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CRAYON COMPETITIVE
INTELLIGENCE BLOG

Crayon Announces Sparks, the First AI-Analysis Tool that Transforms Data Overload into Actionable Enablement

Sheila Lahar

Sheila Lahar on Thu, Sep 12, 2024

Call Clips for Gong Also Unveiled to Deliver Real-Time Competitive Insights from Call Recordings

In the literal sense, a spark ignites or triggers something — whether that be an electrical discharge, the creation of light or even an idea.

For competitive enablement teams constantly digging through and reviewing vast amounts of competitive data, finding that one flicker of an insight seems impossible. Why is that?

The Era of Intel Overload 

Build a World-Class Competitive Enablement Program: A CXO’s Guide
Jonah Lopin

Jonah Lopin on Thu, Oct 10, 2024

In today’s business landscape, hyper-competition is the norm. A staggering 94% of companies report that their markets have become more competitive over the past year, a trend that has compounded over ...

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The 5 Flaws of Old-School Compete Programs (and How to Fix Them)
Sheila Lahar

Sheila Lahar on Tue, Aug 13, 2024

As summer winds down and the out of office replies become less frequent, companies are in full on planning mode for 2025. While there are many inputs that go into annual planning and setting revenue ...

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Webinar Recap: Elevate Your Competitive Enablement Strategy
David Cardiel

David Cardiel on Mon, Aug 5, 2024

In a world where business competition is fiercer than ever, having a strategic edge is no longer optional—it's essential. Our recent webinar, "Elevate Your Competitive Enablement Strategy with Crayon ...

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Customer Corner: How HiBob Surpassed User Engagement Goals in Crayon BEFORE LAUNCH
Sheila Lahar

Sheila Lahar on Tue, Feb 27, 2024

Bringing on competitive intelligence software is transformational for your compete program — when done right. The “when done right” caveat boils down to setting your teams up for success. Chances ...

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Customer Corner: How ConnectWise Increased Global Battlecard Adoption by Centralizing CI
Sheila Lahar

Sheila Lahar on Mon, Dec 11, 2023

The leading characteristic of any successful competitive intelligence program is consistent, enthusiastic adoption. But before your sales reps can dive into the competitive assets you create for ...

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Customer Corner: How Later Created a Must-Read Competitive Newsletter with a Little Help from the Kardashians
Sheila Lahar

Sheila Lahar on Wed, Nov 1, 2023

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 ...

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3 Tips On Presenting CI Results to Senior Leadership from Our Webinar with Rachel Pangburn
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Wed, Oct 11, 2023

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 ...

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How to Run a Competitive Intelligence Platform as a Team of One
Shannon De Marco

Shannon De Marco on Thu, Oct 5, 2023

In 2024, 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 ...

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The Simple Habit That Makes It Easier to Predict Your Competitors' Product Releases
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Tue, Sep 19, 2023

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. ...

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3 Ways CI Leaders Can Use AI Chatbots to Their Advantage
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Fri, Sep 15, 2023

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 ...

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How to Use Champions to Improve Adoption of Competitive Intelligence
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Tue, Sep 12, 2023

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 ...

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Indirect Competitors 101: What They Are + How to Keep an Eye On Them
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Tue, Sep 5, 2023

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 ...

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Struggling to Prioritize Your Competitors? Use the Competitor Coefficient + the Threat Thermometer.
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Thu, Aug 17, 2023

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 ...

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Compete Program Maturity Model: How to Advance From Level 2 to Level 4
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Mon, Aug 7, 2023

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 ...

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Compete Program Maturity Model: How to Advance From Level 5 to Level 6
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Mon, Aug 7, 2023

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 ...

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Compete Program Maturity Model: How to Advance From Level 4 to Level 5
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Mon, Aug 7, 2023

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 ...

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Compete Program Maturity Model: How to Advance From Level 0 to Level 2
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Mon, Aug 7, 2023

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 ...

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Guest Post: Complete Your Compete Program
Mark Gigliotti

Mark Gigliotti on Thu, Jul 6, 2023

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 ...

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Value + Variety: How CI Leaders Can Capture Mindshare and Drive Adoption
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Fri, Jun 2, 2023

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 — ...

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Guest Post: We Need Win/Loss Insights Even More During an Economic Downturn
Matthew Reeves

Matthew Reeves on Thu, Jun 1, 2023

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 ...

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How Salsify and Dropbox Reap the Benefits of Crayon + Slack
Madison Blask

Madison Blask on Thu, May 11, 2023

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 ...

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The Future is Here: Testing out ChatGPT with Win/Loss Analysis
Ken Schwarz

Ken Schwarz on Tue, May 9, 2023

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.” ...

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Improve Battlecard Adoption by Creating an Awards Ceremony for Your Sales Team
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Thu, May 4, 2023

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 ...

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The CI Leaders at Akamai and Deltek Want You to Do These 3 Things
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Wed, May 3, 2023

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 ...

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Guest Post: Understanding Competitive vs Competitor Intelligence
Jim Caldwell

Jim Caldwell on Tue, Apr 25, 2023

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, ...

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Guest Post: How B2B Companies Use Competitive Intelligence to Improve Retention
Evan Klein

Evan Klein on Wed, Mar 22, 2023

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 ...

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It Takes a Village: How to Elevate Your CI Program Through Multi-Threading
Jake Liguori

Jake Liguori on Mon, Jan 30, 2023

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 ...

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The 4 Types of Role-Based Battlecards You Need to Build
Madison Blask

Madison Blask on Wed, Jan 11, 2023

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 ...

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What's a SWOT Analysis?
Madison Blask

Madison Blask on Fri, Dec 9, 2022

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 ...

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5 Tips for Building Your Competitive Intelligence Dream Team from CI Leaders at Dropbox and Stripe
Madison Blask

Madison Blask on Thu, Oct 27, 2022

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 ...

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Your Competitor Is Up to Something—But What? Use Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) to Crack the Case
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Mon, Oct 24, 2022

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 ...

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Building A Top-Tier Market Intelligence Strategy
Madison Blask

Madison Blask on Tue, Sep 27, 2022

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 ...

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The Competitive Program Grader: A Free Tool for Anyone Who Wants to Master Competitive Intelligence
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Mon, Sep 19, 2022

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 ...

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Everything You Need to Know About Competitive Analysis (Template Included!)
Madison Blask

Madison Blask on Thu, Sep 15, 2022

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 ...

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How do you Conduct a Competitive Audit?
Madison Blask

Madison Blask on Tue, Aug 16, 2022

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 ...

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Scaling Your Competitive Intelligence Team? Start Here
Madison Blask

Madison Blask on Thu, Aug 11, 2022

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 ...

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Competitor Tracking 101: Identifying the Competition and Your Biggest Questions Answered
Madison Blask

Madison Blask on Tue, Aug 9, 2022

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 ...

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You’re Not a Factory, Gift Cards Suck, and Other Takeaways from Our Latest CI Live Event
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Thu, Aug 4, 2022

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 ...

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How to Win More Competitive Deals (and Lose With Dignity)
John Judge

John Judge on Mon, Jul 18, 2022

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 ...

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Your Seat at the Table Awaits: Introducing the Architect Certification Course
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Wed, Jun 29, 2022

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 ...

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6 Tips for Driving Competitive Intelligence Adoption from the Experts at Gainsight, Affinity, and Apprize360
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Tue, Jun 7, 2022

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 ...

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Trying to Make the Case for Competitive Intelligence Software? Here Are 3 Tips
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Thu, Jun 2, 2022

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 ...

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The Competitive Intelligence KPIs You Need To Be Tracking
Madison Blask

Madison Blask on Mon, May 23, 2022

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 ...

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To Create a Competitive Culture, You Need Role Models and Software
Sam Rinaldo

Sam Rinaldo on Wed, May 18, 2022

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 ...

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What's in Your Competitive Intelligence Tech Stack?
Sheila Lahar

Sheila Lahar on Tue, May 3, 2022

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 ...

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Sponsor, Scope, Solutions: How to Create an Ironclad Business Case for Your CI Program
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Mon, May 2, 2022

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 ...

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Loss Leader Pricing: What It Is and How It Works (Examples!)
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Fri, Apr 29, 2022

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, ...

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Hopes, Hypotheses, Humility: The 3 H’s of a Successful Win Loss Project
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Wed, Apr 27, 2022

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 ...

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Crayon Analysts: Your Built-In Competitive Intel Sidekick
Mackenzie Colcord

Mackenzie Colcord on Fri, Apr 22, 2022

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 ...

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Compete: The Next Must-Have Department
Garrett Denney

Garrett Denney on Wed, Apr 6, 2022

Sometimes it pays to be the new kid on the block. Every few years it seems as if there is a hot new role that catches like wildfire in organizations of all sizes. Can you remember the days before ...

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Competitive Intelligence: A Data-Backed Overview (Video)
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Mon, Apr 4, 2022

Competitive intelligence (CI) is the process of capturing, analyzing, and activating information related to your competitive landscape. Done right, CI empowers everyone at your organization to make ...

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Penetration Pricing: What It Is, What It Isn't, and How It's Executed In the Real World
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Fri, Mar 18, 2022

Your product team has spent the last 18 months cookin’ up something shiny. Prospects are going to love it. There’s just one problem: You’re entering a saturated market. There’s the old guard. The ...

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Prestige Pricing: What It Is, Why It Works, and How It's Executed In the Real World
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Thu, Feb 3, 2022

Q: How much is a product worth? A: Whatever people will pay for it. In some cases, that’s nothing (not great!). In others, it means charging a premium because, well, you can. Today, we’re focusing on ...

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Influenced Revenue: How CI Practitioners Can Prove—and Amplify—Their Impact On Sales
Erik Mansur

Erik Mansur on Wed, Jan 26, 2022

Over the past decade, marketing organizations at enterprise companies have grown from being perceived as cost centers built around soft metrics to being highly respected drivers of measurable ...

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I Just Bought Crayon For the Second Time—Here's Why
Andrew McCotter-Bicknell

Andrew McCotter-Bicknell on Wed, Jan 5, 2022

I have been working in the B2B SaaS world for over five years now. As a competitive intelligence (CI) professional, I help companies define and build their CI programs so that they can be one step ...

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Rival Companies: Exploring 8 Businesses with Fierce Competition
Mackenzie Colcord

Mackenzie Colcord on Thu, Nov 11, 2021

Time and time again, companies’ yearning desire to be the best gives way to fierce rivalries. For some rival companies, the feud is public-facing – think comparative advertisements and competitor ...

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6 Competitive Advantage Examples From the Real World
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Tue, Nov 9, 2021

Venmo. Walmart. Warby Parker. Xfinity. Supreme. Apple. Obviously, each of these companies is a massive success story. But as it turns out, the drivers of their success—although not without ...

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5 Competitive Advertising Examples to Spark Competitive Creativity
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Tue, May 11, 2021

Competitive advertising is a well-established practice in our modern media landscape. As the intensity of competition rises, so, too, does the difficulty of earning and maintaining the attention of ...

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How to Build a Scalable Competitive Intelligence Program
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Tue, Jan 26, 2021

Today is a great day because you’ve just been hired to spearhead a competitive intelligence (CI) program at your company. When you’re starting a new initiative and integrating a new practice into an ...

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Competitive Intelligence Priorities for the New Year from the Experts
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Tue, Dec 29, 2020

As we head into the New Year, many of us are deep in planning, strategy brainstorm sessions, and goal-setting. For competitive intelligence (CI) practitioners, there are many elements to building ...

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Giant Leaps to Growth: Building Winning Strategies
Ameeta Soni

Ameeta Soni on Mon, Dec 21, 2020

Though we've only a grainy film to guide us, it is likely that Neil Armstrong took a very deliberate approach before making his "one small step for man, and one giant leap for mankind" when he ...

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Competitive Intelligence Planning: 15 Questions for Your Annual Plan
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Fri, Dec 18, 2020

The new year is right around the corner. If you haven’t already, you’re likely about to kick-off your 2021 planning. A lot has happened in 2020 that has impacted businesses across the globe and ...

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How Product Marketers Prioritize & Elevate Competitive Intelligence
Lauren Kersanske

Lauren Kersanske on Fri, Dec 4, 2020

The cool thing about working at Crayon (besides incredible dog and cat Slack channels) is that I get to talk to Product Marketers a whole lot—whether it’s on LinkedIn, in the awesome Product ...

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Tools & Resources to Boost Market Intelligence Team Value: Part 2
Bill Strugger

Bill Strugger on Wed, Dec 2, 2020

In Part I of this blog, I addressed what to look for before engaging with a 3rd-party firm to discuss their offerings. Part II today covers the broad range of tools and services our team uses to add ...

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Purchasing Competitive Intelligence Tools & Services: Part 1
Bill Strugger

Bill Strugger on Tue, Nov 24, 2020

Every week a new vendor comes knocking on my door with a sales pitch for their – fill in the blank – market research, competitive intelligence (CI) research, industry news, web scraping, expert ...

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Critical Areas of Interest for Competitive Intelligence Strategists™
Paul Santilli

Paul Santilli on Tue, Nov 17, 2020

Competitive Intelligence (CI) is one of the most critical methodologies we need to fully understand our markets. Traditionally, CI has been conducted by collecting, analyzing, and sharing single ...

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Bring It All Together: Creating a Centralized Competitive Database
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Wed, Sep 16, 2020

All too frequently, competitive intelligence (CI) information resides in many homes. The process of collecting competitive intelligence can be time consuming when the information lives across ...

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8 Stats to Reference When Starting a Competitive Intelligence Program
Ellie Mirman

Ellie Mirman on Tue, Aug 18, 2020

Just took a new role in competitive intelligence? Congrats! Forming a new competitive intelligence (CI) initiative for your organization? Fantastic! It’s great to see the business investing in this ...

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The New Normal: 3 Lessons on Competitive Intelligence in the COVID-19 Era
Lauren Kersanske

Lauren Kersanske on Fri, Jul 10, 2020

There is no adequate way to express the effect COVID-19 has had on society. It’s changed the way we live and the way we work. Competitive intelligence (CI) might seem like an “extra” in the time of ...

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3 Reasons Marketing Leaders Should Prioritize Competitive Intelligence
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Wed, Jun 17, 2020

There are only so many hours in a day, and there are a lot of tasks that marketing teams tackle on a daily basis. When we think about competitive intelligence (CI), we most commonly think about its ...

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6 Steps to Design a Successful Competitive Intelligence Process
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Fri, Jun 5, 2020

The foundational goals of a competitive intelligence program are to enable the organization to better understand their market, make stronger strategic decisions, and ultimately increase revenue. But, ...

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Where Is the Competitive Intelligence Industry Going? Experts Predict
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Fri, Apr 24, 2020

With the continuous advancement of technology, the Competitive Intelligence (CI) industry has seen many changes over the last five to ten years. Technology aside, we’ve seen many trends arise that ...

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Building an Intelligence Culture In Your Organization
Lauren Kersanske

Lauren Kersanske on Thu, Apr 16, 2020

Competitive Intelligence (CI) is growing. According to the recent State of Competitive Intelligence Report, more than half (57%) of businesses have CI teams of two or more dedicated CI professionals, ...

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How to Practice Ethical Competitive Intelligence
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Thu, Apr 2, 2020

Competitive Intelligence (CI) is a critical part of a smart business strategy. Even still, Competitive Intelligence is questioned by those unfamiliar with the process. In particular, we often hear ...

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3 Ways to Get Intel and Feedback for Your Competitive Intelligence Efforts
Alicia Thomas

Alicia Thomas on Wed, Mar 4, 2020

Baking a cake and crafting your competitive intelligence (CI) program surprisingly have a lot of overlap. If you’ve ever watched an episode of the Great British Baking Show, you’ll know there’s no ...

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25+ [Mostly] Free Competitive Intelligence Resources to Learn Best Practices
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Fri, Feb 28, 2020

Competitive intelligence (CI) skills need to be honed and sharpened regularly. The field of competitive intelligence changes constantly, with new tactics, strategies, and technologies popping up and, ...

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Top 5 Competitive Intelligence Challenges and What You Can Do About Them
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Wed, Feb 12, 2020

With every new initiative comes its own set of challenges. Creating and executing a competitive intelligence (CI) program isn’t always easy, no matter how experienced the professional or how robust ...

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KPIs for Competitive Intelligence: What to Measure and How to Drive Impact
Alicia Thomas

Alicia Thomas on Fri, Jan 24, 2020

One of the hardest problems for many competitive intelligence (CI) professionals is how to measure the impact of programs that they put into place. In fact, less than half (44%) of CI teams have ...

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Competitive Intelligence is Maturing: Here’s What to Do About It
Ben Cope

Ben Cope on Wed, Jan 22, 2020

Competitive intelligence (CI) is not a new business function. The way businesses and CI practitioners are approaching competitive intelligence, however, is changing quickly. We surveyed 1,000+ CI ...

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10 Criteria for Buying a Competitive Intelligence Solution
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Thu, Oct 24, 2019

Choosing the best competitive intelligence (CI) solution for your business isn’t always a quick and easy process. To ensure that the solution you choose meets all of your needs and delivers results, ...

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Market Research Defined and How to Get Started
George Kuhn

George Kuhn on Fri, Aug 9, 2019

When it comes to market research, it pays to plan. Although many organizations wing it and base their marketing campaigns and company strategy on their gut, the best-performing companies rely on ...

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How to Avoid Being Reactive with Your Competitive Intelligence
Ellie Mirman

Ellie Mirman on Tue, Jul 2, 2019

When your competitive landscape is constantly changing - with new competitors, new products, mergers, marketing campaigns, and more - it can be easy to fall into a reactive mode. An event happens, ...

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Competitive Intelligence Self-Assessment: Evaluate Your CI Effectiveness Across These 5 Dimensions [+ Template]
Ellie Mirman

Ellie Mirman on Wed, Jun 19, 2019

Competitive intelligence (CI) surfaces insights that can - and should - be leveraged across the business. Competitive intelligence can be translated into tactical activities as well as strategic ...

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6 Hacky Tools Limiting Competitive Intelligence Professionals' Growth
Alex Crumb

Alex Crumb on Fri, Jun 7, 2019

Bootstrapping a hacky solution to a complicated competitive intelligence (CI) problem is enticing. But, as a company grows, free software trials and bootstrap fixes wear thin. Your limited ...

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What is the Future of Competitive Intelligence?
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Fri, May 10, 2019

Competitive Intelligence (CI) has traditionally been a manual process. Competitive intelligence professionals and market analysts spend a significant amount of time capturing, analyzing, and acting ...

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3 Reasons AI is the Ultimate Competitive Intelligence Colleague
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Fri, May 3, 2019

Ten years ago, the digital footprints of companies were small. So small, a complete digital footprint only included a company website and maybe a Twitter profile. Today, there are many social media ...

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Business Intelligence vs. Competitive Intelligence
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Fri, Apr 19, 2019

Business Intelligence (BI) and Competitive Intelligence (CI) are both critical for improving the performance and success rate for your organization. While both are different in practice, when put ...

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Aligning Sales and Marketing With a Collaborative Competitive Intelligence Strategy
Alex Crumb

Alex Crumb on Tue, Apr 9, 2019

You won’t be able to see success within your organization unless your sales and marketing teams are aligned. This is true when it comes to goals, initiatives, and strategies—including your ...

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7 Strategies for Keeping Your Competitors from Copying You
Ellie Mirman

Ellie Mirman on Wed, Mar 13, 2019

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, is plagiarism the laziest form of flattery? When you work in a highly competitive industry, competitors copying each other is a common occurrence. How ...

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How to Measure the Economic Value of Competitive Intelligence
Tom Heys

Tom Heys on Tue, Feb 19, 2019

Many businesses struggle with measuring the impact of competitive intelligence. In fact, less than half of businesses have established key performance indicators (KPIs) for CI. The 52% of companies ...

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Measuring Competitive Intelligence: The Importance of Setting Goals and KPIs [+ Examples]
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Wed, Feb 13, 2019

It’s no secret that your time is valuable. When you do your job, you don’t have time to waste, and you try to avoid investing in activities that won’t give you results. So, why should competitive ...

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3 Ways to Get Employee Buy-In for a Competitive Intelligence Program
Julie Martland

Julie Martland on Wed, Nov 28, 2018

We have probably never met. Even so, I am confident you have a stellar background and a proven track record of success in competitive intelligence. Or, if you’re new to competitive intelligence, you ...

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The Dangers of Neglecting Competitive Intelligence
Alex Crumb

Alex Crumb on Thu, Aug 30, 2018

Considering your company’s place in your industry is a vital action. Opening your mind to your competition’s chief offerings and honestly setting your own product alongside theirs surfaces pivotal ...

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3 Challenges of Competitive Intelligence Teams & How to Overcome Them
Ellie Mirman

Ellie Mirman on Thu, Aug 16, 2018

The following topic is discussed more in depth in "Democratizing Competitive Intelligence to Drive Impact Across the Organization", published in the Summer Edition of Competitive Intelligence ...

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The Importance Of Competitive Intelligence for Startups
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Wed, Jun 6, 2018

No matter the size of the organization, every business should have a competitive intelligence strategy. Larger organizations will typically have a well-rounded strategy team to handle their ...

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Integrate a Competitive Intelligence Strategy Into Business Identity
Cam Montague

Cam Montague on Wed, May 9, 2018

When I speak with executives from various departments and companies across the spectrum, I’ll often ask the question: “What are your competitors doing?” Silence. It’s awkward. Executives glance ...

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Market Intelligence: The Advantage Millions of Businesses Miss
Jonah Lopin

Jonah Lopin on Thu, Jul 27, 2017

Millions of businesses understand what’s happening internally, but they’re blind to what’s happening outside the four walls of their company. Most companies have awesome data on their own marketing ...

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How and Why to Learn from Aspirational Competitors
Ellie Mirman

Ellie Mirman on Tue, Jul 18, 2017

"We are disruptors in our space, we don't have direct competitors." Many times I have heard that statement, especially from startups, and it has been followed by the refrain that looking at ...

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