Artificial intelligence is reshaping how compete teams operate, but for many it’s not about chasing hype. It’s about solving real problems, automating manual workflows, and getting better intel into the hands of stakeholders faster.

In a recent Crayon webinar, two leading competitive intelligence professionals Logan Hart of ZoomInfo and Kelly Farrell of Intercom shared how they’re using AI tools (including Crayon) to transform the way competitive insights get captured, delivered, and used across their organizations.

Here’s how they’re doing it.

From Slack Overflow to a Deal-Specific Agent for Sales Reps

Logan Hart’s journey with AI started with a familiar pain point: scale. His company’s Slack channel had over 1,200 active users and a constant stream of questions from sales reps, most of which required manual research and input.

“You can imagine my relief when we were able to hook up Crayon’s API to Docket and just automatically see so many answers come pouring in," said Hart. "That was the biggest sanity-saving thing we’ve created.”

Phase One: Automating Answers

Logan used Crayon’s API to feed competitive intelligence into a broader enablement chatbot similar in spirit to Crayon Answers. It helped auto-respond to frequently asked questions, saving hours of manual effort.

Phase Two: Building a Competitive Deal Agent

Next came something more powerful: a custom-built “competitive deal agent” using an internal instance of Anthropic’s Claude, targeted mainly at account managers and CSMs (people who own a book of accounts). This agent:

• Pulls competitive intel from Crayon 
• Combines it with CRM data, call transcripts, and emails
• Delivers deal-specific competitive insights tailored to the exact account a rep is working 
  

“Reps used to ask generic questions like ‘Why are we better than Competitor X?’ But the real question is, ‘Why are we better for this customer who cares about these things?’ That’s what the agent helps answer," said Hart. 

Instead of expecting reps to dig through battlecards, the agent surfaces the most relevant competitive points and talk tracks, all contextualized to the specific deal, segment, and buyer. Think of it as a custom battlecard, built in real-time.

Scalable, Self-Serve Intel for Product & Sales

While much of the conversation around AI in compete focuses on sales use cases, Kelly Farrell is also using AI to support product teams without becoming a bottleneck herself.

AI Agents for Product Managers

Kelly built agents (using tools like Glean) that aggregate competitive and customer insights specific to each product area. These agents:

• Pull in Crayon intel, Gong call insights, Slack discussions, and more
• Generate weekly digests tailored to Intercom's product voice (and other areas) 
• Empower PMs to run them on demand, without waiting on a CI team
  
  

Using Crayon Sparks as Scalable Agents

Kelly also called out how Crayon Sparks functions as an agent for her team.

“Once you define the prompts and parameters, Sparks essentially run in the background and autonomously generate digests,” said Farrell. 

She’s created a set of Sparks that run weekly and monthly analyses on core competitors, delivering auto-generated updates to dedicated Slack channels. The result? A consistent, self-serve stream of relevant competitive insights that used to take hours of manual effort.

Farrell continued, “It’s a really great, no-code way of creating something agent-like that's automated, consistent, and scalable.”

Takeaways: What These Compete Pros Are Getting Right

What both Logan and Kelly show is that you don’t need a massive data science team or custom AI models to start using AI in your compete program. They’re combining existing tools like Crayon, Slack, Glean, Claude, and more to build lightweight systems that automate what used to be heavy, manual work.

Here’s what stands out:

• Start small: Answering repetitive questions automatically is often the first high-impact win.
  
  
• Context is everything: The best AI systems don’t just deliver facts — they tailor insights to specific deals, personas, and use cases.
  
  
• Scalability matters: Whether it’s for reps or PMs, AI helps move competitive intel from centralized bottlenecks to distributed, on-demand access.

As AI continues to evolve, it’s clear that competitive intelligence teams are finding creative, impactful ways to integrate it into their workflows not just to save time, but to drive smarter decisions and execution across the business.

Curious to see what Crayon AI is all about? Take a 2 minute product tour or request a demo for a personalized walk through of Crayon's AI capabilities.