The “Competitive Intelligence” Brief

What It Is

The Competitive Intelligence Brief generates deep-dive competitive analysis on demand. When a rep identifies a competitor in a deal, they can request a brief that aggregates recent news, pricing intelligence, customer reviews, product updates, and win/loss patterns—delivered within minutes rather than requiring manual research.

Why It Matters

Generic battlecards cover the basics, but strategic deals need more. Knowing that a competitor just raised prices, lost a major customer, or launched a new feature changes how you position. On-demand briefs give reps fresh, relevant intelligence when the stakes are high.

Who It's For

• Account Executives in competitive deals
• Sales Enablement teams supporting strategic opportunities
• Sales managers coaching on competitive positioning
• Product marketing teams gathering field intelligence

Required Tools

• Perplexity AI or Crayon for competitive monitoring
• GPT-4 for synthesis and formatting
• G2/TrustRadius for review mining
• Slack or email for delivery
• CRM for deal context

Required Fields/Properties

• Competitor name and website
• Deal size and stage
• Prospect industry and use case
• Specific competitive questions (optional)

Definitions Required

• What intelligence categories to include
• Sources to aggregate
• Freshness requirements (how recent is 'recent')
• Delivery format and turnaround time

Competitive Brief Template

🎯 COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE BRIEF
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📊 **Competitor:** {{competitor_name}}
🏢 **Deal:** {{prospect_company}} | {{deal_size}} | {{deal_stage}}
📅 **Generated:** {{date}}

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

## ⚡ EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
{{executive_summary}}

## 📰 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
{{#each recent_news}}
• **{{date}}**: {{headline}} ([source]({{url}}))
{{/each}}

## 🔍 PRODUCT COMPARISON
| Capability | Us | {{competitor_name}} | Edge |
|------------|-----|-----|------|
{{#each features}}
| {{name}} | {{us}} | {{them}} | {{edge}} |
{{/each}}

## 💰 PRICING INTELLIGENCE
{{pricing_intel}}

## 💬 CUSTOMER SENTIMENT (G2 Reviews)
**What customers love:**
{{positive_reviews}}

**What customers hate:**
{{negative_reviews}}

**Why customers leave:**
{{churn_reasons}}

## 📈 WIN/LOSS PATTERNS
**Recent wins against {{competitor_name}}:**
{{win_patterns}}

**Recent losses (learn from these):**
{{loss_patterns}}

## 🎯 RECOMMENDED STRATEGY
**Key talking points:**
{{#each talking_points}}
• {{point}}
{{/each}}

**Questions to ask:**
{{#each questions}}
• {{question}}
{{/each}}

**Traps to set:**
{{#each traps}}
• {{trap}}
{{/each}}

Brief Request Form

🔍 REQUEST COMPETITIVE BRIEF

**Competitor:** [Dropdown or text field]
**Deal Link:** [CRM opportunity URL]
**Deal Size:** [$X]
**Deal Stage:** [Dropdown]

**Specific Questions (optional):**
[ ] Pricing/discounting patterns
[ ] Recent product changes
[ ] Customer references in our industry
[ ] Why customers leave them
[ ] Other: [Free text]

**Urgency:**
( ) Standard (4 hours)
( ) Urgent (1 hour) - requires justification

[Submit Request]

Slack Brief Request Command

// Slack slash command handler
/compete <competitor> <deal_url> [--urgent] [--questions "your questions"]

// Examples:
/compete Acme https://crm.com/opp/123
/compete "Beta Corp" https://crm.com/opp/456 --urgent
/compete Gamma https://crm.com/opp/789 --questions "What's their pricing for enterprise?"

Intelligence Sources Matrix

| Category | Primary Source | Secondary Source | Update Frequency |
|----------|---------------|------------------|------------------|
| News | Perplexity AI | Google News | Real-time |
| Reviews | G2 | TrustRadius | Weekly |
| Pricing | Internal deals | Competitor site | Monthly |
| Product | Competitor changelog | G2 feature comparison | Weekly |
| Win/Loss | CRM | Gong calls | Weekly |

Test Cases Checklist

• Brief requested → delivered within SLA (4 hours standard, 1 hour urgent)
• Unknown competitor → graceful handling with basic web research
• No recent news found → clear indication, focus on other sections
• Rep feedback collected → routed for system improvement
• Brief correlated with won deal → success pattern logged

Common Failure Modes

• Stale intelligence: News from 6 months ago isn't helpful. Filter aggressively for recency and clearly date all information.
• Generic content: Brief that could apply to any deal isn't useful. Incorporate deal context and prospect specifics.
• Too long to read: 20-page briefs don't get read. Keep to 2-3 pages max with executive summary up top.
• Missing 'so what': Data without recommendations is useless. Every brief needs a 'what should I do' section.

Troubleshooting Tips

• If briefs aren't requested: Make the process easier; consider auto-generating for large deals
• If intelligence is incomplete: Add more sources; review which categories are consistently weak
• If reps say briefs aren't helpful: Survey for specific gaps; may need more deal context integration
• If delivery is too slow: Pre-cache common competitors; use faster LLM for non-urgent requests

KPIs to Track

• Brief Request Rate: Brief requested for 80%+ of competitive deals >$50K
• Delivery SLA: 95% of briefs delivered within SLA
• Rep Satisfaction: >8/10 average helpfulness rating
• Competitive Win Rate: Track win rate for deals with vs. without briefs
• Intelligence Freshness: >70% of news items from last 90 days

Suggested Dashboard Widgets

• Briefs by Competitor: Which competitors drive the most brief requests
• Request to Delivery Time: How quickly briefs are being delivered
• Win Rate with Brief: Competitive win rate for deals that requested briefs
• Feedback Trends: Rep satisfaction and common improvement requests