A SalesGlobe Sage YouTube monologue by Mark Dinolo about competitor performance as the third insight discipline in the Revenue Roadmap. The speaker argues that monitoring competitor strengths and vulnerabilities (via public data, hires, or third-party studies) informs tactical and strategic GTM decisions. He emphasizes recurring competitive analysis, differentiating offerings/coverage, and using competitive intelligence to refine strategy over time.
Chapters
Sam. Foreign. Welcome to Freedom Friday. Mark Dinolo here, art school MBA and CEO of Sales Globe. And it's that day, the week we get to take a fresh look at creative problem solving for your business and for your life. And last episode we were talking about the revenue roadmap and we were talking about the different layers of the revenue roadmap that help us to drive growth for the business. Layers of insight, sales strategy, customer coverage, and enablement. Let's talk about the third inside discipline, which is competitor performance. So watching the performance of your competitors gives you an understanding of the landscape you're navigating. So it's seeing about where they're successful, where they may have weaknesses or give you opportunities. And so knowing your competitors strengths and weaknesses can help you position yourself more effectively. So some questions to ask. Who are your main competitors and what are they doing well and where are they vulnerable? So you assume you know your main competitors, but your competitors may actually be different depending on what you're looking at. So your competitors in the market for certain products may be different depending on the products, and your competitors for your labor may be different. So if I'm trying to hire top sales talent, I may get it from companies that are not my main market competitors because I'm getting it from other places that are a better fit. So this could be public information or it could be what you can gather through your team. In what specific areas do you need intelligence and who can get it for you? For example, if you're focused on outperforming your competitors with how you organize and employ your sales organization or how you pay your sales team, you might be able to get that information from people you hired who are at competitors. But sometimes that information can be skewed, especially around areas like quality quotas or performance or compensation because you tend to hear about the big stories or the big exceptions like high performers earning huge payouts or the big hero story. So that can kind of skew our understanding of what's going on in competitors. So it can also be useful to get specific competitor intelligence through a third party like a consultant who can go directly to the market and talk with your competitors. Sometimes they can do it through a study, or they can get it just directly from those competitors and get unbiased information. What actions can you take based on your positioning and your competitor vulnerabilities? So your actions might be very tactical, like adjustments in your sales coverage model, or they could be more strategic, like an overall shift to your go to market strategy. So let's talk about Some actions to lead regarding competitor performance. Well, with the questions that you're asking and the information that you're getting, you want to perform regular competitive analysis to benchmark against your competitors. So competitive analysis shouldn't be a single one time event, shouldn't be episodic. It should be a reoccurring process where you're getting information along the way. And then you can identify areas where you can differentiate your strategies, your go to market strategy, or your offerings. Or you can focus on unique features or services that can differentiate you from competitors. You can leverage a competitive intelligence to refine your strategy. So gathering intelligence on your competitors can inform your strategic decisions and positioning by using insights to anticipate competitor moves and you can respond proactively. And again, having consistent information is key to this. So let's talk about some actions to lead with competitor performance. The first thing you want to do is you want to perform regular competitive analysis. So competitive analysis shouldn't be a one time event. It shouldn't be episodic. It shouldn't be that, yeah, we did it last year and we know what's going on, because you probably don't at this point. So what you want to do is you want to be current and you want to be proactive. So you want to update your analysis on a periodic basis. You want to identify areas where you can differentiate your offerings or differentiate your strategies. So just because you're doing things differently than competitors, doesn't mean you have to do things like competitors. Again, back to problem solving. We want to understand what we're solving for. For our business. The competitive information is simply insight to provide you information based on your strategy. So what can you do based on your strategy to differentiate from competitors and then leverage that competitive intelligence to continue to refine your strategy? So, based on your overall go to market plan and based on doing the consistent competitive analysis, you're responding in a recurring way. So that's happening throughout time.
