Jason Smith’s Post

I’ve been at this for over 30 years now. Yet there’s still room for incremental improvement in how I operate every single day. Whether it’s: - Tightening the problem focus on an email outreach I’d sent to an exec peer. - Crafting new stories and examples in my speaking appearances. - Connecting more frequently with our customers There are opportunities to improve you, and your team’s, work every single day. Within our customer base, they are often staring at a $50+ million dollar competitive revenue gap problem that they need to close. But closing that doesn’t happen overnight. It’s an outcome of a series of incremental improvements With whatever you’re trying to accomplish, tighten those gaps. Because they will always be there.

I sit directly across from our sales team in the Klue office. Three reasons why it keeps me sharp 👇 1. I can give quick feedback on how they can tweak their pitch. If I hear one rep over-promising, I’m able to course correct and understand if that is happening across the team. 2. We talk shop about what we think our market and competitive landscape will look like in the short and long-term from each of our view points. 3. I get a front-line understanding of objections, buyer pains, pushbacks, and competitor claims. Not everyone has the luxury of in-person collaboration, but you need to know what is happening within deals that are in flight. If you don’t, then odds are you’ll leave more than a handful of winnable deals on the table (or worse into your competitor’s pockets).

Every company has three things in common: Customers. Employees. And competitors. Even when you find a niche and an angle that is truly unique. If that becomes successful, then the money (and competition) will follow. And the landscape then becomes crowded. Once that happens, what do you know will differentiate your company in the eyes of your buyers? If you don't have a clear answer to this, then you'll get swallowed up the sea of alternatives out there.

We don’t celebrate milestones nearly enough. There have been some huge wins at Klue in Q2, and we had a chance at our company all-hands on Friday to acknowledge them: - Our largest expansion to date.  - Our second biggest combined win-loss + competitive intel deal - Our fastest time to launch with an enterprise customer What I love most when looking at each of these milestones was the number of different people on the Klue Crew who directly or indirectly had a hand in making these moments happen. We’re often looking at what’s next (and it’s no different at Klue) but getting a moment to reflect on these team wins that span from CS to sales to support to product, marketing and more reminds me of why I love what we get to do.

Passion is the most overlooked ingredient that drives businesses to become market leaders. I’ve always believed that as our momentum grew at Klue, but couldn’t directly point to it. That was until I started looking at buyer interviews more regularly. I was reviewing a recent key win report in our win-loss program… and guess what I found? “I trust the passion that Klue actually wants to build the best tool out there and be the market leader.” This was one of their biggest decision-drivers the buyer had for selecting us over a competitor 👆 Buyers aren’t just selecting vendors on capabilities in that moment alone. They need to believe in your passion and vision that you’re building the strongest business in the market. Otherwise they’re probably picking your competitor.

Millions of reps get asked the same question every day: “How do you compare to X…?” Buyers are more educated than ever. Which means sellers can’t afford to wing it. Those are the moments — and deals — where sellers need to understand the alternatives they're competing with. And if your reps are able to confidently answer that question, then your team is likely in a lot better position to hit their target.

Exec teams can go cross-eyed staring at business metrics. One simple thing that I love to look at that brings this data to life 👇 Quotes and clips from buyers that chose us or a competitor. There's something about the unvarnished feedback from the people evaluating your product that adds context to a lot of the GTM metrics we review. They stick. I swear there are buyer quotes I can recite line-for-line even a year later. It's like a terrible song on the radio that you can't get out of your head 🤣 Now, combine those with win-rates against biggest competitive threats and the top reasons as to why we're winning and losing against each? Then you're bringing some of the most valuable insights that drives business decisions to the table.

One of my favourite memories building Klue was finding product-market fit. Every Friday we'd invite our peer network over to get a look at the new run of our product. They'd absolutely tear it up. And then something started happening... I could feel their eyes light up as we'd bring something new and different to the table each time in response to what they said previously. It's hard to put into words, but you 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘬𝘯𝘦𝘸 we were onto something. Fast forward to today, and this is why I love our Klue Quarterly celebration. Our team share with our customers and Compete community: - Newest releases in Klue - What's we're working on in 2024 - Walk throughs on how to get the most out of Klue Getting to see the feedback from customers who can't contain their excitement over what's coming in comments, DMs, and in follow-up messages just sends me right back to those early days all over again. Thank you to everyone who joined us for Klue Quarterly yesterday, and if you missed it, the team wrote a quick recap on the biggest moments in the comments below 👇

One of the biggest momentum builders we had at Klue as we took on our direct competitors 👇 Rip n' replacements. The customers that were with our competitors, who switched over to us. These are huge moments inside a business for a few reasons. 1. Social proof that reinforced our momentum We kept a tally internally. Each time we landed a new deal in Slack, we'd add it to the total. It became the first thing reps and our Compete team would note in the comments. And this wasn't just a 'rah rah' rallying moment. This was social proof that reinforced: - Our outbound (90+ customers have now switched for X Y Z reason) - Our comparison page (an asset we could drive from ads + follow-ups) 2. We learned even more about our competition from these switchers Understanding why a customer switched from a competitor to us was a huge reinforcer in the messages, value props, and product direction that we should double down in. It was our first moments of getting, and acting, on unfiltered feedback from our buyers. We'd hear things like our laser-focus on: - A product that helped our customers keep revenue teams dialled in against competitors. - Running sales cycles where we were considered trusted advisors, and not pushy sales people - Our education-first marketing that helped our audience do their roles a little better each day These micro moments really add up. Blink and suddenly these deals are boosting morale and revenue.

I remember when we first received funding at Klue. We were considered the 'scrappy Canadian' underdog. Our competitors even called us that verbatim in sales calls. But the reason our VCs backed us is because they saw an opportunity in two things: 1. The competitive intel category 2. Our product, vision, and momentum to gain market leadership In order to meet the goals that come with significant investment, we HAD to have a strategy to take market leadership from the incumbents in place (meta for the Compete company, I know). I don't think this gets talked about enough. And there's a lot of micro + macro things that we did to surpass our biggest competitors from four years ago to today. I'll be sharing what these things were more here - if you have questions for me on this topic drop them in the comments, I want to hear what Qs folks have when it comes to competitive strategy at the leadership level. Because if you don't have a competitive strategy in a crowded category... then you don't really have a strategy at all.