Competitive Intelligence Is Not About The Checkmarks

"We need to know what we can do that they can't." If I had a penny for every time a sales rep asked me this question! Indeed, most competitive intelligence work seems to be spent producing a matrix with checkmarks that might look like this:

Oracle loves doing this!

Of course, this kind of comparison is completely useless. It lacks the credibility to be taken seriously by a prospect, it doesn’t have the details to be useful for product decisions, and it doesn’t help sellers win any deals. What does it mean "Limited Solution"? 

Adding rows to the matrix might add granularity but doesn’t alleviate these issues. Just look at this comparison with Box that I found on Dropbox’s website: 

Wow, look, no passwords in Box!

Such a comparison becomes only slightly more credible when conducted by an independent analyst firm, but even then, it lacks the necessary insights. I appreciate that Forrester includes some weighting for each area of functionality in its Wave but scoring 3.00 points for Customers and Accounts doesn’t really tell me much about a Billing product. The Wave may help you get on the shortlist, but it will not win any deals.

So, what should Competitive Intelligence be doing if not comparing features?

The objective of the function is to increase the win rate. That’s it. Increasing the win rate will, at some point, involve enabling the sellers with insights and tools because that’s where the rubber meets the road. However, the Competitive Intelligence (CI) function can influence the go-to-market (GTM) strategy in ways that ensure the sellers work on opportunities they stand a chance of winning.

Rather than thinking of CI output as sales tools, it needs to inform the GTM strategy. That starts with understanding where your competitors are successful. Which market segments do they target, and where are they winning business? The competitor’s website usually mentions several target verticals, but only some of those segments are where they get most of their business, while others are aspirational.

CI needs to find out the competitor’s strongholds – for example, by profiling all their customer references. Yes, this is a lot of work, but it gives you much better insights than the “Industries” tab on the website. Usually, segmentation has more granularity than just industries, which needs to be analyzed. Understanding competitors' segmentation should inform your own segmentation strategy. It may be wise to avoid direct confrontation on your competitor’s home turf, and you may find more success in another segment.

Once you have decided on your target segment, you need to recommend the sales play. Who’s the buyer? Do you start with a single department, or do you go after the entire enterprise through IT? Do you lead with a particular product or capability, or do you lead with a comprehensive solution? Again, knowing how your competitor goes to market can help you make the right decision that will lead to an increased win rate. The CI team needs to find that out and document it - and that is a lot of work as well.

After you determine your target segment and sales play, you need to figure out what’s the best way of finding the targets. CI can yet again contribute by analyzing how the competitors go about it and recommending whether to use the same marketing tactics and communication channels. For example, if you see your competitor doing a lot of work with industry analysts and you don’t talk to any of them, you should probably invest in your own analyst relations function.

Eventually, you need to decide on your messaging. Is it about saving costs, increasing employee productivity, or improving safety? Competitive differentiation is a key element of not just your corporate and product messaging but also your strategy. Understanding your competitor’s messaging - and strategy - can greatly improve the effectiveness of yours.

Ultimately, you do need to train the sellers. But they need to be trained on the target segments, sales plays, strategy, and messaging, which includes your competitive strengths. They may need a tool that helps them learn all of that, including the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. That tool is not a list of features with green checkmarks in the column under your company's name.

Competitive Intelligence is much more strategic than creating a feature comparison.

What Happened to Vision Statements?

Every technology company needs a vision. A vision acts as the North Star that guides the company in what it is trying to accomplish. It describes how the world will be different because of the company's efforts and explains how the world will become better when the company succeeds.

Yet nowadays, very few companies share their vision statement or even have one. And they should.

Vision vs mission statement 

When I researched tech companies, I would often find a mission statement. Some were good, some not so much, but very few shared their vision. Often, companies mix up the two terms, answering with their mission when asked for a vision. But mission and vision aren't the same. 

A vision describes the future state your company working towards. It's a world different and better from the world we know today. A mission, on the other hand, explains what the company does to achieve that vision; the company's role in making that vision reality. Vision is about changing the world; mission is about the company. 

Good companies have a clear vision. It's not hard to guess that Tesla envisions a world with all cars running on electricity. Google likely wants a world where finding information is easy. And SpaceX's vision has humans living on Mars. These visions are obvious and they not only make the companies' value propositions easy to understand, they also strengthen their brands.

You might think these are big companies with strong brands, which is why their vision is so clear. But a strong brand doesn't always mean a clear vision. Many powerful brands including Microsoft, Apple, and Nvidia are quite opaque about their vision. They are very successful companies, but they are not sharing their vision. And they should be. 

Importance of vision  

Take OpenAI, a company with a mission statement that mentions AGI (artificial general intelligence), yet OpenAI doesn’t share its AGI vision. But a company like OpenAI needs a vision more than any other company. It builds a product that could change the world. What will that future world look like? 

Without articulating its vision, others are doing it for them. Opinions about AGI range from irrational exuberance to fearmongering and conspiracies. As a result, the CEO faces Senate hearings and gives interviews where he says things like “AI can go quite wrong” and “we are a little bit scared” instead of inspiring us with his vision.

If you don’t control your vision, somebody else’s vision will control you. 

Vision statement rules 

Numerous MBA-like websites analyze vision and mission statements, offering more or less useful advice on how to write them (i.e. 'use present tense'). But as I explained in The Secrets of Good Messaging, the meaning is more important than the grammatical structure. A good vision statement should follow these rules: 

• Vision must be, well, visionary. It can’t just reflect present reality. Instead, it needs to be futuristic, bold, and ambitious. A good vision can be provocative, even attracting contrarian views. There are many vocal opponents of electric vehicles, but that doesn't make Tesla's vision any less visionary. For a technology company, some future form of the technology the company might be working on will enable the vision. Your vision can't be achieved with what's on your roadmap today.

• Vision must be compelling. The new world it describes must be better than the current one. A good vision should inspire and offer something new. "We want to become the most admired company" might be compelling to the employees, but it hardly inspires any customers. Promising to preserve the status quo isn't compelling enough. It has to be something new that we will want. 

• Vision should be enduring; not subject to a change every year. Its time horizon should be at minimum a decade, preferably 2-3 decades. Microsoft's vision of "a computer on every desk and in every home" took at least 25 years to materialize. Think big and think long-term. At the same time, don't impose a deadline on your vision—it's a vision, not a goal. When President Kennedy told Congress that "...before this decade is out, [we’ll] land a man on the Moon...", he explicitly called it a goal. By the early '70s, that goal was achieved, and America lost interest in lunar exploration. There was no vision. 

• Vision must be achievable in the long term. There needs to be an eventual endpoint. Remember Microsoft’s vision of a computer on every desk? Today, it has become a reality (except for the Oval Office – it puzzles me why there’s no computer on the Resolute Desk). Similarly, it is conceivable that one day, all cars will be electric, all information in the world will be accessible, and humans will colonize Mars. None of these things is likely to happen anytime soon, but there is an end-state included in the vision.

• Vision should be flexible in scope, avoiding commitments to specific technology, target markets, or time frames. These factors will inevitably change. At some point, Tesla realized that to transform the world into a world of electric vehicles, it had to get into the business of building charging stations. Tesla's vision required a scope beyond the electric car technology.

• Vision should be big, bigger than the company. Other companies may need to share your vision, to contribute to its realization. When Bob Metcalf said that one day, every computer would be connected, he started a company that made network adapters (3Com). His vision still needed other companies to build routers and switches (i.e., Cisco, Synoptics, Wellfleet) and develop networking software (Novell, IBM, Microsoft). The vision was much bigger than the company. 

Target audience  

A vision statement is supposed to have a very broad appeal, as your company can only have one corporate vision (although you can have multiple visions for multiple product lines). As tempting as it may be to say that the target audience is everyone, it would be a cardinal sin of marketing. Therefore, let’s be clear that the target audience for your vision statement is your current and prospective:  

1. customers,  

2. employees,  

3. everyone else.  

The "everyone else” group includes investors. Let’s not be confused about that. You may need investor-specific messaging and an investor pitch deck, but your vision statement is not primarily targeting your investors. 

Vision packaging 

Just like with any other message, the substance is far more important than the way it is packaged. Ideally, your customers should be able to tell your vision in their own words. You can say, “People will live on other planets,” or “Humans will become multiplanetary.” It means the same thing, even if the official SpaceX vision wording is “Making humanity multiplanetary.” Yes, words matter, but when people find your vision compelling, they will be able to explain it in their own words. That makes a great vision!

Of course, it doesn’t hurt if your vision is packaged up in a snappy and easy-to-remember phrase. If nothing else, brevity is key. Your vision statement must not be long – people don’t have the attention span for anything long. One brief sentence is the goal. Still, a vision statement is not a marketing slogan. If your slogan can articulate your vision, that’s great. But the vision's main goal is to inspire people, not to convert clicks.

Vision statement examples 

To conclude, let’s look at a few examples of good and not-so-good company vision statements. I scored them against the rules outlined above, and in some cases, I offered a better version. Feel free to do better: 

Google 

“To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” 

This is really a mission statement, but there is a vision hidden inside: a world where all information is universally accessible is inherently a compelling vision that meets most of the requirements. Note that it’s very flexible about the technologies required; it doesn’t mention Google solutions such as search or mobile devices. But those technologies surely contribute to achieving this vision. The only miss is that this vision expects Google to achieve it alone. I’d make just some very minor changes:

“Google’s vision is the world’s information accessible by everyone.” 

Futuristic
Compelling
Enduring
Achievable
Flexible
Bigger than the company

Meta 

“The metaverse is the next evolution of social connection. Our company’s vision is to help bring the metaverse to life, so we are changing our name to reflect our commitment to this future.” 

Meta’s vision is the metaverse, which is very visionary. The statement is compelling (evolution of social connection…whatever that is), and it is likely enduring, achievable, and flexible. On the same page, Meta also says “The metaverse will be a collective project that goes beyond a single company.” That makes it bigger than Meta; I only wish it was included in the vision statement. The “we are changing our name” part has obviously a one-time purpose and shouldn’t be included in an enduring vision. A cleaner vision statement for Meta could look something like this: 

“Meta’s vision is a metaverse where virtual social connections rival those experienced in real life”. 

And Meta’s mission is “to bring the metaverse to life”. 

Futuristic
Compelling
Enduring
Achievable
Flexible
Bigger than the company

Zuora 

“The world. Subscribed”. 

Zuora is my former employer, and its vision statement is worth including. Zuora is the leader in subscription management and has developed a very strong narrative about the subscription economy. This is a great vision statement, and it is also a good example of packaging it in the form of a snappy marketing tagline. The world full of subscriptions may not be obviously compelling but rest assured that Zuora's narrative explains how subscriptions transform the burden of owning products into the freedom of using them. It's hard to do better. 

Futuristic
Compelling
Enduring
Achievable
Flexible
Bigger than the company

Coinbase 

“We are building the cryptoeconomy – a more fair, accessible, efficient, and transparent financial system enabled by crypto.” 

I was surprised to have found this one. Kudos that the company has a vision statement. I find it not that compelling, but that’s perhaps because I don’t fully understand how the shortcomings of the current financial system. It also includes a solution (crypto), which makes it less flexible. I suspect that it will take more than cryptocurrency to achieve this new economy. But all in all, it’s not bad. 

My take: “Our vision is a global cryptoeconomy that is secure, efficient, and inclusive.”

Note: I'm not quite satisfied with the three value propositions in this vision statement (nor in the original one). The crypto industry has yet to effectively articulate its value proposition, which is why it has been primarily attracting speculators and criminals thus far. However, that'd be a separate project altogether. 

Futuristic
Compelling
Enduring
Achievable
Flexible
Bigger than the company

Stripe 

“Stripe is a technology company that builds economic infrastructure for the internet.” 

This is obviously not a vision statement; it’s a brief company description. However, there is a spark of vision hidden in the phrase 'economic infrastructure for the internet'. What's missing is something compelling. Why does the Internet need an economic infrastructure? Isn’t there plenty of commerce already happening online? Something like this could become a vision statement: 

“Stripe’s vision is an economic infrastructure for the Internet that makes it easy for everyone to participate.” 

Futuristic
Compelling
Enduring
Achievable
Flexible
Bigger than the company

SpaceX 

“Making humanity multiplanetary” 

SpaceX has a very lofty vision that is futuristic, compelling, enduring, achievable, flexible, and bigger than the company itself. The magnitude of this vision is appropriate for a company engaged in space travel. There's not much I could do to improve this vision statement. The phrasing effectively serves as both a vision and the company's mission simultaneously, which I would prefer to separate. Maybe something like this might work:  

“SpaceX's vision is multiplanetary.” 

“SpaceX's mission is to put the first humans on Mars.”  

But honestly, what they have is pretty darn good. 

Futuristic
Compelling
Enduring
Achievable
Flexible
Bigger than the company

OpenAI 

“Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence—AI systems that are generally smarter than humans—benefits all of humanity.” 

It’s great to see that OpenAI has a mission, but as I already mentioned, it could be better. It needs a vision, which is partially hidden in the mission statement: AGI. But we are left to guess what it is for, and there is no flexibility in scope (it’s AI or bust). To make the statement more compelling, I would try something like this: 

“OpenAI’s vision is a world where AGI makes everyone more productive and fulfilled.” 

Futuristic
Compelling
Enduring
Achievable
Flexible
Bigger than the company

 

Conclusion

Every technology company needs a public vision statement. It describes the new world that the company is striving to achieve. It must not be self-centered; instead, it should be something that the majority of your customers, prospects, employees, partners, and investors find compelling. The truly exceptional visions, as exemplified in the examples above, are very bold and transformative. They depict a new world made possible by electric cars, the metaverse, AGI, cryptocurrency, subscriptions, and even space travel. How inspiring is that?

You might hear some doubts. You may encounter skeptics. You will be told that it will not happen in your lifetime. Sure. But you won’t be accused of not having a vision!