out our feature blog here. 

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