Teaser: Steve Hernan on The Global Sales Mentor Podcast

5 Jun 2021 · 1 min

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1:18

In this teaser segment, Steve Hernan explains the core of sales intelligence and competitive intelligence from a practical, win‑focused perspective. He stresses that the primary concern is the end stakeholder’s need for non‑public, actionable information that can tip a deal in their favor, rather than abstract strategy. He outlines a two‑pronged goal for any competitive intelligence program: (1) win sales and (2) inform strategy, with an emphasis on the former as the immediate business driver. From a data‑collection standpoint, he highlights the importance of gathering detailed product information—capabilities, key differentiators, pricing models, discount structures, and flexibility—as well as monitoring the pipeline for early‑warning signals about upcoming competitor offerings. This early insight enables proactive messaging and client protection to preserve market share before new solutions launch.

Chapters

When you're talking about sales intelligence, you ultimately have to think about your end stakeholders. Like, what do they need? What information do they need that's, you know, not just publicly available but non-publicly that's going to help them push a deal over the edge? Because, you know, that's what we're looking at. We're looking for immediate. We don't care about, you know, hey, you know, strategy and all that. We want to win, you know. Right. And any competitive intelligence program should You know, have a 2-pronged goal: win sales and drive strategy. But winning sales is huge because that's their business. Right, right. So from a collection standpoint, our focus is on, okay, product details, product capabilities, key differentiators, pricing, discount structures, how flexible they are in this, what are they going to come at us with. on a deal. And also, to pipeline, that's a big thing. It's like, what might be coming to the future that, you know, we have early warning on, we can maybe head off or start to message against or shore up our existing clients so that when this new product or solution comes out, we've already, you know, captured this customer and their market share. And I'll