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This is a recap of a conversation about how to launch a sales confidence survey to measure competitive confidence.

The Sparknotes

Sales crave real-life examples in their battlecards.

“Putting in dynamic content, real Gong snippets of the top rep using those talk tracks, is going to be really powerful. It will absolutely drive adoption in the long run.”

Imagine the holy grail of battlecards on your top competitor…

Why we win. Why we lose.

All the objection handling techniques and talk tracks laid out perfectly.

Spoiler alert: that is still not enough.

Sellers want to hear, watch, and see how their peers win and close deals via audio clips, embedded videos, and images. They want real social proof from customers and prospective buyers that can back up their talk tracks.

This was one of the findings from Klue’s own Sales Confidence Survey, created by Competitive Enablement Manager, Brandon Bedford.

What else did he find? And how did it guide his competitive efforts?

1. Reps felt very confident going up against their main competitor (and win rates backed this up). But, they were feeling a little less informed on smaller, emerging competitors.
2. Reps had preferred channels for consuming and sharing competitive intel, which led Brandon to double-down on sharing insights through a competitive intelligence newsletter and keeping on top of the competitive slack channel.
3. Sellers have tons of great creative ideas when you ask the right questions. Leaving a free-form response in your survey unlocked this creativity.

Results from regular sales confidence surveys give competitive experts a key performance metric

“It goes back to success metrics. We want to show across all these different metrics and dimensions that we are more competitively enabled than we were last half or last quarter.”

Average deal size, time to close, CRM metrics and win-loss data can all be powerful indicators of success for Competitive Enablement experts and PMMs. But there are a lot of factors that determine those metrics.

Sharing sales confidence adds that little extra spice.

With this metric, the next time you present to leadership you can share ‘not only are we winning more against these competitors, but our reps are feeling more confident going against them.’

Now that’s a compelling competitive story to tell.

How frequently should you conduct seller confidence surveys?

It’s not one-size-fits-all, but, according to Brandon:

One a quarter at most. Once a year at least. Twice a year is the sweet spot.

️ Prioritizing your competitors is a primary goal of sales confidence surveys.

“The purpose of the sales confidence survey was really around prioritization. You have to prioritize where you want to spend your time.“

Every business has competitors.

If you don’t think yours does, we kindly recommend you check again.

You can’t enable your sales team against all your competitors all at once.

Just like you can’t fix everything causing your sellers’ lack of confidence right away.

That’s why Brandon set out to conduct the sales confidence survey as one of his first acts as Competitive Enablement Manager.

The findings help him determine how to prioritize:

• Which competitors to focus on
• What sales collateral needs the most improvement
• Which gaps in confidence are the most pressing

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts