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For 暗黑网鈥檚 Competitive Enablement Series we鈥檝e interviewed both leading competitive intelligence professionals and consumers of competitive content. We get an inside look at what goes into building a quality competitive program, and what different teams want from competitive intelligence (CI) in their company.聽

In this edition of 鈥楥ompetitively Enabled鈥�, we spoke with Ryan Donovan, CTO at We dive into the biggest struggles CI teams face and the steps taken at Hootsuite to ensure sellers are using the competitive insights built by their compete team.

Why does competitive intelligence matter for your role?

From a product planning perspective, you鈥檙e constantly being asked by your board if they鈥檙e doing a good job, and how you fare competitively. So you have to know where you stand, and where your plans stand relative to the competition.

Conversely, from a product management perspective, you need to have competitive intelligence to really make sure you鈥檙e planning and prioritizing the right features. It鈥檚 fuel to understand how you can differentiate, because if you don鈥檛 know what your competition鈥檚 doing, there鈥檚 no way you can carve out your own differentiation strategy.聽

Thirdly, from a product marketing perspective, you need to know how to price it, package it, position it, and train sellers on it. Then, you need to have the right Q&A and collateral ready. When customers say, 鈥淲ell, you know, what about X, they鈥檙e cheaper. Why would you go with the likes of Hootsuite?鈥� you can have an intelligent answer.

Where have you seen teams struggle with competitive intelligence in your career?

It鈥檚 a lack of intelligence where I鈥檝e seen the biggest misses. When a board member knows something that one of your competitors is doing, and you don鈥檛, that鈥檚 the worst possible scenario. Having the data in the first place and being able to get it and coalesce it, that鈥檚 the biggest challenge point for any company that鈥檚 trying to build a competitive intelligence practice.

Also, if you show any sign of hesitation, or anything other than authoritative confidence, that鈥檚 where the credibility starts to erode. It just goes downhill from there because salespeople are immensely talented BS detectors. They鈥檒l just laser in on anything that might be seen as a wobble. This is why having solid intelligence matters.

Can you speak a little bit more to this idea of authoritative confidence in the competitive content?

So increased confidence means that you can survive a precision questioning. If I don鈥檛 feel well-armed, I鈥檓 going to be reticent to put myself out there like that.

From a product marketing perspective, the PMM is going to lose faith with the sellers when the seller is able to pull up data and go, 鈥榃ell, what about this? What about that?鈥�. It鈥檚 not necessarily moment-in-time reporting, but content that鈥檚 been out there for a bit, and when questioned the PMM doesn鈥檛 know what is going on. Those are the moments to be avoided.

If somebody from sales can go and get better data than if they went to the product marketing team, then that鈥檚 problematic from a credibility standpoint.

What is important when providing competitive intelligence to consumers of the content?

Competitive intelligence has got to be easy, especially for sellers as they鈥檙e the biggest audience. So coming up with very simple tables and Harvey Ball-type formats and ensuring everything is consistent. So as you get into the collateral, competitor X looks the exact same as competitor Y, and then tying that back to our own sales enablement collateral.聽

You also have to be able to restrict what they can do with things, especially if you鈥檝e managed to get something juicy. You obviously might want them to see it, but not actually be able to have it, download it, or distribute it, because oftentimes you do see sellers move between competitors. So having that rights management piece on competitive collateral is very important because that鈥檚 where you typically see the most competitive migrations.

What is one of the biggest competitive intelligence challenges you鈥檝e faced?

Our challenge has been getting the information in a format that has been useful to sellers.

Distributing intel hasn鈥檛 been the challenge point because we鈥檝e had 暗黑网. We鈥檝e now done a much better job with the synthesis and packaging of the information so that it鈥檚 much easier from a self-service perspective to discern the information.

Distributing it has never been a problem, but I did have nightmares about password-protected PDFs back in the day!

How did you solve this?

That journey really started in 2019. Early in that year, the right connectedness started to build up, and then what Lynette did (Sr. Director, Product Marketing) brought that to scale.聽

Spending the time to get all of the information on each competitor into a consistent format took a fair investment, but has paid dividends. Now everything is packaged and distributed in a consistent manner, making it easier for folks in the field to consume. Even the most grizzled and cynical representatives feel that the level of service being provided to them is the best ever.聽

There used to be a lot of reading and a lot of navigation that went into going through intel, and I think the art of what our team has done is getting intel distilled down into something that鈥檚 easy for the sellers to consume. It鈥檚 quite a game-changer, this 鈥楽tarbucks experience鈥�. No matter which Starbucks you go to in the world, you鈥檙e going to have a pretty consistent experience. Now you鈥檙e getting a Starbucks-like experience from our PMM team.