CONNECTWISE + CRAYON

Before using Crayon, ConnectWise had small pockets of CI across the company. Different teams would do their own competitive research and then post findings on their SharePoint sites. As a result, employees often didn’t know about the research or have access to it. Duplicated efforts were common. There was a clear need to centralize the data. 

Another pain point: There were several versions of each battlecard scattered across different tools—so when someone wanted to make an update, they had to do it 3 or 4 times manually. With Crayon, they still have battlecards living in several tools, but when one version is updated, the other versions are automatically updated, too. This not only saves the PMM team time but also ensures that the sales team always has the most up-to-date content. 

Gavin Gamber, VP of Acquisition Sales at ConnectWise appreciates his team having easy access to Crayon battlecards during competitive deals. 

“Having key CI data in a centralized location that is easy to access ensures the ConnectWise sales team has the most up-to-date intel and talking points right at our fingertips,” said Gamber. “With Crayon, we’re more confident in delivering our fact-finding information, and our overall chances of closing a new deal increases.”    

Once ConnectWise implemented Crayon, teams could find the intel they needed and share any field intel they discovered back to Crayon. 

“With Crayon, it’s simple for anyone, regardless of department, to submit intel,” says Will. “If someone discovers something potentially relevant, they can send an email, and that intel will go directly into the platform for review. I love how easy it is for our company to share competitive findings.”

Crayon is the singular place for all competitive intelligence at ConnectWise. 

“Crayon is our command center that helps us easily manage our competitive intel operations—managing our battlecards, competitive content, and enablement materials to provide better insights to leadership teams.” 

With their CI command center up and running, ConnectWise experienced a dramatic increase in the consumption of CI across the entire organization. In 2023, ConnectWise had thousands of battlecard views from their sales team. On a quarterly basis, at least 50 percent of the team consistently views battlecards.

One key factor in getting ConnectWise employees to engage with competitive intel has been all the integrations that Will and his team leverage with Crayon. Crayon’s platform is integrated with several tools the ConnectWise team uses daily, such as Microsoft Teams, Seismic, Salesforce, and SharePoint.  

“Our goal is to integrate Crayon everywhere we can,” said Will. “We want to remove any barriers for employees to access battlecards and intelligence they may need to make better decisions on a daily basis.”  

In addition to having Crayon integrated across the ConnectWise tech stack, Will built CI dashboards and embedded them in multiple channels. One particular dashboard highlights the most important intel takeaways across their competitive landscape over the last seven days. The leadership team frequently reviews this dashboard to discover competitive highlights from the week.

Using Crayon has been immensely helpful to ConnectWise as the company grows and the team scales alongside that growth. 

“I’ve found that Crayon is the best fit for us as we build out our CI program and scale,” says Will. “Without Crayon, we would be manually spending time making updates to competitive assets as opposed to doing strategic competitive intelligence work. Inefficiency is a revenue killer.” 

As the product marketing team continues expanding the CI program at ConnectWise, one thing is for sure—there is increasing interest in competitive intelligence and an understanding of its value across the business. A perfect example of this curiosity and enthusiasm is the monthly competitive broadcast.  

According to Will: “Every month, we have a competitive broadcast to the entire company where the team shares competitive news highlights and big competitive wins as well as recognizes the top competitive intel submitter for the month.”

The future of CI at ConnectWise is all about continuing to scale and pushing the competitive program and enablement to the next level. 

One new Crayon feature that the ConnectWise team is excited about is the release of Compete Hub, a real-time, dynamic feed that shows sales teams the latest and most important insights. 

According to Will: “We’re really enjoying the new Compete Hub feature because it shows our reps what’s new and relevant. If a rep has an upcoming sales call with someone who’s evaluating a competitor, a one-minute scan of the Compete Hub means they’re all caught up with any possible intel updates for the day.”

“When we think about next year and beyond, we’re constantly looking for ways to evolve the CI program to drive even better insights and better engagement across our teams,” says Will. “Crayon is the partner that helps us get there.”