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CRAYON COMPETITIVE
INTELLIGENCE BLOG

Why Competitive Enablement Is the Ultimate Key to Closing More Deals

David Cardiel

David Cardiel on Thu, Nov 21, 2024

In today’s hyper-competitive sales landscape, every deal counts. Two-thirds of sales opportunities are competitive, and here’s the kicker: these deals close 5x faster and at significantly higher value. Yet, many sales teams are still fumbling with outdated battlecards or scrambling for insights mid-call.

If your sales team is stepping into competitive deals without the right tools, you’re not just losing opportunities—you’re handing them to your competitors.

The Cost of Outdated Competitive Enablement

Using old-school competitive enablement is like trying to stream Netflix on ...

2 Tips + 2 Takeaways From Our Win/Loss Webinar with Nick Siddoway and Brad Rosen
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Wed, Jun 14, 2023

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 ...

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Start Small and Don’t Surprise People: Tips From Our Win/Loss Webinar with Scott Frost
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Wed, Jun 7, 2023

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 ...

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3 Takeaways From Our Win/Loss Webinar With Egencia’s Jayde Phillips
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Thu, May 18, 2023

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 ...

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8 Key Steps to Help You Spot Competitor Analysis Trends in 2023
Madison Blask

Madison Blask on Mon, Feb 6, 2023

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 ...

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Your Competitor’s Next Big Move Is Coming. Get Ready with the Accelerator Course.
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Mon, Dec 5, 2022

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 ...

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10 Best Practices for a Successful Win/Loss Program
Ken Schwarz

Ken Schwarz on Fri, Nov 18, 2022

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: ...

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How to Create a Competitive Matrix (Step-by-Step Guide With Examples + Free Templates)
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Tue, Nov 1, 2022

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 ...

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3 Ways Product Marketers Can Win (More!) with Crayon’s Competitive Win Loss Tools
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Tue, Apr 12, 2022

It's Monday morning. You haven’t even taken the first sip of your coffee. You touch your right index finger to the magical biometric scanner thing on your MacBook. Your company-approved desktop ...

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Competitor Messaging Analysis: A Step-by-Step Guide for Product Marketers
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Mon, Feb 28, 2022

In a world where the most talked about 60 seconds of the Super Bowl involved a $7M black screen emblazoned with nothing more than a bouncing, polychrome QR code, the road between market leader and ...

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5 Steps to Get Valuable Insight From Competitor Website Analysis
Mackenzie Colcord

Mackenzie Colcord on Wed, Nov 3, 2021

When it comes to user experience (UX) design, competitive analysis should be an integral part of your strategy, to stay ahead of trends and make your website stand out against the rest within your ...

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B2B Competitive Analysis: Your Definitive Step-by-Step Guide (+ Free Template)
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Wed, Sep 1, 2021

B2B competitive analysis is the process of critically assessing your company (or business unit) in relation to one or more competitors. Broadly speaking, the objective is to identify opportunities ...

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Your Guide to Conducting a Successful Competitive Product Analysis
Mackenzie Colcord

Mackenzie Colcord on Thu, Jul 1, 2021

To be successful in a crowded marketplace, it is important to understand the competitive advantages of your company’s solution against its alternatives. Enterprises must be well-versed in their ...

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Competitive Landscape Analysis: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Get a Head Start
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Wed, Jun 9, 2021

Neglecting competitive landscape analysis is a costly mistake—one that’s steadily growing costlier over time. We say that for several reasons. First of all—and as regular readers of this blog are ...

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Competitive Analysis Frameworks: 3 Ways to Get More From Competitive Data
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Tue, May 25, 2021

Competitive analysis frameworks are indispensable for anyone who wants to extract meaning from intel and inspire action across their organization. When we talk about competitive intelligence, we’re ...

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24 Questions to Consider for Your Next SWOT Analysis
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Thu, Jan 21, 2021

So, you’re getting ready to conduct a SWOT analysis — fantastic! Whether you’re a marketer, an executive leader, a competitive intelligence (CI) professional, or someone else entirely, you’re on your ...

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Competitive Analysis Requires Benchmarking Your Own Company
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Tue, Jan 12, 2021

Most businesses know their own strategy through and through, and recently, more companies than ever before are investing in competitive intelligence. The real secret to success is combining those two ...

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How to Leverage Product Reviews In Your Competitor Analysis
Ben Cope

Ben Cope on Tue, Sep 1, 2020

Review sites are jam-packed with competitive intelligence (CI). On review sites, you’ll find both happy and unhappy customers giving insight into your competitors’ products and outlining strengths ...

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Using Competitive Data Points to Predict the Future
Ben Cope

Ben Cope on Fri, Aug 14, 2020

For anyone with an internet connection and a glut of time available for research, competitive data points are nearly inexhaustible. New job postings, minor website copy changes, new marketing content ...

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5 Key Areas to Analyze when Conducting a Competitor Marketing Analysis
Lauren Kersanske

Lauren Kersanske on Wed, Aug 12, 2020

A competitor analysis encompasses many different facets of your competitor’s business—revenue, product, marketing, sales, engineering, organizational structures, and more. But there’s something to be ...

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Making Sense of a Fast-Moving World of Information with STEEP Analysis
August Jackson

August Jackson on Tue, Jul 28, 2020

Information comes at us fast and in a volume that makes it difficult to deliver insight and foresight. STEEP is the first step to exploring implications of events to get to the heart of "So what?" ...

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How to Avoid the Dreaded Feature Comparison Checklist
Ellie Mirman

Ellie Mirman on Tue, Jul 21, 2020

Every product marketer has been asked by a sales rep, somewhere between one and a million times, for a feature comparison checklist. “I need to see how we stack up. Does our competitor have X ...

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Analyzing Your Competitive Landscape: 4 Case Studies
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Fri, Jun 26, 2020

Conducting a competitive analysis can be time-consuming. It takes time to gather intelligence, analyze the insights, share data, and integrate your findings into your strategy. However, if you’re ...

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How to Take a Snapshot of your Competitive Landscape
Lauren Kersanske

Lauren Kersanske on Fri, Jun 19, 2020

“Can you give me a quick overview of the competitive landscape?” Unless you have an in-depth and current competitive analysis on-hand, you might find yourself slightly panicked at this sudden ...

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How to do a Comprehensive Competitor Analysis [+Free Template]
Ellie Mirman

Ellie Mirman on Wed, Oct 2, 2019

84% of companies say that their market has become more competitive in the last three years, according to the 2021 State of Competitive Intelligence Report. With markets becoming more competitive, ...

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How to Do a Market Analysis In 5 Steps
Ellie Mirman

Ellie Mirman on Fri, Sep 27, 2019

Becoming a market expert is a big undertaking. Markets are large, complex, and constantly changing. But if you’re tasked with tackling a market analysis, here are the steps you can take to get an ...

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How to Conduct and Leverage a SWOT Analysis [+ Free Template]
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Tue, Jul 23, 2019

Giving your company a competitive advantage requires ongoing assessment and strategic planning. One way to evaluate your company's performance is through SWOT analysis. A SWOT analysis includes ...

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4 Steps for Conducting an Impactful Competitor Analysis
Lauren Kersanske

Lauren Kersanske on Tue, Jul 16, 2019

A competitor analysis is the process of identifying and analyzing your competitors and how they compare to you. The challenge with a competitor analysis is that it’s a labor-intensive task that ...

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How to Read Between the Lines of Your Competitor’s Website Update
Brittany Sudlow

Brittany Sudlow on Fri, Jun 21, 2019

So your competitor updated their website… From the outside, this may seem like “just some marketing fluff.” Everyone updates their website at some point! Who cares? But product marketers know to look ...

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The Surprising Power of the Weak Signal: Go Deep on Competitive Intel
Tom Heys

Tom Heys on Thu, May 30, 2019

After the digital explosion of the last 20 years, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the staggering amount of competitive data available today. In many ways – and for many organizations – it can be ...

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Competitor Tiers: How to Break Down Your Competitive Landscape
Ellie Mirman

Ellie Mirman on Mon, Jan 28, 2019

“Who are your competitors?” is a seemingly simple question that can be surprisingly difficult to answer. Do you answer with your most common competitors from a sales perspective? Or, the leaders in ...

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Amazon's Job Description Gave Away Strategic Plans -- What Can You Learn About Your Market's Competitive Strategy from Job Posts?
Ellie Mirman

Ellie Mirman on Wed, Mar 21, 2018

Companies can be plenty secretive about their sales numbers, product roadmaps, and go-to-market strategies, but frequently lay out these details in plain sight: in job descriptions. Last week, Amazon ...

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How to Decode Your Competitor's Strategy with Predictive Intelligence
Ellie Mirman

Ellie Mirman on Tue, Jan 2, 2018

A new year is upon us, and with it annual plans with new key initiatives. While you are crafting and executing your plan, so are your competitors… how will your plan succeed in light of their ...

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Your Competitive Intelligence SWOT Cheat Sheet
Matt Desilet

Matt Desilet on Wed, Aug 30, 2017

The web is full of noise about "optimizing strategy." The explosion of B2B content marketing has flooded our inboxes with playbooks about improving your marketing and competitive intelligence ...

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