I Just Bought Crayon For the Second Time—Here's Why

I have been working in the B2B SaaS world for over five years now. As a competitive intelligence (CI) professional, I help companies define and build their CI programs so that they can be one step ahead and crush their competitors.

Over time, I’ve noticed competition intensifying, and it is becoming harder and harder to keep tabs on rivals’ movements. That’s why Crayon’s CI platform has become an essential part of my tech stack. It takes on the burden of gathering, filtering, and categorizing real-time competitive intel and provides my company with a detailed overview of our competitive landscape so that we can stand out and differentiate in our market.

From the first time I used Crayon, I’ve never looked back. I’ve been a user for nearly four years now, and as I settle into a new CI position at a new company, Crayon will join me and play a major role in my company’s success ... for the second time.

Strong partnership

One of my favorite aspects of Crayon is that they treat me like I'm part of the family. It’s clear that they have a customer-first culture, and it brings my experience as a Crayon user to the next level. I have developed strong bonds with the Crayon team – from my customer success manager and dedicated competitive insights analyst to marketing and sales leadership.

I also appreciate the way Crayon values my feedback and the cadence with which they act upon it. Knowing that Crayon will always listen to my needs as a customer and do what they can to help me and my company be most successful is a major factor in how we’ve grown such a strong, long-lasting partnership.

Company-wide impact

Competitive intelligence is only as good as the impact it yields. Crayon gets this, and they demonstrate their understanding by making it easy for me to create deliverables and get intel to the right people at the right time. For my product teams, it has helped build their roadmaps. For my marketing teams, it has provided a unique perspective to ensure messaging and positioning are relevant in the market. For my leadership teams, it has armed them with a sharp understanding of our competitive landscape. For my sales teams, it has improved win rates and helped sellers come out ahead in competitive deals (shoutout to Crayon’s intuitive and easily shareable battlecards). 

And for me, as a CI pro, Crayon has guided me through the complexities of implementing CI as a formal function, cut down on my research process, and helped me connect my CI efforts to a wide range of business outcomes. At times, success can be hard to measure when you work in CI, but Crayon makes it easy for me, and my company, to thrive.

Cultural change

Another source of value that Crayon brings to my business is its ability to connect departments and create a culture of gathering, sharing, and acting on CI. Throughout my Crayon experience, adoption rates have always been high and CI culture has been robust. Sellers at my last company, ZoomInfo, loved Crayon so much that the adoption rate across 1,000+ sales professionals was around 90%.

This has allowed me to build stronger relationships between myself and sellers. By utilizing the power of Crayon and its seamless integrations with Slack, HighSpot, and ClickUp (just to name a few), I am able to work directly and conveniently with sales to update, maintain, and create sales enablement materials that help them go into competitive conversations with preparedness, ease, and confidence.

Powerful scalability

As a CI professional, I come up against the age-old challenge of limited resources. Typically, I work as a one-man CI team, and it’s practically impossible for me to know every movement competitors are making around me. With Crayon, I’m able to leverage larger-scale intelligence that I likely wouldn’t have found before. I can then push this intel in real-time to a variety of stakeholders so we can adjust our positioning to further grow our business.

Also, the Crayon platform’s seamless ability to scale as organizations and departments grow is impressive. For example, if you’re a team of one supporting a marketing team but are looking to grow your CI program to now support sellers, Crayon is the perfect platform to evolve with you. Having the assurance that my company will never outgrow Crayon, and that it will always grow with us, is something I deeply appreciate about the platform.

Long-lasting success with Crayon

Crayon isn’t just another tool in my tech stack. It’s an essential platform that’s become part of my daily routine. That’s why, in my new CI role at ClickUp, I’ve decided to partner with Crayon ... for the second time.

I’m excited for Crayon to join me again – to work together as partners to identify competitive opportunities and ensure that my company aligns with buyer needs and expectations. I have a feeling that together we’re going to crush 2022.