Dropbox + Crayon

George Baier IV grew up in the stamp business. His father -- a George Baier himself -- was the GM of a rubber stamp factory. His great-grandfather started both that factory and the since-unbroken line of Georges Baier. For Baier IV, being immersed in the stamp world was a formative experience; whenever anybody was out, be it a machinist, or a wood-cutter, or a janitor, he would fill in to keep the line moving. The experience encouraged him to be a generalist, and to understand how all of the pieces of a team fit together, a mindset that he kept when Dropbox asked him to move from being a customer on their Advisory Board into building out their internal Competitive Intelligence program. 

Before George started, competitive intelligence was a small part of many people’s roles at Dropbox, without any sort of systemized way for people to share vital data about their rivals. George was able to use Crayon to pick up on these programs and turn them from an ad-hoc collection of insights that lived inside of individual brains into a measurable force that could animate growth throughout the entire company:

“As we formalized our program centrally, we picked up a lot of the existing programs -- battlecards, sales collateral, sales plays -- and started plugging into them, and putting measure to them in ways we hadn’t been able to before.”

The results have been staggering. In the last year, battlecard usage has increased at Dropbox by 400%, and people aren’t just sharing more information with each other, they’re sharing better and more useful data, a process which has led to increased sales win rates.

At Dropbox, Competitive Intelligence isn’t so much a matter of collecting more information as it is filtering and deciding which information actually has strategic value. If people are trying to respond to too much information simultaneously, the actionable specifics get lost -- fire hoses make bad water fountains.  

Explains Baier: “It’s not just about more information -- it’s about the refining and the whittling process. There are a million insights out there. Only some of them are relevant to your business, and only a few of them can lead you to make better decisions.”

Having the right information allows Dropbox to use Crayon not only as a Competitive Intelligence tool, but also as a risk management tool. “Surprises are rarely good for your bottom line,” says George. “You have to be able to lift your head up and see what’s happening beyond just what you’re doing at the moment.”

With a central Competitive Intelligence program, Dropbox is able to collate their existing tactics into a cohesive strategy. This leads to fewer dead-end requests, less pointless work, and a deeper confidence from executive decision-makers in the overall direction of the organization:

“If you can get visible company stakeholders to feel more confident, and they can tie it to the competitive intelligence you gave them, that gives you your best ROI.” 

By using Crayon as a centralized platform for Competitive Intelligence information, George was able to create a culture of collaboration that stakeholders across the company responded to readily. Before Crayon, Dropbox had no formal communications around Competitive Intelligence. This meant that even if somebody had a brilliant insight that could help multiple departments of the company better reach their goals, there was no way to ensure that it reached the audience it deserved. 

Now, there’s a weekly memo that goes out to the entire company. Hundreds of people have opted into the integrated slack channel, and are engaging with a better understanding of how their role fits into the competitive goals of the team. The Product, Sales, Marketing, Comms, and Executive teams are all regularly using Crayon and getting alerts, and George has noticed a corresponding shift in how the entire organization is thinking about competition:

“There’s a momentum. When people around the company know there’s a [competitive intelligence] team, look to them, are tapping into their newsletter channel, are joining their slack channel, are contributing field intel, when you start creating that competitive culture, that community: that’s your success metric. It’s a cultural shift around how you think about competition in a productive way, and knowing there’s a team leading the charge.”

Going forward, George and Dropbox have even more ambitious plans for how they’ll use Crayon. They are looking to dive deeper into win-loss analysis, and provide more holistic reporting for how they can close more of the most competitive deals. They want to integrate more qualitative data into their sales process. They’ve even been examining how leveraging Crayon will allow them to bring new products to market more quickly and with less risk. While he may have left the inking world behind, George is continuing to put his stamp on Dropbox.