ALTERYX + CRAYON

Since diving into the world of competitive intelligence, Spencer Hong has not yet come up for air. In that time, Spencer has jumpstarted CI programs at two leading B2B software companies, with some help from Crayon along the way.

Now, as the Senior Competitive Intelligence Analyst at Alteryx, Spencer is actively enabling more than 2,500 team members worldwide — including a go-to-market team of over 1,000 individuals!

So, how does he do it? In a word — dedication. In a phrase — constant evangelism. 

And in Spencer’s own words — “By supporting anyone and everyone with competitive intelligence.”

With all of their current success, it’s hard to believe that the competitive intelligence function at Alteryx wasn’t always so refined. Before tapping the power of Crayon, their CI function was far less digitally enabled and far more reliant on simply sharing PDFs.

“Before I joined, we didn’t use any software for competitive intelligence besides Google Alerts,” explained Spencer. “Which is nothing compared to what Crayon offers.”

Spencer — along with Alteryx’ Manager of Market & Competitive Intelligence, David Cooperberg — were in search of a platform that could transform their competitive intelligence function. And when you have big dreams for your CI program, you need a solution capable of scaling alongside your ambitions.

As Spencer (and anyone who has ever onboarded software) knows, the early days are crucial in generating adoption for your platform. If you don’t get eyes on your solution in the first month, you’ll find yourself fighting an uphill battle to reach the adoption targets you’re striving for in the long run.

Crayon was quick to take some of that onboarding weight off of Spencer’s shoulders. “Our dedicated Customer Success Manager is awesome,” said Spencer. “From day one of being introduced to Crayon’s CS team, we worked closely to build and align on our CI program’s goals. Crayon came to our first meeting with a 30-60-90 day plan, which really helped get our internal stakeholders on the same page.”

“The team’s organized manner allowed them to come to every meeting with action items, which was incredibly helpful as we onboarded and developed Crayon internally,” continued Spencer. “I am not kidding, Crayon’s CSM function is a true differentiator among CI providers.”

If there’s one thing Spencer learned from his first time using Crayon at a previous company, it’s that onboarding new software is a team sport. Spencer took a multi-pronged approach to generating initial adoption of Crayon at Alteryx.

Spencer’s onboarding team was a real Who’s Who of internal stakeholders: IT to set up the SSO and Salesforce integrations, his Chief Product Officer to internally evangelize Crayon, and sales leadership to further generate awareness of the tool.

“Once the tool was deployed, we kicked off a sales training campaign and started using an internal kudos system to highlight the sellers or Sales Engineers who utilize Crayon the most,” explained Spencer. “We found that if we can encourage and promote use of Crayon, it just makes people want to use it even more.”

After onboarding Crayon, Alteryx saw a 40% increase in battlecard adoption across thousands of users within the first 60 days of launch and an increase in competitive win rates. But how did they get there?

According to Spencer, word of mouth is one of the greatest tools for evangelizing Crayon. So, he took it upon himself to get in front of as many sellers and sales engineers as possible — armed with the Crayon + Salesforce integration ready to back up his claims by proving initial value to the sales team.

“Crayon integrations are pivotal for adoption,” said Spencer. “The fewer clicks it takes sellers to do their job, the better. Having Crayon battlecards generated in Salesforce is huge for reducing the journey of finding battlecards.”

To stoke continued battlecard adoption, Spencer meets with his sales teams on a monthly basis. The key to generating adoption across such a large global sales force? Creating battlecards that sellers actually want to use.

“When I join a sales team meeting the first thing I do is ask about the top competitors for their team, since every team has different regional, industry, and department competitors,” said Spencer. “This way I can make sure all the content we provide sellers is actually useful to them.”

Spencer has also been able to ensure sellers are always being enabled with the latest and greatest competitive intel, thanks to Crayon reducing his time-to-update battlecards from an average of every 3 months or more to every 2 weeks — which has resulted in huge adoption rates for the Alteryx revenue team, with 45% of the team reviewing a battlecard monthly.

So, with already stellar adoption rates in the bag, where does CI adoption at Alteryx go from here?

If it were up to Spencer, the job isn’t finished until opening Crayon and submitting intel is just as common for folks as opening up email, sending a Slack or Teams message, or creating an opportunity in Salesforce.