Your Competitors’ Sales Pros: The Unlikely Informants of Your Competitive Playbook

Ah, the thrill of the chase in the business world, tracking competitors’ moves, and deciphering their strategies! Just like marketers, who, despite their best intentions, can sometimes become their own worst enemy, many companies overlook the goldmine of insights sitting right in front of them—public activities of their competitors’ Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) and Account Executives (AEs).

Why does this treasure trove often remain buried? It may be because, in the flurry of new business trends and jargon, the simplest tactics can be the most effective yet the most overlooked.

Remember the good old days when businesses focused on ‘sales’ without the embellishment of today’s constantly evolving lexicon of sales strategies?

There’s a lesson there: sometimes, getting back to basics to clear, plain-sighted observations can offer the most valuable insights, especially in a landscape cluttered with the newest acronyms and methodologies.

The underappreciated art of watching and learning

SDRs and AEs are out there every day, pushing their products and inadvertently showcasing their company’s strategies and market focus. They connect, converse, close—or sometimes falter. Each action is a subplot in the larger narrative of the competitive market, openly available on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and various industry forums.

Why should you care? Just as marketing budgets are often the first on the chopping block during a downturn, as Harvard Business Review noted, understanding your competitors’ frontline strategies can safeguard your business against potential threats and downturns.

It’s about ensuring survival and strategizing dominance by learning not just from your own experiences but also from the visible footprints of your competitors. This knowledge can give you a strategic edge, empowering you to make informed decisions and stay ahead of the game.

Tactical espionage is not as sinister as it sounds

It all looks great–in theory. But what does it look like in practice? Here are some real-life insights from monitoring your competitors’ sales pros.

1. Lead generation insights: Dive into how competitors’ SDRs generate leads. Are they aggressively using LinkedIn to push content or engaging in nuanced, industry-specific discussions on niche platforms? Each pattern of engagement provides clues about who they’re targeting and how effectively they’re reaching their audience.
2. Analyzing outreach: The how, where, and when of competitor outreach can reveal much about their sales operations’ rhythm and priorities. Observations here can range from the frequency of their email blasts to the persistence of their follow-up calls. Are their AEs pushing hard on upsells or focusing on growing a base via wide-reaching webinars? These insights can help you tune your orchestra to play a more resonant tune in the market symphony.
3. Content strategy deconstruction: Here’s where you play detective with the content that competitors’ AEs share. What pain points do they highlight? What benefits do they push the most? This is your chance to counteract their narrative with your finely tuned messaging, addressing the gaps they’ve left wide open.

Leveraging tools to uncover hidden gems

We have discussed competitive intelligence tools in depth, so here’s just a quick rundown of the ones that will help you with this specific competitive hack:

• Unkover: Think of Unkover as your high-powered binoculars in this game of competitive birdwatching. It helps you see far and wide, picking up on patterns you wouldn’t notice with the naked eye. Plus, it’s easy to set up, and you can start for free.
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator: This isn’t just for networking. It’s a goldmine for tracking how competitors interact with their network. Who are they connecting with? What are they posting? More importantly—what does this say about their strategic focus?
• BuzzSumo: Content is king, but context is queen. BuzzSumo lets you see which content themes strike a chord in the industry, guiding you to tune your content strategy to resonate better with your audience.

Keeping score in the competitive game with practical metrics

Here are some key metrics you can use to measure the success and effectiveness of this strategy. You’ll find them in your dashboard when using Unkover.

• Engagement rates: How well do competitors’ posts perform? Do people applaud their content or merely give it a courteous nod? High engagement rates can be the applause you need to hear to judge the effectiveness of their strategies.
• Sales cycle insights: How quick are their closures? This tempo, whether adagio or allegro, speaks volumes about their operational efficiency and market agility.
• Customer feedback: Direct from the horse’s mouth—what are customers actually saying? Reviews and feedback can often cut through the noise and give you the candid truth about market perceptions.

From insight to foresight: crafting a winning strategy

Why not use these observations to refine your outreach, tailor your messaging, and amplify your market presence?

For instance, if you notice that a competitor’s AEs are pushing a specific benefit of their product, you can counteract this by highlighting a different, unique benefit of your own product.

Instead of getting lost in a sea of acronyms that rebrand old strategies, focus on what truly matters: clear, actionable, revenue-impacting strategies that speak in terms executives understand—growth, retention, and profitability.

Conclusion: the simple genius of observation

Let’s circle back to simplicity.

In an age where business complexity is often glorified, observing and learning from your competitors’ SDRs and AEs offer a straightforward yet effective strategy for competitive intelligence.

Tools like Unkover are your allies in this quest, simplifying the complex and uncovering the actionable.

In the grand chessboard of competitive strategy, every move counts, every pattern tells a story, and every insight can be the difference between a checkmate and being checked out. Remember, it’s not about who’s got the fanciest moves; it’s about who plays the smartest with the pieces they have.

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