3 Clever Ways Sales Reps Can Outsmart the Competition in 2024
As a sales leader, I‘ve seen firsthand how the sales landscape has become increasingly crowded and competitive in recent years. With more solutions on the market and buyers doing the majority of their research online before ever speaking to a rep, it‘s harder than ever to stand out from the noise and win deals.
In fact, according to research from Crayon, 77% of companies say the competitive environment is becoming more intense in their industry. And on average, B2B buyers consume 13 pieces of content before making a purchase decision, much of it from third-party sources (Forrester).
What does this mean for sales reps? It means that simply being aware of your competitors is no longer enough. To stay ahead of the curve, you need to make competitive research a regular part of your sales process and use those insights to sharpen your competitive edge.
But with so much information out there, it can be tough to know where to start. That‘s why I‘ve compiled this list of my top 3 clever ways to research your competition in 2024, complete with specific tips, tools, and examples you can start using today.
1. Become a Social Media Sleuth
Social media is a goldmine of competitive intelligence, if you know where to look. By studying your competitors‘ activity across key platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, you can gain valuable insights into their strategy, positioning, target audience, and more.
Here are a few specific things to pay attention to:
- Company page: Look at how your competitor positions themselves in their company description. What‘s their mission statement? What values do they emphasize? How do they describe their target market?
- Employee data: Check out your competitor‘s employee headcount and how it‘s grown over time. What roles are they hiring for? This can give you clues into what areas they‘re investing in.
- Content: What types of content are they sharing and engaging with on LinkedIn? Are they publishing thought leadership articles? Sharing case studies? Posting job openings? This can tell you a lot about their priorities and what‘s working for them.
For example, at a previous company, we were able to uncover that a key competitor was investing heavily in building out their customer success team based on a hiring surge we noticed on LinkedIn. This tipped us off that they were doubling down on customer retention and expansion, which informed our own strategy.
- Audience insights: Use Facebook‘s Audience Insights tool to learn more about your competitor‘s audience demographics, interests, and behaviors. How does their audience compare to yours? Are there any key differences you could use to your advantage?
- Reviews and recommendations: Keep an eye on your competitor‘s Facebook reviews and recommendations. What are customers saying about them? Look for common themes and pain points you can address in your own messaging.
- Facebook groups: See if your competitor has any dedicated Facebook groups for customers or community members. Joining these groups (if they‘re public) can give you a behind-the-scenes look at how they engage their audience and what topics are top-of-mind.
- Hashtag analysis: Do a search for your competitor‘s branded hashtag (e.g. #CompanyName) and see what comes up. You can also use a tool like Keyhole to analyze their most frequently used hashtags and get insights into their Instagram strategy.
- Influencer partnerships: See if your competitor partners with any Instagram influencers or brand ambassadors. Who are they partnering with and what kind of content are they creating together? This can spark ideas for your own influencer strategy.
- Instagram Stories: Don‘t forget to watch your competitor‘s Instagram Stories in addition to their regular posts. Stories often give you a more unfiltered, behind-the-scenes look at the company culture and personality.
One of my favorite competitive research hacks for Twitter is to create a private Twitter List for each of your main competitors. This allows you to see a streamlined view of just their tweets in one place, without getting distracted by the rest of your timeline.
To set up a competitor Twitter List:
- Go to your competitor‘s Twitter profile
- Click the three dots icon on their profile
- Select "Add/remove from Lists"
- Create a new List (e.g. "Competitors") and set it to Private
- Add your competitor to the List
Once you have your List set up, check it regularly to track:
- Product launches and feature announcements: Twitter is often the first place companies will share news about new offerings. Keeping tabs on your competitor‘s product updates can help you anticipate shifts in their positioning and inform your own product roadmap.
- Thought leadership and content promotion: See what topics and types of content your competitor is tweeting about most frequently. Are they establishing themselves as an expert on certain subjects? Identifying any gaps in your own thought leadership strategy?
- Interactions with customers and prospects: Pay attention to how your competitor handles customer inquiries, complaints, and sales objections on Twitter. You may uncover some new objection-handling techniques to add to your own repertoire.
Of course, social media moves fast and monitoring multiple platforms can quickly eat up a lot of time. That‘s why I recommend using a tool like Hootsuite or Sprout Social to streamline your efforts. These tools allow you to track multiple competitors across all major social platforms in one central dashboard.
2. Tap Into the Voice of the Customer
Keeping a pulse on what customers are saying about you and your competitors is one of the most valuable things you can do as a sales rep. After all, your customers are the ones who have actually gone through the buying process and weighed the pros and cons of each solution.
There are a few key ways to gather this type of competitive intel:
Win/loss interviews
Win/loss interviews are one-on-one conversations with customers who have either recently purchased from you (a "win") or chosen a competitor instead (a "loss"). The goal is to understand what factors influenced their decision and how they perceive you compared to the other options they considered.
To conduct effective win/loss interviews:
- Choose the right customers: Focus on recent wins and losses, ideally within the past 3-6 months. Look for customers who match your ideal customer profile and had a competitive sales process.
- Prepare your questions: Create a list of open-ended questions that cover topics like: their decision-making process, perceived strengths and weaknesses of each vendor, the key factors that drove their final decision, and their post-purchase experience so far.
- Offer an incentive: Increase participation rates by offering a small incentive, like a gift card, for completed interviews.
- Listen more than you talk: Resist the urge to jump in and defend your product or company. Just focus on listening and gathering insights.
- Share the insights: Don‘t let your win/loss interviews collect dust on a shelf. Share them with the rest of your sales and marketing team and discuss how you can use the learnings to improve.
For example, at [Company], we conduct win/loss interviews with at least 10 customers per quarter. One insight we‘ve gained is that a key differentiator for us is our hands-on customer onboarding process, which customers consistently cite as a reason for choosing us. We‘ve used this insight to double down on promoting our onboarding experience in our sales collateral and demos.
Customer advisory boards
If you want to take a more proactive approach to gathering customer insights, consider setting up a customer advisory board (CAB). A CAB is a group of hand-selected customers who meet regularly (usually quarterly) to provide feedback and guidance to your company.
While CABs are typically run by customer success or product teams, getting involved as a sales rep can be incredibly valuable. Attending CAB meetings gives you a front-row seat to hear what customers love about your product, where they think you can improve, and how they think you stack up to the competition.
Some tips for making the most of CAB meetings:
- Do your homework: Read through past meeting notes and come prepared with thoughtful questions to ask the group.
- Listen for competitive mentions: Pay close attention any time a customer mentions a competitor. Probe for more details on what they like or don‘t like about that vendor.
- Recap key insights: After the meeting, send a recap email to your sales team highlighting any key competitive takeaways and how you can use them in your sales process.
Online reviews
Don‘t overlook the wealth of competitive insights available in online review sites like G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius. These platforms allow customers to leave detailed reviews and ratings of software products, which can give you a quick pulse on how you compare to your competitors in the eyes of real users.
Some things to look for in competitor reviews:
- Common themes: Do you notice any patterns in what customers praise or complain about? For example, if multiple reviews mention poor customer support, that could be an area where you can differentiate yourself.
- Competitive comparisons: Look for reviews that mention your competitor in comparison to your own product. What do customers see as the key differences? Use these insights to inform your own positioning and messaging.
- Reviewer demographics: Pay attention to the job titles and industries of reviewers to get a sense of your competitor‘s target audience. Are they going after the same types of buyers as you, or targeting a different niche?
One caveat: Take online reviews with a grain of salt, as they can sometimes skew negative. Look for patterns across multiple reviews rather than getting hung up on any one piece of feedback.
3. Decode Their Marketing and Advertising Strategy
Your competitors‘ marketing and advertising can tell you a lot about their overall strategy, key messages, and target audience. By keeping an eye on the content they‘re creating and the channels they‘re using to promote it, you can start to reverse-engineer their playbook and identify areas where you can differentiate yourself.
Here are a few specific things to analyze:
Ad creative and messaging
Start by auditing your competitor‘s ad creative across key channels like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and relevant industry publications. Take note of the messaging, visuals, and calls-to-action they‘re using.
- Value proposition: How are they positioning their product or service? What key benefits and differentiators do they focus on?
- Pain points: What customer pain points or challenges do they highlight in their ads? How do they position their product as the solution?
- Offers: What kind of special offers or promotions are they running? For example, are they offering a free trial, demo, or discount?
You can use a tool like SEMrush to see exactly which keywords your competitors are bidding on and get a sense of their ad spend over time. This can give you valuable intel into which search terms and audiences they‘re targeting.
For example, at [Company], we noticed a competitor was heavily targeting a specific keyword group around "sales coaching software." This tipped us off that coaching was a key use case they were going after, so we adjusted our own ad strategy and messaging to better highlight our coaching capabilities.
Content marketing
In addition to paid advertising, take a close look at your competitor‘s content marketing efforts. This includes things like:
- Blog posts and articles: What topics are they writing about most frequently? How in-depth and well-researched is their content?
- Ebooks and whitepapers: What kinds of gated content are they creating to generate leads? What pain points and topics do they focus on?
- Webinars and events: What kinds of online and offline events are they hosting? Who are the speakers and what topics do they cover?
- Case studies: What types of customers are they featuring in their case studies? What specific challenges and results do they highlight?
To get an inside look at your competitor‘s content strategy, I recommend signing up for their email list and following their blog and social media channels. Pay attention to the topics they cover, the formats they use, and how frequently they publish new content.
For example, one of our top competitors has a blog post that ranks highly on Google for the search term "best sales call recording software." We used this insight to create our own piece of content on the same topic, but with a slightly different angle and updated information. As a result, we were able to climb onto the first page of search results and siphon off some of their traffic.
Customer stories and case studies
Customer stories and case studies are a goldmine of competitive intel, as they give you a behind-the-scenes look at how your competitor‘s product is being used in the real world.
When analyzing competitor case studies, pay attention to:
- Featured customers: What types and sizes of companies are they highlighting? Are they targeting the same ideal customer profile as you?
- Results and KPIs: What specific metrics and results do they tout in their case studies? How do they position the value of their product?
- Use cases: What specific use cases and applications do they highlight? Are there any use cases they cover that you don‘t?
For example, we recently lost a big enterprise deal to a competitor and couldn‘t figure out why. But then we discovered one of their case studies featuring a similar company in the same industry. Turns out, they had more robust security features and compliance certifications that sealed the deal. We used this insight to beef up our own security messaging and positioning.
Putting It All Together: Turning Intel Into Action
The most effective competitive analysis doesn‘t just tell you what your competitors are doing, but how you can use those insights to drive real improvements in your own strategy.
Once you‘ve gathered all your competitive intel, block off some time to review and synthesize your findings. I recommend doing this on a quarterly basis, or whenever there‘s a major shift in the competitive landscape (like a new market entrant or product launch).
Some questions to consider:
- What are the most important insights and takeaways from your research?
- How can you use this intel to improve your sales process, messaging, and enablement?
- What changes do you need to make to your own product, positioning, or go-to-market strategy to stay competitive?
- How will you communicate these insights to the rest of your organization?
For example, after conducting a round of win/loss interviews, we realized that a key reason we were losing deals was that our sales demo didn‘t effectively showcase our product‘s ease of use. Competitors were doing a better job of highlighting their intuitive UI and quick setup process. Armed with this insight, we revamped our demo flow to better emphasize our user experience and saw an immediate uptick in win rates.
The key is to not just gather competitive intelligence, but to actually do something with it. Insights are only valuable if you put them into action.
Staying One Step Ahead
In today‘s hyper-competitive sales landscape, staying one step ahead of your rivals is more important than ever. By making competitive research a regular part of your sales process and using these three clever tactics, you‘ll be well-equipped to outsmart the competition and drive more revenue in 2024 and beyond.
Remember, competitive intel isn‘t a one-and-done activity. It requires ongoing effort and a commitment to continuous improvement. But trust me, it‘s worth it. The most successful sales reps and organizations are those that make competitive research a priority and use it to inform every aspect of their strategy.
So what are you waiting for? Go forth and start sleuthing! Your future self (and quota) will thank you.
