Art by Markus Spiske
Is competitive enablement an invaluable tool for organisations?
Sales are crucial to any organisation. It plays a key role in converting and retaining customers and generating revenues for the company, helping an organisation to thrive. Therefore, having an effective sales team is of prime importance to any business. So how can we achieve that? The answer is by empowering the sales team with one of the essential sales tactics called competitive enablement. This article asks is competitive enablement an invaluable tool for organisations?
So what is competitive enablement, and why is it important?
Competitive enablement refers to the set of practices that enable businesses to deliver customer and competitive insights to sales employees so that they can utilise them to achieve success against competitors. It provides the sales team with actionable information about competitors so that they can manage any demanding situation in sales, improve their operations, develop new offerings and enter new markets. Competitive enablement provides sales members with the best knowledge, tools and resources required to be successful and win in the marketplace.
Therefore, there has to be a well-defined competitive enablement program in place, and the sales team must know how to use the competitive insights they are provided with. These programs are easy to establish and vary from company to company. However, the core concept and the strategies employed remain the same. Here are some of the best practices of competitive enablement.
Looking into online presence
Businesses will struggle to can’t survive without taking a digital approach to sales and marketing. So the first thing is to keep an eye on your competitor’s online presence. Companies can gain valuable insights into the competition by analysing their web activities. They can also explore the competition’s online strategy to learn about SEO skills, their approach to social media marketing, customer pain points and more. This can help them understand the value proposition to their prospects.
Gathering Information on pricing
Information regarding cost helps companies learn what prices are paid for the same products or services by competitions. This is crucial as it helps businesses remain competitive, and it can help them design a sales strategy and deal with customer objections.
Listening to prospects
Listening to prospects is important as they possess many valuable competitive insights. With this, companies can get to learn more about customers’ needs and pain points, pricing or current promotions of competitions, and much more. The information can be shared among peers, and then companies can decide how they can make their services or products better.
Keeping an eye on product innovations/developments
All businesses want to grow, so they keep bringing new and innovative products to the market. Scrutinising information on current developments and innovations of competition can help businesses to understand the competitor’s next motive and establish a competitive strategy.
Confirming the data
The competitive insights that have been gathered need to be confirmed. Competitors can spread false advertising and rumours regarding their products and services to throw off their rivals. Such information cannot help with an organisation’s competitive strategy as this scenario can cause a business to lose customers or, even worse, it’s business reputation. Therefore, before sharing any intelligence, companies need to check for its validity.
Documenting and sharing insights
The intelligence that is gathered must be jotted down and distributed well through the sales team. Communication plays a key role here as it fosters collaboration, and the information can also be put on competitive battlecards so that each sales member can access them. Businesses can also employ competitive enablement platforms to help them achieve inter-departmental sharing.
Is competitive enablement just a hot air term to sell Competitive Intelligence seats?
Competitive enablement is when a company uses its resources to become more competitive. This can be done through things like improving operations and developing new offerings. And by entering new markets.
But Competitive Intelligence, on the other hand, is gathering and analysing information. And not just about the competition to understand their strategies and weaknesses. But also the market you compete in.
Put simply; Competitive Enablement is what you do with Competitive Intelligence.
Now, the competitive enablement definition is correct. And we really do get it. But only if the most common thing occurs during a Competitive Intelligence project.
Now you may ask: What’s the most common thing with a Competitive Intelligence project?
It is, of course, when Competitive Intelligence is done wrong when it’s confused with market research or glorified Google alerts. When someone has collected as much information as possible on one or two competitors, then put this information into nice graphs and slides to make it look pretty. We fail to see what knowing your competitor’s HQ address has to do with any competitive advantage.
Is competitive enablement an invaluable tool for organisations?
In conclusion, sales are essential for any organisation as it helps to generate revenue and convert and retain customers. By empowering competitive enablement, businesses can give their sales teams the tools they need to succeed in today’s market. This will help to improve the company’s overall performance and increase profits. Thank you, Sharmistha Bose, for your input in this article.
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