S01E24: Competitive Intelligence On Demand: Build a Real Brief in 10 Minutes

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We’ve all been there…

You're mid-deal. Things are moving. Then the prospect drops a name.

A competitor. Maybe they're casual about it. Maybe they say they're "also evaluating" them. Maybe it comes up right as you're about to close for next steps, right at the moment you thought you had momentum.

Your brain does something in that half-second. It searches for the right thing to say.

Most reps land in one of three places. They freeze, buy time with a filler, and hope the conversation moves on. They pivot... "great product, but here's what makes us different"... and launch into a rehearsed comparison nobody asked for. Or they attack. "Oh, [Competitor]? We hear that a lot. Here's why customers leave them."

None of those work.

The freeze signals you don't know your own market. The pivot signals you've been waiting for this and you're about to sell, not listen. The attack signals something worse: fear. Buyers don't trust reps who tear down alternatives. They wonder what the rep says about them when they're not in the room.

What makes it worse: most reps don't even have the right information to react from. The battle card is six months old. The pricing column is outdated. The differentiation points are generic. They're improvising, without a foundation.

There's a fourth option. And it starts before the call.

Every sales team has battle cards. Most of them are sitting in a shared drive, updated once a year at SKO, already wrong.

Here's the problem with static competitive intelligence: it's built for the average deal against the average version of a competitor. That account doesn't exist.

Your prospect is a specific company. They have a specific tech stack, a specific use case, a specific reason they're on your list and their list at the same time. The competitor looks completely different depending on who's buying from them. Their strengths in enterprise don't translate to mid-market. Their pricing at one segment doesn't apply at another. Their G2 reviews from eighteen months ago don't reflect what shipped last quarter.

The rep who memorized a battle card six months ago doesn't know any of that. They know a generic comparison that was already outdated when it was written.

And the prospect knows their options better than you think. They've done the research. They've watched demos. They've talked to references. When you pull out a generic comparison, they notice.

The fix isn't a better battle card. It's a different approach entirely.

Ten minutes. That's all it takes to build a competitive brief specific to your deal, your prospect, and what's actually true today.

Not a battle card. A brief. One page. Built that morning. Specific to that account.

Four prompts. Four steps. Here's how.

You want to know what's actually changed in the last six months. Not their homepage positioning. Not their pitch deck copy. What's new, what's broken, and what customers are saying right now.

Use this prompt:

What you're looking for:

A competitor that just raised a Series C and started hiring enterprise sales reps is a different conversation than the version of that same company from a year ago. Know which one you're walking into.

This is the step most reps skip entirely. It's the most important one.

Not every prospect is equally likely to choose a competitor. Some accounts are primed for them based on industry, existing tools, or use case. You need to know if this prospect is one of them, and why.

Use this prompt:

This gives you the prospect's probable reasoning. Not a generic objection list.

If the output doesn't apply to your deal, you've already learned something. The competitor mention might be low-stakes. They're kicking tires or satisfying a procurement requirement.

If the output hits close to home, you know what you're actually up against. Now you can address it directly instead of talking past it.

This is where most competitive training breaks down. Reps are taught to position their strengths. What they should be doing is naming tradeoffs.

"We're better at X" is a claim. The prospect has no reason to believe it.

"If you go with them, you get X. What you're trading is Y. That matters when Z" is a tradeoff. It's honest. It respects the prospect's intelligence. And it reframes the decision from "who's better" to "what does each choice actually mean for us."

Use this prompt:

Example output:

Three honest statements. No attacks. The prospect can evaluate them. That's the point.

Now you know what to say when the moment comes. Not a script. A posture.

The goal: acknowledge the competitor fairly, invite curiosity about fit, and position the decision as a tradeoff, not a competition.

Use this prompt:

What the output sounds like in practice:

Notice what's not there. No "the problem with [Competitor] is..." No "we beat them on every metric." No pivoting immediately to your deck.

You're treating the prospect like someone who can make a good decision with good information. Most of the time, that's all it takes.

Four reasons.

Specificity beats memorization. A brief built for this deal tells a completely different story than a generic comparison slide. The prospect can feel the difference.

Tradeoff framing beats attack. Buyers trust reps who understand the alternatives. Buyers distrust reps who dismiss them. When you can articulate an honest tradeoff, you position yourself as someone who knows the market, not someone who's afraid of it.

Timeliness matters. A battle card from six months ago has wrong pricing, outdated features, and stale review data. You don't know what you don't know. Ten minutes of real research fixes that.

It shifts the dynamic. Instead of reacting to a competitor mention, you become the person who surfaces the tradeoffs before the prospect has to. That's a different kind of rep. Buyers notice it.

Pick the competitor that comes up most often in your current pipeline. Run the four prompts tonight. It takes ten minutes.

Use the brief on the next call where they surface. After the call, note what landed and what didn't. Adjust the prompts. Rebuild the brief before the next time.

Over four weeks, you'll have a living brief for your top two or three competitors. Better than anything in the shared drive. Built for the deals you're actually running.

The battle card is already wrong. The brief you build tonight isn't.

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