--- title: AI Competitive Intelligence: Know Your Rivals Before the Call description: How to use AI to gather competitive intelligence for sales. Research competitors, track positioning, and win more head-to-head deals. date: February 5, 2026 author: Robert Soares category: ai-for-sales --- Most sales teams rate themselves a 3.8 out of 10 in competitive selling readiness. That number comes from [Crayon's 2025 State of Competitive Intelligence report](https://www.crayon.co/state-of-competitive-intelligence), and it matches what sellers actually experience in the field. They know competitors exist but they do not know enough about them to sell against them effectively. The disconnect is stark. Sellers face competitors in 68% of their deals, yet half of all compete programs lack a sales executive sponsor. The people who need intelligence the most often cannot get it in time to use it. This creates a pattern that plays out every day. Reps walk into calls without knowing who else the prospect is talking to, what those competitors claim, or where they actually fall short, and by the time they figure it out the deal has shifted direction or closed with someone else. ## The Research Problem Nobody Talks About Competitive intelligence used to mean reading competitor websites and hoping you remembered the important parts when it mattered. Product marketing teams would build battlecards, post them to a shared drive, and watch them collect dust while markets moved on. Features launched, pricing changed, messaging shifted. The battlecard from six months ago might as well describe a different company. As Sunita Iyer, a former CI Manager at Dell, [put it](https://www.octopusintelligence.com/competitive-intelligence-expert-quotes/): "It was harder to convince internal departments than figuring out competitors." The intel gathering was only half the battle. Getting anyone to actually use it was the other half. Manual research also has a math problem. You could read every competitor's website, blog, case studies, job postings, LinkedIn posts, review sites, and press releases. For one competitor, that takes hours. Most companies have several competitors that matter. Markets shift constantly, which means the research never ends. According to the [Competitive Intelligence Alliance](https://www.competitiveintelligencealliance.io/11-competitive-intelligence-trends/), 76% of CI teams now use AI daily, a 76% year-over-year increase. They switched because manual processes could not keep up with how fast things change. ## What Good Competitive Intel Actually Looks Like Most people think competitive intelligence means knowing who your competitors are. That is table stakes. Useful CI goes deeper than a list of names. Positioning matters more than features. How does Competitor X describe themselves? What problems do they claim to solve? What language do they use? Understanding their positioning helps you understand the conversation already happening in your prospect's head before you ever talk to them. Pricing structure affects how deals play out. Not just the number but the model. Per seat? Usage based? Annual contract only? Enterprise minimum? These details shape objection handling and negotiation strategy in ways that matter during the actual conversation. Weaknesses require specificity. Saying a competitor is "hard to implement" means nothing. Saying they require six months of professional services and customers on G2 consistently complain about onboarding delays gives you something to work with. As Chirag Bansal, Head of Competitive and Market Intelligence at GreyRadius, [noted](https://www.octopusintelligence.com/competitive-intelligence-expert-quotes/): "There's no use in gathering intelligence unless you find actionable insights to make an impact." Information that does not change behavior during actual sales conversations is just noise. ## Using AI to Build Competitor Profiles AI makes it possible to build comprehensive competitor profiles without dedicating weeks to the project. Start with a deep research prompt that covers the essentials: ``` Research [Competitor Name] for competitive intelligence: Company overview: what they do, who they serve, approximate size Positioning: how they describe themselves, their main value claims Core features and capabilities Pricing structure if publicly available Target market and ideal customer profile Recent news from the last six months Leadership changes or notable hires What customers praise in reviews What customers complain about in reviews Signals from job postings about where they're investing I sell [your product] to [your market]. Highlight what matters for positioning against them. ``` The output gives you a working competitor profile in minutes instead of hours. It is not perfect. AI can miss context, misread nuance, or surface outdated information. But it gives you a foundation to build on rather than starting from scratch every time. One [Hacker News discussion](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46865447) about competitive intelligence workflows noted that "Enterprise teams use Klue/Crayon ($20K+/yr), mid-market uses Competitors.app ($15-20/competitor/mo), and everyone else seems to use... Google Alerts." AI closes part of that gap. You do not need enterprise software to get useful competitive intelligence anymore. ## Building Battlecards That Reps Actually Use The battlecard problem is not creation. It is adoption. Most battlecards fail because they try to be comprehensive. Fifteen pages of competitor analysis looks impressive in a shared drive and gets ignored during actual calls. Reps need something they can scan while a prospect is talking, not a document that requires a coffee break to read. According to [Crayon's research](https://www.crayon.co/state-of-competitive-intelligence), companies using battlecards effectively see up to 22% improvement in competitive win rates. The key word is effectively. A battlecard nobody references is just documentation. Here is a prompt for battlecards designed around actual use: ``` Create a one-page battlecard for [Competitor]: QUICK FACTS What they do in one sentence Pricing model Primary market THEIR PITCH How they position themselves (2-3 sentences max) WHERE THEY WIN Three bullet points on genuine strengths WHERE WE WIN Three bullet points on their weaknesses relevant to our prospects CLAIMS THEY MAKE What their reps say, and how to respond KILLER QUESTIONS Questions to ask prospects that highlight our advantages Keep it scannable. This needs to work during a live call. ``` The constraint matters. Forcing brevity forces prioritization. What actually matters when you have thirty seconds to reference something? ## When Competitors Come Up Mid-Conversation Prospects will tell you they are evaluating competitors. Sometimes they name them directly. Sometimes you can guess from the questions they ask. Either way, you need to respond without stumbling. Nigel Arthur, a sales coach, [puts it bluntly](https://www.mysalescoach.com/blog/competition-in-sales-meddpicc): "If you can't tell me what we're up against, you're not selling—you're hoping." The wrong response is trash-talking. According to research cited by [SalesFuel](https://salesfuel.com/how-to-discuss-competitors-in-a-sales-conversation/), around 35% of B2B decision-makers will stop working with a sales professional who badmouths competitors. Attacking competitors signals desperation and makes prospects defensive about their evaluation process. The right response acknowledges without dismissing. You want to shape evaluation criteria, not win an argument about which company is better. A prompt for handling competitive mentions: ``` A prospect just mentioned they're also evaluating [Competitor]. Context: [company type, stated needs, stage of conversation] Help me: 1. Acknowledge them professionally without dismissing the competitor 2. Ask questions that surface what they're looking for 3. Position against their known strengths without attacking 4. Introduce criteria where we have advantages 5. Handle likely objections they might raise based on competitor positioning No trash talk. Professional and strategic. ``` The goal is not to make them feel bad about considering alternatives. The goal is to make sure they evaluate you on criteria where you win. ## Tracking Changes Without Losing Your Mind Markets move faster than quarterly battlecard updates. A competitor launches a feature, changes pricing, or shifts messaging, and suddenly your intel is stale. Bryn Harrington, Product Marketing Lead at Oura, [described](https://www.competitiveintelligencealliance.io/11-competitive-intelligence-trends/) using AI "really frequently for competitive analysis and market insights... [to understand] what our competitors in the consumer wearable space are doing." The frequency matters. Competitive intelligence is not a project with an end date. Set up a simple monitoring cadence: ``` Check for recent updates on [Competitor]: Product launches or feature updates in the last 30 days New content or messaging changes on their site Press mentions or announcements Job postings that signal new initiatives Funding or acquisition news New case studies or customer wins they're promoting Flag anything that changes how we should position against them or what our reps should say. ``` Running this monthly keeps your intelligence current without making it a full-time job. When a major competitor makes a significant move, you will know about it before your next competitive deal. ## Learning From Wins and Losses Win-loss analysis is where competitive intelligence gets specific to your deals rather than general market positioning. When you win against a competitor, understand why: ``` We won a deal against [Competitor]. Here's what happened: [Brief summary of the deal, buying criteria, key conversations] Analyze: What seemed to matter most to this buyer? Where did we have clear advantages? What did they say about the competitor? What should we repeat in similar situations? Are there patterns we can apply to positioning? ``` When you lose, the analysis matters even more: ``` We lost a deal to [Competitor]. Here's what happened: [Brief summary] Analyze: What seemed to matter most to this buyer? Where did we fall short? What did they like about the competitor? Could we have done something differently? Is this a pattern or a specific situation? ``` Over time, these analyses reveal patterns. Certain competitors win certain deal types. Certain objections predict losses. Certain positioning approaches work better with specific buyer profiles. Yaron Eshdat, an Associate Partner at LINX Market Intelligence, [observed](https://www.octopusintelligence.com/competitive-intelligence-expert-quotes/): "The essence of Competitive Intelligence is not to gather information effectively, it is all about converting the information you have into actionable business insights." Win-loss analysis is where raw intelligence becomes actual insight about how to sell. ## The Hardest Part None of this works if the intelligence stays in documents nobody reads. [Only 44% of companies](https://www.crayon.co/state-of-competitive-intelligence) can see competitor information in their CRM. The rest rely on tribal knowledge, outdated materials, or reps researching on the fly during deals. The gap between "we have competitive intelligence" and "reps can actually use competitive intelligence" is where most programs fail. Companies using conversational intelligence tools for competitive analysis, like Gong or Chorus, report 82% higher sales effectiveness. Part of that is the tools themselves. But part of it is that those tools put intelligence in the workflow rather than in a separate system nobody checks. The question is not whether AI can help with competitive intelligence. It obviously can. The question is whether the intelligence reaches the people who need it at the moment they need it. That requires thinking about workflow as much as research. Where does your competitive intel live? Can reps access it during calls? Does it update when markets change? Those answers matter more than how comprehensive your competitor profiles are.