BACKGROUND
There are multiple ways to go about competitive strategy from a Marketing standpoint, and it always depends on a company’s unique circumstances. What I had learned in my time leading competitive intelligence for the Worldwide Product Marketing Group for Microsoft Dynamics CRM is that the more your cross-functional teams understand and share about the competition, the better your chances of finding a meaningful value proposition for customers vs. alternatives.

At Microsoft, we faced strong competitors. One was the clear leader in the CRM market, and another was aggressive and growing at a tremendously fast rate. Microsoft was still a relatively new entrant in the CRM market and wasn’t the first vendor being shortlisted.

We needed to challenge the competition. While there were many aspects to this program, including a successful licensing promotion based on a rebate program (not covered here), it was clear that I needed to manage both external and internal challenges.

First, the antitrust lawsuits of the late ‘90s continued to have a massive impact on Microsoft all the way into the 2nd decade of the 3rd millennia. For example, our Legal team was required to review every piece of public-facing marketing content. It deemed whether the potential risk that each piece of content presented was acceptable or not, and what changes could (read: should) be made. Any piece that suggested competition was subsequently diluted or removed altogether. I needed to find a way to get executive support to arm our sales teams with edgier messaging and content intended to deposition tough competition.

Second, we wanted to change the narrative in the market and reframe the conversation around the topics that we learned are most important to our customers, and how Microsoft uniquely solves those needs. This approach invoked a simple, easy-to-consume microsite that was designed as a buyer’s guide for CRM purchases, and I called it “Less Talk, More Awesome.” There were no direct competitive mentions on this site (so Legal loved it), but it did contain plenty of indirect depositioning through landmines.

For example, it suggested several vendor evaluation questions that a buyer in market might ask their shortlisted vendors. Unsurprisingly, these questions focused on Microsoft’s differentiated strengths and the website provided Microsoft’s differentiated answer. If any customer were to use the questions with other vendors, it was sure to provide Microsoft with an advantage.

The last example is in stark contrast to the previous one. I wanted to punch back at a specific competitor that was using misleading and often incorrect information to instill fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) in accounts where we were competing. This approach was intended to help our salespeople and partners that were deep in the sales cycle, and some of the most aggressive marketing that Microsoft had participated in since before the anti-trust lawsuits.

The challenge, of course, was the anti-compete culture that had permeated every division. Luckily, in aligning with Corporate Vice Presidents who wanted to compete more aggressively, I received the support needed to “take the gloves off,” as we said at that time.

This approach manifested itself in a meaty, substantiative white paper of 16 pages that was built around a “pay more and get less” theme. The “Pay More” section outlined the high add-on costs of our competitor, and how those contrasted with what came with the core license of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The “Get Less” section put a microscope over every CRM application offered by each vendor and provided perspective for the buyer to understand exactly what functionality comes with each product’s core license and what would be extra. Microsoft, as you’d expect, offered a far superior value proposition.

Besides the requisite competitive battlecards, win/loss reports, and such, these were two of the programs I had put in place to support our customer-facing sales teams with content that could be shared with prospects.

There were many benefits to these programs. Our sales, partner, and subsidiary marketing teams relished the notion that we took a strong stand against a brash competitor. And it also gave them more confidence and information to respond to competitive FUD, and even lay a bit of our own out there for our competitors to churn through.