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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 Yet, many sales teams are still fumbling with outdated battlecards or scrambling for insights mid-call.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The Cost of Outdated Competitive Enablement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 ...

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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3 Tips From Our Battlecard Webinar with Sam Niro
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Thu, Jul 20, 2023

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: ...

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The Worst Thing a Seller Can Do In a Competitive Situation (+ More Takeaways From Our Latest Webinar)
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Fri, Apr 28, 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 ...

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Customer Corner: The Dos and Don’ts of Running a CI Session at Sales Kickoff from Talkdesk’s Holly Jackson
Holly Jackson

Holly Jackson on Mon, Nov 21, 2022

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 ...

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Build and Implement Your Sales Enablement Strategy (in 7 Simple Steps)
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Tue, Nov 8, 2022

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 ...

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What Is Sales Enablement? Your Burning Questions Answered
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Thu, Nov 3, 2022

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 ...

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Sales Battlecards 101: How to Help Your Sellers Leave the Competition In the Dust
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Wed, Sep 21, 2022

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 ...

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The Key to Handling Competitive Objections and Landmines: “Why?”
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Wed, Jul 6, 2022

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 ...

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New Data: Battlecard Benchmarks and Best Practices Based On 1,200+ Survey Responses
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Thu, Jun 16, 2022

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 ...

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Sales Enablement Materials: 12 Types of Content That Empower Sellers
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Fri, Oct 15, 2021

Making cold calls. Running demos. Persuading decision-makers. The life of a seller isn’t an easy one. But that doesn’t mean you—whether you’re a product marketer, sales manager, revenue leader, or ...

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7 Metrics to Measure the Success of Your Sales Enablement Efforts
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Wed, Sep 22, 2021

Whether you’re a marketer or a sales manager, there are innumerable ways you can empower sellers to do their jobs more effectively. You can provide content that helps them personalize emails. You can ...

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5 Reasons Competitive Intelligence Is a Critical Component of Pre-Call Planning
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Wed, Sep 8, 2021

Unless you’re subscribed to the Crayon blog, you’re most likely reading this because you Googled “pre-call planning.” If that’s the case, you probably noticed that there are a lot of blog posts on ...

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11 Sales Enablement Statistics Everyone Should Know In 2022
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Fri, Apr 30, 2021

Sales enablement statistics are useful for a number of reasons. Maybe you’re new to the discipline and trying to quickly learn as much as possible. Maybe you’re building a business case for the ...

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6 Best Practices to Align Sales and Marketing Teams
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Wed, Apr 14, 2021

The more closely you align your sales and marketing teams, the better. When everyone is on the same page — from content marketers and demand gen specialists to BDRs and account executives — lead ...

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Sales Battlecards: 8 Tips to Help You Win More Deals
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Wed, Mar 10, 2021

The sales battlecard is an extraordinarily impactful tool for any business in a competitive B2B market. As we'll discuss in the 2021 State of Competitive Intelligence Report (coming soon!), 71% of ...

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How to Definitively Prove the Value of Sales Enablement
Conor Bond

Conor Bond on Thu, Feb 11, 2021

High-performing sales reps are not born; they’re built. To be more precise, high-performing sales reps are not built in a discrete period of time; they’re built on an ongoing basis. Call analyses, ...

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How to Eliminate Competitive Battlecard Bias So Sales Wins More Deals
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Thu, Oct 29, 2020

One sales enablement tool we all know and love is the competitive battlecard. Battlecards are an extremely impactful tool for your sales team to have in their toolbox, especially when a prospect is ...

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9 Sales Enablement Tools Your Team Needs to Win a Competitive Battle
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Thu, Sep 10, 2020

A sales rep has entered a competitive situation: are they ready to go to battle and win? A lot can go into preparing that sales rep to handle questions, objections, and deliver just the right ...

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How Well Does Your Sales Team Pivot?
John Judge

John Judge on Fri, Aug 28, 2020

Remember not long ago when we’d never heard of Dr. Anthony Fauci, had no idea what Zoombombing was, only occasionally worried about getting the flu? We came into 2020 like we do most years, with ...

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Battlecards 101: Measuring and Optimizing Your Battlecards
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Wed, Aug 26, 2020

Now that we’ve covered the basics of creating battlecards and walked through driving battlecard adoption in our Battlecards 101 series, it’s time to take the next step. By now, you’ve created and ...

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Battlecards 101: 5 Ways to Drive Sales Adoption of Battlecards
Lauren Kersanske

Lauren Kersanske on Fri, Aug 7, 2020

This post is part two in our Battlecards 101 Series. Click here to read part one. Imagine that you spent hours upon hours building an informative and detailed battlecard for your sales team. Now ...

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13 Sales Enablement Tools to Increase Your Competitive Win Rate
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Tue, Jun 30, 2020

Arming your sales team with the tools, skills, and resources they need to win competitive deals is a critical step in growing revenue. Sales enablement is the process of providing your sales team ...

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6 Strategies for Partnering with Sales for Better Battlecards
Ellie Mirman

Ellie Mirman on Tue, Jun 23, 2020

You’ve crafted amazing battlecards. They have the latest intelligence, crisp messaging, and deep information on each competitor. And yet the sales team doesn’t adopt them. They have their own ...

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How to Set Up a Comprehensive Competitive Sales Enablement Program
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Fri, May 15, 2020

It’s important to ensure that your sales team is ready to close any deal that comes into their pipeline, whether or not it’s competitive in nature. Sales teams need to be well equipped, trained, and ...

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3 Win/Loss Insights to Use in Your Battlecards
Lauren Kersanske

Lauren Kersanske on Wed, Mar 18, 2020

Win/loss analysis is a critical component of competitive intelligence (CI). Understanding who you are winning (or losing) against and why helps inform how you position and differentiate yourself ...

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How to Enable Sales Teams to Win in Hyper-Competitive Markets
Jake Miller

Jake Miller on Wed, Dec 11, 2019

Market landscapes have become exponentially more competitive. Organizations now operate in a state of hyper-competition–a landscape in which no competitive advantage can be sustained in the long run. ...

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Why Your Battlecards Aren’t Working
Ben Cope

Ben Cope on Wed, Nov 20, 2019

Your competitors impact nearly every aspect of your business. They impact how your product team shapes its development roadmap. They shape how your marketing team runs campaigns. They even influence ...

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Why Competitor Battlecards Should Focus on the Entire Sales Funnel
Ben Cope

Ben Cope on Fri, Oct 4, 2019

Competitor battlecards have become a popular tool for enabling sales teams, and with good reason. Competitive analyses are more in-depth than what a salesperson needs when they encounter a ...

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Competitive Objection Handling: How to Fight Against Competitor Claims
Lauren Kersanske

Lauren Kersanske on Thu, Sep 12, 2019

The competition is talking about you, and no surprise—it’s not good. Whether it’s half-truths or outright lies, you need to arm your sales team with tactics and talking points to counter claims made ...

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How to Prepare Your Sales Team to Win More Competitive Deals
Ben Cope

Ben Cope on Thu, Aug 22, 2019

Receiving an inbound demo request is often the best part of a salesperson’s day. Learning that the evaluation is going to be competitive in nature can be less exciting. Sales teams in competitive ...

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10 Dynamic Tiles to Integrate Into Your Sales Battlecards
Ellie Mirman

Ellie Mirman on Thu, Jul 25, 2019

Battlecards have historically lived in static PDFs delivered via email to sales reps’ computers. And by historically, I mean most battlecards today are static documents that are always out-of-date, ...

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Four Ways to Analyze Sales Enablement Program to Improve Sales Success
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Wed, Jun 26, 2019

How do you know if your sales enablement efforts are effective? It's important to not only deliver a variety of sales enablement resources, but to also circle back and analyze their impact on your ...

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Five Tips To Help Your Sales Reps Win Competitive Deals
Lauren Kersanske

Lauren Kersanske on Tue, Jun 4, 2019

84% of businesses say their industry has gotten more competitive in the last three years, according to the 2021 State of Competitive Intelligence. In the same report, 53% of respondents said the ...

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What is the Difference Between Sales Operations and Sales Enablement?
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Thu, May 16, 2019

Back in the 1970s, Xerox recognized the need for a support team that handled many of the basic operations and logistics essential for a successful sales team. The support team took over core sales ...

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How to Combine Tactical and Educational Competitive Intelligence for Sales Success
Tom Heys

Tom Heys on Tue, Apr 30, 2019

Sales are often primary clients of competitive intelligence (CI) in companies and also one of the best channels to drive measurable value through battlecards. By making intel more accessible and ...

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3 Sales Enablement Challenges and How to Overcome Them
Meg Guarente

Meg Guarente on Tue, Mar 5, 2019

Product marketers have a complex job working cross-functionally to support many crucial areas of the business. Creating and distributing buyer-facing content, updating sellers on the industry and ...

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Sales Enablement for Everyone: How Areas of Marketing Enables Sales
Ellie Mirman

Ellie Mirman on Fri, Mar 1, 2019

As companies grow, sales teams get bigger, and sales cycles become more complex, many businesses invest in a sales enablement function within the marketing team. Marketers, who are tasked with ...

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Top 3 Sales Consequences for Ignoring Competitive Intelligence

David Donlan on Thu, Feb 21, 2019

The sales process we know today is remarkably different from the sales process of a decade ago. Years ago, prospects had an average of four to five choices for any product or service they were ...

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Planning a Successful Sales Kickoff - 16 Tips from Marketing Leaders
Ellie Mirman

Ellie Mirman on Tue, Jan 8, 2019

It’s that time of year again -- when we gather the entire sales team together, energize them, educate them, and align them for success in the new year. This effort often falls to the team that we ...

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10 Sales Enablement Terms You Need to Know
Emily Dumas

Emily Dumas on Tue, Nov 20, 2018

Sales enablement is an important role in any organization - ensuring that sales has the skills and tools to win in their market. Most industries change rapidly, with competitors regularly launching ...

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The Best Sales Enablement Tool Just Got Better: Introducing Crayon Battlecards
Bryan Dunn

Bryan Dunn on Tue, Oct 30, 2018

The speed of competition has never been faster. Over the last decade, innovations like Software as a Service (SaaS) and cloud computing have allowed companies to improve their products, change their ...

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The Art and Science of Using Competitive Intelligence to Win Sales

David Donlan on Fri, Sep 7, 2018

There are endless tips and tricks to help sales executives close more deals. One of those tips not talked about enough is using competitive intelligence to win sales. Leveraging competitive ...

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