competitive intelligence battlecards - jpk group...objection handling: aligned by buying criteria...
TRANSCRIPT
JPK
Gro
up
Product Intelligence and Experience Summit
March 15-16 • San Francisco, CA
Competitive Intelligence Battlecards
March 16, 9:45am
Eric Kuhnen is the Principal and a Managing Partner of Focal Partners
Consulting. Eric is an expert in competitive analysis and response, and brings
more than 20 years of experience in product research, development and
management to every project. Before joining Focal Partners, Eric was
responsible for competitive positioning, product marketing, and product
management at Astoria Software (acquired by TransPerfect), GoRemote
(acquired by iPass), and Oracle Corporation. Since 1990, Eric has managed the
launch of nine different software products across four different disciplines: SaaS,
enterprise, equipment control, and government.
View presentation online at:
www.jpkgroupsummits.com/attendee2
Eric Kuhnen – Focal Partners
Session examines the value of aligning objection handling
with buying criteria developed from Win-Loss interviews to
yield concrete, useful recommendations
Battle cards
“»At its core, a battle card is a tool for helping sales teams
win the hearts and minds of their prospective customers.
General Points
»Layout »Data and Content »Recommendations
Layout
Northrop Grumman Information & Technology (IT) has a major presence in homeland
security initiatives. They are a leader in public safety systems and one of the world’s
largest suppliers of 911 First Responder Computer-Aided Dispatch systems. The sector is
a top-tier integrator of large-scale information systems for customers such as the Internal
Revenue Service, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Aviation Administration and
Department of Justice. Their focus is on Strategic Security, Engineering & Science,
Training & Simulation, Base & Range Operations and Enterprise IT solutions & products.
Specifically, their homeland security technologies and programs include:
• Emergency Preparedness Federation (EMPRED FED). EMPRED FED is a suite
of training simulation, control, interface and visualization tools that offers
comprehensive solutions to help planners, strategists, emergency responders and
post-disaster recovery teams prepare for and handle emergency situations;
• Emergency Management Integrated Solutions Center (EMISC). A joint program
conducted by Northrop Grumman and the University of Alabama in Huntsville,
the EMISC integrates emergency management/disaster preparedness modeling and
simulation applications, including those associated with U.S. Department of
Defense capabilities, into a distributed modeling and simulation network to enable
collaborative planning, analysis, training and exercises;
• Support Planning Integrated Data Enterprise Readiness System (SPIDERS).
SPIDERS is a Web-based readiness planning and decision support application
used by the Defense Logistics Agency and the Federal Emergency Management
Agency for wartime readiness and disaster relief planning;
• First Responder Authentication Credential (FRAC). FRAC is an identity
management credential for emergency personnel that details what attributes an
individual possesses, such as firefighting, law enforcement, hazardous materials,
medical, communications, public health or emergency management skills.
• Wireless Broadband Networks. Northrop Grumman will demonstrate its
comprehensive wireless network features and functionalities that can dramatically
enhance and secure communications, information sharing and collaboration for
public safety agencies; and
• Case Management Frameworks. Northrop Grumman integrates commercial-off-
the-shelf applications and service oriented architecture into an effective case
management framework solution for secure collaboration of critical information
within government and industry.
• Lots of reading
• Nothing to draw the eye
• Indistinct audience
Data and Content
• Biased research
• No objection handling
Recommendations
• In a discussion about technology
advantages, none of the
recommended points is relevant
A Battle Card Combining All Three Problems
A Battle Card Combining All Three Problems
A Battle Card Combining All Three Problems
(This table runs on for four pages)
A Battle Card Combining All Three Problems
10 pages of data to produce six mediocre conclusions
• Innuendo: draws no specific conclusion
• Unsubstantiated TCO: no corroborating data in the report
• Unproven claims: cites no independent source
• “Naked” technical capability: not aligned with project goals
• Implied interest: not aligned with customer interest
• Snarky come-back: …and it stinks.
“»Let Sales teams do what they do best: understanding
the prospect's pains, budget, decision-making process,
etc.
»Let competitive intelligence teams do what they do best:
“connect the dots” for Sales teams
Key Point #1
Building a better battle cardMaking better “recommendations”
Recommendations: Aligned by Sales Sequence
»Initial Pitch
Establish XYZ as a strong leader in the BPM/BAM market with over 300 BPM implementations in the world’s top-performing companies, including 24 of the Fortune 100.
»Follow-up Pitch
ABC will position XYZ as a
small firm with narrow
offerings and questionable
viability. Stress that XYZ is a
$500M middleware
specialist.
Recommendations: Aligned by Sales Sequence…but still Laying Traps
»Initial Pitch
Explain how SuperBPM adds a key piece for XYZ’s SuperCEPevents processing strategy. There is a symbiotic relationship between event processing and business process execution; events can trigger business processes or vice versa. Emphasize that no other vendor has this capability.
»Follow-up Pitch
Emphasize that in BPM and CEP,
XYZ is recognized by Gartner and
Forrester as supplying far superior
capability by integrating these
operations into a single product,
whereas ABC’s product integration
is still in transition and it will charge
the customer to complete the work.
Objection Handling: Aligned by Buying Criteria
»Decision Factor
»Product Integration
»The Competitor Says
»Nemesis FAS provides the
only multi-channel sales,
service, marketing, and
transaction solution pre-
integrated with core
banking.
»What You Say
»Despite acquiring the core
technology in 2006,
Nemesis FAS is not
integrated with Nemesis
Business Process
Management (BPM), CEP,
or Business Transaction
Monitoring (BTM) solutions.
Customers report that
Nemesis FAS
implementations require
many complex product
integrations over a long
period of time.
Objection Handling: Aligned by Buying Criteria…and Strengths & Weaknesses
»Decision Factors that play
to the competitor’s
strengths
»Your Action: counter-
punch
»Pricing
»Nemesis is willing to earn
your business with deep
discounts to our licensing
and support fees.
»Nemesis does not discount
maintenance fees. In fact,
once you’re locked into
Nemesis, their pattern is to
charge much higher annual
maintenance costs.
Objection Handling: Aligned by Buying Criteria…and Strengths & Weaknesses
»Decision Factors that
expose the competitor’s
weakness
»Your Action: attack! »Predictive Analytics
»Nemesis FAS’s predictive
analytics automatically
learns from each interaction
by updating it models with
empirical data observations.
»Nemesis FAS’s real-time
visualization uses the same
technology as our solution,
but it lacks XYZ’s ability to
blend data from multiple
sources to you to make
better decisions about
creating new service
offerings.
Reasons for Losing (22 Losses)More unfavorable
(26 Wins) Reasons for WinningMore favorable
Understanding IT Strategy 21.6%
Business Process Knowledge 19.5%
Proposed Solution 17.5%
Technical Expertise 12.8%
Timeline Plan 11.3%
8.7%Price/Value Ratio
8.6%References
Imp
act
23.3% Price/Value Ratio
22.6% Implementation Partners
19.1% Understanding IT Strategy
13.1% Timeline Plan
13.0% Technical Expertise
5.5%References
3.2%Business Process Knowledge
“Wizard Chart” Courtesy PSP Enterprises, Inc.
“»Win-Loss Data drives toward better Battle Cards
Building a better battle cardOrganize your data by audience
Battle Card Audiences
»Sales Teams
»Points to make in the sales pitch»Objection handling organized by buying criteria and strengths, weaknesses»Weaknesses in the competitor’s strategy and operations»Sales approach and process
»Example:
»High employee turn-over.
ABC Consulting’s employee
turnover is high, and ABC
faces an immediate shortage
of field skills to support
customer migrations and new
projects.
Battle Card Audiences
»Sales Teams
»Points to make in the sales pitch»Objection handling organized by buying criteria and strengths, weaknesses»Weaknesses in the competitor’s strategy and operations»Sales approach and process
»Example:
»Educates the banking prospect about the
trend toward next-generation customers
»Promotes the “intelligent personalization”
concept
»Shows Nemesis FAS correlating information
from multiple sources
»Promotes Nemesis FAS as a self-learning
engine that recommends products and services
in real time
»Disparages rule-based systems.
»Cites customer references tailored to specific
goals:
»Improve cross-sell and retention
»Maximize the revenue impact of each contact
due to constraints on outbound selling
Battle Card Audiences
»Sales Engineers
»Solution overview
»Weaknesses in the
competitor’s product design
and implementation
»Example:
»NEMESIS FAS JUDGMENT BUILDER»A graphical development tool for configuring decision services, the services that allow FAS applications to monitor activity, gather statistics, and make recommendations.»Deployed as a standard plug-in to the Eclipse environment.»Used to define and manage Inline Services. All aspects of Inline Services are exposed in Judgment Builder. The target user of Judgment Builder is an IT professional with a basic knowledge of Java and a general understanding of application development and lifecycle issues.
Battle Card Audiences
»Sales Engineers
»Solution overview
»Weaknesses in the
competitor’s product design
and implementation
»Example:
»No migration tools for upgrading from ABC BPM 10 to 11. The transition from ABC BPM Suite 10 to 11 is a major product revision, not a straightforward upgrade. It is particularly difficult for existing Juicy Fruit Software implementations, which requires a multistep migration from 10 to 11 to get functionality comparable to what was had previously.
Building a better battle cardMake it easy to find information
A good one-page example for inside sales teams
Use Executive Summaries
A one-page overview of the top
three points in the critical sections
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1 CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY. FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY.
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Battlecard: Oracle Real-time Decisions Market: Real-time Cross-sell for Banking
Focal Partners (www.FocalPartners.com)
650-380-5862
SOLUTION OVERVIEW
• Oracle Real-Time Decisions (RTD) combines both rules and predictive analytics to power adaptive solutions for real-time enterprise decision management. Oracle RTD consists of four key components: Decision Center, Decision Manager, Decision Studio, and Real-Time Decision Server.
• Oracle RTD is a part of Oracle’s Business Intelligence solutions within the Oracle Middleware Software Group.
KEY WEAKNESSES TO ATTACK
• Product Integration: Oracle says: “The only multi-channel sales, service, marketing, and transaction solution pre-integrated with core banking.” Attack with: Despite acquiring the core technology in 2006, Oracle RTD is not integrated with Oracle Business Process Management (BPM), Complex Event Processing (CEP), or Business Transaction Monitoring (BTM) solution.
• Personalization: Oracle says: “Oracle RTD improves your overall business responsiveness with optimized, personalized customer interactions flows driven by self-adapting decisions that adjust in real-time, thereby maximizing the benefit of each opportunity.” Attack with: While Oracle RTD’s decision technology can adjust in real time, RTD is not built to correlate disparate data streams at very high data rates. In fact, Oracle RTD works best in a batch-processing mode on historical data; so it is only as useful as yesterday’s data is available.
• Comprehensive Solution: Oracle says: “Oracle has a comprehensive and industry-leading solution to meet the needs of real-time decisioning for responsive customer engagement in many industries.” Attack with: To differentiate its services, Banks need real-time information from disparate customer touch-points, strong analytics, and linked business process management. CLIENT SOLUTION, not Oracle RTD, offers Banks the ability to incorporate all three of these in a single solution.
KEY STRENGTHS TO COUNTER
• Vendor Viability: Oracle says: “Oracle has one of the largest service organizations in the world.” Counter with: Relatively few of Oracle’s Professional Service engineers are trained in Oracle RTD deployments. Therefore, Oracle supplements its highly specialized Oracle RTD integration team with junior engineers learning on the job. By contrast, since CLIENT SOLUTION is based on CLIENT’s core technology, a large segment of CLIENT’s professional services team is always qualified to help customers build solutions around CLIENT SOLUTION.
• Pricing: Oracle says: “Oracle is willing to earn your business with deep discounts to our licensing and support fees.” Counter with: Don’t be fooled by initial pricing. According to one Gartner analyst, “It's easy to [fall] out of compliance with Oracle licensing. They do nothing to help people stay in compliance. Then they audit you and hand you a big bill.”
• Incumbency: Oracle says: “As an existing Oracle customer, we can give you the total solution.” Counter with: Oracle RTD is not integrated with other Fusion Middleware components. In fact, Oracle makes more money scaring customers away from best-of-breed solutions and then charging to integrate Oracle RTD into the Oracle stack.
RECOMMENDATIONS
• Where Oracle is the incumbent, negotiate directly with line-of-business executives, who will be receptive to the way CLIENT solves their business problems and drives revenue.
• Frame the discussion around complex event processing and extol CLIENT SOLUTION SUITE’s real-time architecture in delivering event-based solutions. Help prospects understand that CLIENT SOLUTION SUITE sets the gold standard for performance by delivering powerful algorithmic responsive customer engagement strategies.
• Emphasize that CLIENT solutions are proven at the top 20 Banks and more than 250 Capital Market firms. Then show how the CLIENT SOLUTION employs CEP to quickly discover and respond to customer opportunities including examples of capturing channel activity in real time, unlocking value and risk for Banks, and creating real-time, dynamic responses.
Avoid TL;DR
• Battle cards are the result of
tremendous amounts of
research
• Make your research and
conclusions “scannable” and
“digestible”
Avoid TL;DR
• Battle cards are the result of
tremendous amounts of
research
• Make your research and
conclusions “scannable” and
“digestible”
»Example:
»Explain how Savvion has been proven to work at the enterprise level. Savvion works at either departmental level or enterprise levels. Savvion BPM suite is highly scalable, high performance and highly available.
Tablet Friendly
• Navigation buttons
• 1-2 pages per section
• Links to source material
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1 CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY. FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY.
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Battlecard: Oracle Real-time Decisions Market: Real-time Cross-sell for Banking
Focal Partners (www.FocalPartners.com)
650-380-5862
SOLUTION OVERVIEW
• Oracle Real-Time Decisions (RTD) combines both rules and predictive analytics to power adaptive solutions for real-time enterprise decision management. Oracle RTD consists of four key components: Decision Center, Decision Manager, Decision Studio, and Real-Time Decision Server.
• Oracle RTD is a part of Oracle’s Business Intelligence solutions within the Oracle Middleware Software Group.
KEY WEAKNESSES TO ATTACK
• Product Integration: Oracle says: “The only multi-channel sales, service, marketing, and transaction solution pre-integrated with core banking.” Attack with: Despite acquiring the core technology in 2006, Oracle RTD is not integrated with Oracle Business Process Management (BPM), Complex Event Processing (CEP), or Business Transaction Monitoring (BTM) solution.
• Personalization: Oracle says: “Oracle RTD improves your overall business responsiveness with optimized, personalized customer interactions flows driven by self-adapting decisions that adjust in real-time, thereby maximizing the benefit of each opportunity.” Attack with: While Oracle RTD’s decision technology can adjust in real time, RTD is not built to correlate disparate data streams at very high data rates. In fact, Oracle RTD works best in a batch-processing mode on historical data; so it is only as useful as yesterday’s data is available.
• Comprehensive Solution: Oracle says: “Oracle has a comprehensive and industry-leading solution to meet the needs of real-time decisioning for responsive customer engagement in many industries.” Attack with: To differentiate its services, Banks need real-time information from disparate customer touch-points, strong analytics, and linked business process management. CLIENT SOLUTION, not Oracle RTD, offers Banks the ability to incorporate all three of these in a single solution.
KEY STRENGTHS TO COUNTER
• Vendor Viability: Oracle says: “Oracle has one of the largest service organizations in the world.” Counter with: Relatively few of Oracle’s Professional Service engineers are trained in Oracle RTD deployments. Therefore, Oracle supplements its highly specialized Oracle RTD integration team with junior engineers learning on the job. By contrast, since CLIENT SOLUTION is based on CLIENT’s core technology, a large segment of CLIENT’s professional services team is always qualified to help customers build solutions around CLIENT SOLUTION.
• Pricing: Oracle says: “Oracle is willing to earn your business with deep discounts to our licensing and support fees.” Counter with: Don’t be fooled by initial pricing. According to one Gartner analyst, “It's easy to [fall] out of compliance with Oracle licensing. They do nothing to help people stay in compliance. Then they audit you and hand you a big bill.”
• Incumbency: Oracle says: “As an existing Oracle customer, we can give you the total solution.” Counter with: Oracle RTD is not integrated with other Fusion Middleware components. In fact, Oracle makes more money scaring customers away from best-of-breed solutions and then charging to integrate Oracle RTD into the Oracle stack.
RECOMMENDATIONS
• Where Oracle is the incumbent, negotiate directly with line-of-business executives, who will be receptive to the way CLIENT solves their business problems and drives revenue.
• Frame the discussion around complex event processing and extol CLIENT SOLUTION SUITE’s real-time architecture in delivering event-based solutions. Help prospects understand that CLIENT SOLUTION SUITE sets the gold standard for performance by delivering powerful algorithmic responsive customer engagement strategies.
• Emphasize that CLIENT solutions are proven at the top 20 Banks and more than 250 Capital Market firms. Then show how the CLIENT SOLUTION employs CEP to quickly discover and respond to customer opportunities including examples of capturing channel activity in real time, unlocking value and risk for Banks, and creating real-time, dynamic responses.
Final Thoughts
What We’ve Covered Today
»A battle card is a tool for helping sales teams win hearts and minds»Battle cards get confusing when authors don’t pay attention to layout, data/content, and recommendations»Competitive intelligence teams do best when they “connect the dots” for Sales teams
»Win-Loss Data drives
toward better Battle Cards
»Make better
“recommendations”
»Organize your data by
audience
»Make it easy to find
information
Thank-you