CRAYON COMPETITIVE
INTELLIGENCE BLOG

If you’re a CI leader, you’re creating competitive assets left and right to help enable your colleagues and support your company’s overall goals. One of these assets is most likely an internal ...

If you visit Bob Boyle’s LinkedIn profile, you’ll see that he became a product marketing manager (PMM) in January 2023. But if you have a conversation with him, you’ll quickly realize that he started ...

Rachel Pangburn and Garrett Denney—who lead competitive intelligence at RF-SMART and Crayon, respectively—are well-versed in the act of presenting CI program results to senior leaders. They’re so ...

Last month, we began collecting responses for our 2024 State of Competitive Intelligence survey. So far, of the 106 people who have completed the survey, 62% have said they struggle to gather ...

In 2023, it’s quite possible that your CI team has gotten smaller, or the amount of time you can dedicate to the program has decreased. Organizations are trying to do more with less, but while ...

This is a guest post from Ignition, the go-to-market ops platform. Visit haveignition.com to learn more! In a crowded market, product quality is paramount. But even the most revolutionary products ...

If you’re responsible for competitive enablement, you should survey your sales reps on a quarterly basis and ask them how confident they feel selling against your top competitors. Their responses ...

Last week, I used data from Crayon’s competitor tracking software to show you that your competitors are talking about AI 5x more than they did in 2022. The data in that blog post is industry ...

When a competitor announces a major product release or an acquisition, the natural reaction is to wish you’d known about it sooner—because the sooner you know, the more time you have to prepare ...

In a perfect world, you can see the future. You know what your competitors are going to do months before they actually do it. I wish I could tell you that I have a portal to this alternate universe. ...

A few days ago, we started collecting responses for our 2024 State of Competitive Intelligence survey. As I’m writing this, the sample size is still very small (42 responses), but the early results ...

For the data presented in this blog post to make sense, you need some background on Crayon. Crayon is a competitive intelligence platform. Our customers use our technology to monitor their ...

Champions (a.k.a. advocates or evangelists) are coworkers who encourage their peers to consume the content you produce. They are essential to the success of your competitive intelligence program. So ...

Your company has two kinds of competitors: direct and indirect. You know the former. Those are the competitors that your sales team goes head-to-head with every single day. Meanwhile, an indirect ...

Creating a culture of CI can feel like training for a marathon. It requires serious dedication and repetition (So. Much. Running). And for most, running 26.2 miles doesn’t happen on the first day. ...

Being a CI team of 1 in a saturated market is a tough job. Ideally, you'd like to keep tabs on every competitor, but you don't have nearly enough bandwidth to do that. You need to prioritize. You ...

For nearly a decade, Crayon has been helping people like you build excellent compete programs—programs that increase win rates and influence executive decision-making. We decided to take everything ...

For nearly a decade, Crayon has been helping people like you build excellent compete programs—programs that increase win rates and influence executive decision-making. We decided to take everything ...

For nearly a decade, Crayon has been helping people like you build excellent compete programs—programs that increase win rates and influence executive decision-making. We decided to take everything ...

For nearly a decade, Crayon has been helping people like you build excellent compete programs—programs that increase win rates and influence executive decision-making. We decided to take everything ...

Here at Crayon we surveyed the market for the 2023 State of Competitive Intelligence report to get a deeper understanding of how teams rank the importance of different types of intelligence. More ...

Earlier today, I had the pleasure of talking to Sam Niro, Competitive Intelligence Manager @ Talkdesk, about how she creates and rolls out new battlecards. Here's the recording of our conversation: ...

This is a Crayon guest post from one of our partners, Fletcher. Visit the Crayon Partner Directory to learn more! So, you've started your Compete program... What more should you do? As a CI ...

A lot can happen in a week. One of your competitors updates their pricing. Another competitor releases a new AI feature. A third competitor publishes a comparison page on their website. We know that ...

From the very first time Rachel Foskett, VP of Global Product Marketing at MiQ, met with Crayon, she had high expectations for her onboarding experience — and she knew that to run a thriving CI ...

For the third installment of our new Win/Loss Wednesdays series, we had the pleasure of chatting with Brad Rosen, President at Sales Assembly, and Nick Siddoway, President & CRO at TruVoice from ...

For the second installment of our new Win/Loss Wednesdays series, we had the pleasure of chatting with Scott Frost, who’s led competitive intelligence at Stripe, Adobe, and New Relic. By the end of ...

When I was a kid, car commercials puzzled me. I remember asking my dad: Why do they make these? No one is gonna get off the couch and buy a Camry after watching a Toyota commercial. Which is true — ...

This is a Crayon guest post from one of our partners, Goldpan. Visit the Crayon Partner Directory to learn more! Win/loss analysis isn’t a nice-to-have. Understanding your buyers and prospects is ...

There’s a trope in teen movies where the protagonist’s mom prepares an extraordinary breakfast — eggs, bacon, bagels, fresh fruit, coffee, orange juice — only for said protagonist (annoying, ...

Few activities are more tedious than sifting through Google Alerts in search of important competitive insights. Not only is it tedious, it’s detrimental to your CI program — because the time you ...

For the first installment of our new Win/Loss Wednesdays series, we had the pleasure of chatting with Jayde Phillips, who manages market and competitive intelligence at Egencia, an American Express ...

Slack is the communication backbone of tens of thousands of companies around the world because while it’s true that knowledge is power, we all know that the true power comes only once that knowledge ...

This is a Crayon guest post from one of our partners, PSP Enterprises. Visit the Crayon Partner Directory to learn more! “Let’s talk about how I can use GPT to help me with competitive intelligence.” ...

Competitive intelligence leaders are often so focused on improving the content of their battlecards that they overlook a simple yet vital responsibility: reminding their sales teams that the ...

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of speaking with Mimi An and August Jackson — who run competitive intelligence (CI) at Akamai and Deltek, respectively — about the top insights from Crayon’s 2023 ...

A few days ago, I had the pleasure of hosting a webinar that featured Crayon’s VP of Strategy, Chris Pope, and Aircall’s Director of Sales, Tommy Jester. We talked about the mistakes that sellers ...

According to the 2023 State of Competitive Intelligence report, 58% of those who measure their battlecards think they’re well-adopted. Among the ranks of that majority is Spencer Hong, Senior ...

This is a Crayon guest post from one of our partners, Atlantic Intelligence. Visit the Crayon Partner Directory to learn more! What separates competitive from competitor intelligence? Simply put, ...

After successfully enabling the sales organization with competitive insights at Intellum, Kaitlyn Smith — Product Marketing Manager and competitive intelligence practitioner extraordinaire — set her ...

In high school, my economics teacher loved to remind us that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” It’s an old-timey way of saying “everything comes at a cost.” Oftentimes, the cost of something ...

In our fifth installment of the Crayon Customer Corner, we sat down with Dan Dearing — Senior Director of Product Marketing at SafeGuard Cyber. As a competitive intelligence team of one who maintains ...

Here at Crayon, we recently published the 2023 State of Competitive Intelligence, a benchmark report based on a survey of CI leaders and stakeholders. We gave CI leaders a list of 11 sources of ...

Here at Crayon, we recently published the 2023 State of Competitive Intelligence, a benchmark report based on a survey of CI leaders and stakeholders. “Stakeholders” refers to people who need CI to ...

This is a Crayon guest post from one of our partners, Satrix Solutions. Visit the Crayon Partner Directory to learn more! You’ve probably heard the saying, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” It’s ...

Competitive Intelligence professionals and product marketing leaders know the struggle of being resource-constrained. Product marketing in particular often owns competitive intelligence (and all that ...

Creating effective competitive intelligence deliverables is like trying to build a sandcastle on the beach: Just when you think you've got it right, a new wave comes crashing in and changes ...

When Crayon published the first edition of the State of Competitive Intelligence on January 16, 2018, “Despacito” was still comfortably in the Top 40. You had just heard the term “Bitcoin ...

While they might be a thorn in your side, your competitors aren’t special. They, like every other business on the planet, are coming into 2023 with all kinds of newfangled ideas. The optimists are ...

As a Customer Success Manager here at Crayon, I have seen over 100 CI programs in action. Nearly all of them have the same success criteria: “Enabling the sales team to win competitive deals and ...

In the world of sports, a team that wins three or more championships in the span of only a few years is considered a dynasty. Today, Crayon is celebrating a dynasty of our own in the competitive ...

When your win/loss data is disconnected from your competitive intelligence tool, trying to understand your differentiators is like trying to appreciate the Mona Lisa from a mere 6 inches away — you ...

Your sales team just won a competitive deal. It was a taxing evaluation: multiple demos, a trial period, extensive pricing conversations—the works. Until the account executive on your sales team got ...

Battlecards are one of the most popular sales enablement materials businesses create today, with two-thirds of competitive intelligence teams saying that they regularly maintain competitive ...

Tis’ the season for a brand new episode of Into the Fray: The Competitive Intelligence Podcast! In our latest installment, podcast guest host Will Thompson (Crayon’s Director of Growth Marketing), ...

Tesla, Rivian, and Toyota all make electric vehicles, but the way they perceive their respective roles in the EV market (and the way prospective purchasers perceive each brand) couldn’t be more ...

As we glide into a new month, you know what that means — a new episode of Into the Fray: The Competitive Intelligence Podcast has arrived! In our latest installment, guest host Will Thompson sat down ...

The best competitive intelligence programs are proactive, meaning they identify threats as soon as they begin to emerge and enable their sales teams accordingly. That sounds pretty straightforward—so ...

A product launch. An acquisition. A groundbreaking go-to-market partnership. Sooner or later, your competitor will do something big—something that directly threatens your market share. You have two ...

In this edition of Customer Corner, we caught up with Holly Jackson, Director of Competitive Intelligence at Talkdesk. Below she gives her best advice for any CI practitioner trying to make a splash ...

This is a Crayon guest post from one of our partners, PSP Enterprises. Visit the Crayon Partner Directory to learn more! The hypercompetitive New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner said it best: ...

There are several obstacles to building a successful competitive intelligence program—one of the biggest being the lack of consensus on what a successful CI program actually looks like. That’s why ...

It’s a typical Monday morning as you go through emails and catch up. Suddenly an urgent email arrives from the CEO: “Did you see this?” Cue instant anxiety….palms sweaty, knees weak, arms are ...

It doesn’t matter if you’re building a strategy from scratch or overhauling tired practices established by marketers of yore: Sales enablement shouldn’t be an afterthought. In fact, if you aim to ...

Alec Baldwin wouldn’t be the patron saint of closing deals if, in perhaps the most cliche sales reference in cinematic history, he’d said “always be… enabling.” Sellers are hired to sell. It’s the ...

A competitive matrix is a visual resource that enables you and your colleagues to better understand your company’s position within the market—that is, to better understand how your company stacks up ...

Assembling a team takes more than just finding candidates with the right keywords on their resumes — company culture, soft skills, and communication styles are key to putting together the right ...

Imagine you lead the intelligence function at a CRM software company. One day, you notice that your closest competitor has recently published a couple blog posts about contracts and document ...

As we inch closer to the end of another month, you know what that means — a brand new episode of Into the Fray: The Competitive Intelligence Podcast has arrived! In our latest installment, podcast ...

Just in time to kickoff Q4 — a brand new episode of Into the Fray: The Competitive Intelligence Podcast has arrived! In our latest installment, podcast host, Erik Mansur (our VP of Product ...

After watching the new Amazon-meets-Middle-Earth show last week (it’s good!) I decided to watch the extended cuts of the Lord of the Rings movies. 10+ hours of whimsy and brimstone, what a delightful ...

In our fourth installment of the Crayon Customer Corner, we sat down with Zach Napolitano — Director of Product Marketing at Splash. As a first time CI practitioner, Zach took his role as a student ...

According to Harvard Business School, of the approximately 30,000 new products launched each year, about 95% fail. Of course, the product failure rate varies from one industry to another—for example, ...

Sales battlecards (also known as competitive battlecards, or simply as battlecards) give your sellers the facts, tactics, and materials they need to win competitive deals. Before we go any further, a ...

Imagine waking up and finding yourself in the driver’s seat of a car, parked on the side of a road that you don’t recognize. You’re alone, and your phone is nowhere to be found. A stranger walks up ...

When it comes to competitive analysis, scope is everything. If you’re just starting out, you might go broad and deep on a dozen market stalwarts (like oil painters and SEC tailgaters, building a base ...

Just in time to kick off the month — a brand new episode of Into the Fray: The Competitive Intelligence Podcast has arrived! In our latest installment, podcast host, Erik Mansur (our VP of Product ...

Few things are more intimidating than the prospect of an audit. You know, those mildly invasive processes in which someone from an SEO consultancy or the IRS or some other authoritative three letter ...

What does the compete department at your company look like? Is competitive intelligence the responsibility of one person? Two people? A whole team? Odds are, your CI program is just a fraction of one ...

The Olympic podium. Bookish teens jockeying for valedictorian. The couples on the cusp of a $50K payday on British reality TV phenomenon Love Island. There is nothing more fundamentally human than ...

A couple weeks ago, when we sat down with Andy McCotter-Bicknell and Fouad Benyoub—leaders of competitive intelligence programs at ClickUp and Everbridge, respectively—we were expecting to talk about ...

Another month is here and you know what that means — a brand new episode of Into the Fray: The Competitive Intelligence Podcast! In our latest installment, podcast host, Erik Mansur (our VP of ...

The last time I made an appearance on this blog, I showed you how to optimize your competitive intelligence program for both search mode and awareness mode. I showed you, in other words, how to ...

If you’re working with a sales team actively involved in competitive deals, you’re probably familiar with battlecards. Battlecards are a fundamental resource to help your sales team win more deals ...

When I was in 4th grade, my elementary school did an invention convention. Each student had to identify a problem in their everyday life and come up with a solution. My 9-year-old brain—which was ...

Competitive deals are emotional. How could they not be? You’re in sales because you like to win and make money. Competitors get in the way of both. I don’t care how senior you are—when a competitor ...

An account executive on your sales team, Jen, is chatting with a prospect. The conversation is going well. The prospect doesn’t seem to be evaluating any other vendors. And then they say this: “Talk ...

June is here and with it comes a brand new episode of Into the Fray: The Competitive Intelligence Podcast! In our latest installment, podcast host, Erik Mansur (our VP of Product Marketing), sat down ...

A lot of smart, creative people have taken the lead on competitive intelligence and found themselves trapped in a vicious cycle: It’s not an infinite cycle, of course—it does, eventually, come to an ...

Sadly, the impact of good product marketing is often obscured. A flawless product launch, an inspiring positioning statement, a face-melting slide deck—you and I both know that each of these things ...

For most of April, an indie pop band called shallow pools was touring the East Coast of the United States, making stops at legendary venues like Irving Plaza and Toad’s Place. For now, the band is ...

Even the greatest product will be overlooked if it lacks a captivating message that resonates with its target customer in a way that no competitor can match. Doing this isn’t easy. It requires ...

The freedom to be yourself is an amazing thing. It’s powerful and fundamental. It’s something everyone deserves. Life is short and everyone should be proud to be himself, herself or themselves. Given ...

There’s a lot of things I should do. I should stretch in the morning. I should go to the dentist every six months. I should stay off Twitter for the rest of my life. But just because I should do ...

In recent years, the financial services industry has undergone massive and near-constant change. First, the COVID-19 pandemic altered our spending habits completely. In response, businesses that had ...

A few weeks ago, we showed you how to make the case for an official competitive intelligence program. We showed you, in other words, how to convince an executive decision-maker (EDM) that CI is a ...

In our third installment of the Crayon Customer Corner, we chatted with Geoffrey Gibson — Vice President of Sales at Mend and a three-time (!!) Crayon user. After successfully leveraging Crayon at ...

We all know your stakeholders can benefit from competitive intelligence, but let’s talk about the real problem: They have so many places to look for information that, rather than looking, they’ll ...

So, you’ve gone through all the work of implementing competitive intelligence. You’re off to the races — tracking, analyzing, and activating valuable intel left and right… now what? Implementing a ...

If it seems like your industry is getting more competitive, it probably is. Why is that you ask? There are a few factors at play here. A big one is that it has never been easier to start a company. ...

To create a competitive culture is to convince your colleagues that competitive intelligence is essential—to shift the perception of CI from nice-to-have to need-to-have. What does that mean? It ...

You just lost a customer. Let’s call her Sarah. No, she didn’t churn. In fact, she’s never seen your product, let alone used it. Sarah just signed a contract with your competitor—without so much as a ...

May has arrived. Do you know what that means? We have a brand new episode on Into the Fray: The Competitive Intelligence Podcast! In our latest installment, podcast host, Erik Mansur (our VP of ...

It’s 8:32am. An account executive on your sales team opens up their laptop to get their day started. Yesterday was crazy. Back-to-back-to-back-to-back calls. Lots of follow-up for them to tackle ...

9,932 As of 2022, there are 9,932 martech solutions according to Scott Brinker’s latest marketing technology landscape. From email marketing to social media monitoring to ABM and everything in ...

Things could be going better. You’re working hard to deliver on the competitive intelligence requests that come through your inbox, but as far as you can tell, very few people are consuming the ...

We touched on it in our guide to penetration pricing, and today we go deep on one of the most polarizing pricing strategies out there: loss leader. In this post, we’ll define loss leader pricing, ...

Canada is south of Detroit. There’s nothing you can do with this information, but it’s pretty cool, right? Sometimes, learning for the sake of learning is perfectly appropriate. But when it comes to ...

Over the last two and half years, people have experienced tremendous change. It’s shown up in everything from our daily routines and rituals to our ability to travel and see friends and family. It’s ...

Trust me. We get it. Your competitors are always on the move–from constant website updates to new product features and maybe even new funding rounds. That’s why companies find Crayon’s Competitive ...