🌶️ Chili Piper's spicy move to stand out

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In this issue (4 min read)

🪄 Three competitive positioning tips

🤡 ClickUp clowning their competitors' keynote

Adam ☕

Drift vs. Intercom: who ya got?

We had another killer community Power (half) Hour on Friday talking all things competitive positioning.

The great Tara Scott took on our own Compete whizz, Hunter, in a positioning showdown. Hunter repped Intercom, Tara took their rival Drift, and each had 15 mins inside of Klue Insights to present a quick dismiss against each other.

If you haven't heard of a 'Quick Dismiss' before, it's a talk track that your reps use early in a deal to communicate your high-level differentiated value relative to competitors.

And if you can make this crisp and clear, then you'll have your buyer crossing your competitors off their eval list. Here are four steps to a strong one 👇

1. Acknowledge the Competitor’s Strengths. Start by giving some credence to your competitor. This not only shows that you're well-informed but also builds trust with the prospect.

"Yeah, we totally know about Drift. They're a really amazing chatbot tool for converting website visitors into sales leads."

2. Reframe the Competitor’s Weaknesses. Subtly highlight areas where the competitor may fall short, specifically in a way that connects to your product’s strengths.

"Now, that said, they often struggle as a platform when it comes to supporting the rest of the customer journey."

3. Emphasize Your Unique Value Proposition. Clearly outline what sets your product apart, focusing on value propositions highly relevant to the customer’s needs.

"In Intercom, we're designed to support your customers through the entire customer journey, from acquisition to onboarding to ongoing support."

Ask a Leading Question. Finish with a question that highlights your product’s strengths and guides the conversation towards your unique benefits.

"Curious when you're thinking about the goals for your customer engagement platform, how important is it that you can support your entire customer journey, not just lead generation?"

You can catch the full session here, and drop any questions or takes you have in our community forum.

CATCH THE SESSION

🌶️ Chili Piper's spicy new stance

ICYMI, Chili Piper brought "Demand Conversion" to market last week with their relaunch, introducing new products along with their new category name.

The core value prop is all about consolidation. We've seen the all-in-one play before.

And when you lead with that kind of message, then you're opening up your competitive landscape.

And Chili Piper weren't shy about that fact 👇

As soon as I saw this swipe at a lootttt of new competitors on their homepage, I had to run over to Hunter's desk and get his 'compete take' on it.

Here were the three things that he shared:

🆚 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘃𝘀. 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Drift/Intercom, Outreach/Salesloft, Leandata, Calendly…all of these tools are best-of-breed at a specific thing. But I guess it can be a struggle to get them to talk to each other.

Chili Piper is pretty green in some of the categories these players compete in. But they’re the only player that “does it all”. Is that compelling enough to get customers to drop their old tools and buy into the new Chili Piper way of doing things? Their buyers will have to decide.

🆕 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗖𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗼𝗿𝘆: "Demand Conversion" is a crisp, easy-to-undersand concept and it doesn’t feel overly forced. I could definitely see buyers adopting the category name and using the term “Demand Conversion Software” more often.

🧐𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘄...

❓Do we see tighter integrations/partnerships with the other players in the “Demand Conversion” process?

❓Will other players like Salesloft (who recently acquired Drift) announce a counter-attack?

Check out Hunter's post on this market that's gonna get towards Ghost Pepper levels of spiciness soon...

P.S. This couldn't have been timed better for us content-wise as the latest episode of the Ready for Launch podcast is on their favourite category creating product launches!

Is it cool to troll a billion dollar competitor?

I remember ClickUp dropping one of my favourite competitive ads last year.

Their biggest competitor's CPO called ClickUp out during his keynote. Specifically their some of their messaging on billboard.

Within forty minutes ClickUp turned around a dubbed-up trolljob ad in response that netted them hundreds of thousands of eyeballs.

Their former CMO, Melissa Rosenthal, shared the behind-the-scenes of this viral ad on a recent appearance on the Revenue Rebels podcast.

New on the network

How to ACE you PMM interview assignment | Positioning for Growth

Yi Lin Pei shares the secret to nailing the biggest part of your interview process.

The best category creating product | Ready for Launch

Andy, Oaks, and Tamara compete on the best category creating launch — and they're pitting 5 hour energy, Intercom, and Netflix against one another.

How to stay relevant in product marketing | We're not Marketers

Eric, Gab, and Zach cover their different prior backgrounds and what they've learned to stand out.

Meetup with the community

We've got two community sessions happening in June — both are worth marking on your calendars 📆

1. How to Sharpen Your Homepage Positioning and Messaging with Fletch PMM | The Marchitect, Jun. 14, 9am PST

For episode two of The Marchitect, Rowan and Morgan are joined LIVE by the best messaging minds around: Anthony Pierri and Rob Kaminski, the two halves of Fletch PMM.

They'll be tearing down the best (and worst) homepage examples in the wild and taking on all of your questions. Save your seat here.

2. Klue Quarterly: Summer 2024 | Jun. 20, 9:30am PST

Our product team are popping the hood to give a look at what's new in Klue in Q2. Plus a few of our in-house experts are walking through how to tackle product marketing and competitive intel's most important workflows, including:

🗞️ Digest tips. How to run an Intel Digest that will keep your entire business up-to-speed on the competitive landscape.

🔁 Building a feedback loop. Ways to source tribal knowledge and tap into buyer insights at scale.

💰 ROI. How to demonstrate your revenue impact to leadership.

CHECK OUT EVENTS

The buyer-tells-all documentary

Sometimes buyers and sellers don't see eye to eye.

Especially when it comes to specifics around what actually happened in a deal.

So, we sat down and interviewed a buyer and their rep after a six-figure deal slipped through the cracks. Find out what happened in our tell-all interview 🎤

WATCH NOW

New jobs in the community

A TON of new roles have been added to our jobs board! Here's just a few:

1. Staff Product Marketing Manager, Portfolio Marketing at MongoDB here.

2. Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Strava here.

CHECK OUT NEW ROLES

P.S. This edition took me 3.5 hours to write. If it was worth your time, it'd mean the world if you shared with a product marketer in need 🙏

P.S.S. Wanna binge hours of on-demand content, connect with others, and learn from some of the best in the industry?

Join the 3,000+ other product marketers, compete pros, and GTM leaders in the Compete Network community.