Cybersecurity moves through M&A and category collapse faster than most marketing teams can follow. We build the intelligence function that keeps your sales team, positioning, and roadmap up to date, without adding a full analyst desk.
The Challenge
The market map shifts beneath you every quarter
EDR, XDR, and SIEM categories keep collapsing into each other as platform vendors acquire point solutions and re-badge them. A competitor you positioned against six months ago might now be a feature inside a bigger suite, or gone entirely. Marketing teams that update competitive positioning once a year are selling against a market that no longer exists.
Sales is making it up as they go against incumbents
Reps facing an entrenched incumbent in a deal cycle need a battlecard with real objection handling, not a feature checklist from a launch deck. Without a disciplined intake process from win/loss calls, sales makes up the narrative deal by deal, and every rep tells a slightly different story about why you win. That inconsistency shows up as lost deals with no clear reason attached.
Breach disclosures shift opinion faster than your content calendar
When a competitor discloses an incident or gets called out in an incident response report, the window to reposition around it is measured in days, not the next quarterly campaign cycle. Most cybersecurity marketing teams find out from a customer or an analyst before they find out from their own monitoring. By the time a response goes out, the news cycle has moved on.
Analyst movement is handled like an annual fire drill
Gartner and Forrester positioning shifts, new evaluation criteria, and analyst inquiry notes all carry signal about where the market is grading vendors, but most teams only look at this during renewal season for the report itself. That means messaging and roadmap decisions get made without the one external data source that buyers actually trust as neutral.
What We Do
We begin by assessing the competitive intelligence that already exists within the company, typically scattered across a shared drive, a sales Slack channel, and whatever surfaced on the latest analyst call. Most cybersecurity companies at $5M-$100M ARR have pieces of valuable intelligence but no system for turning them into something useful. We catalog it, interview sales and product leaders, and pinpoint the three or four competitors genuinely costing you deals, rather than the ten logos on the usual comparison slide.
Next, we build the tracking system: a defined group of sources (competitor changelogs, funding and M&A announcements, analyst report cadence, breach disclosure trackers, review site sentiment) monitored on a schedule with a clear owner. This isn't a one-off report. It's infrastructure designed to keep running without us permanently in the room.
We conduct win/loss interviews directly with sales and, when access permits, with buyers who selected a competitor. The real signal lives in raw win/loss data, and it's nearly always more candid than internal sales commentary. We translate those patterns into specific talk tracks, not generic strengths-and-weaknesses grids.
Battlecards are rebuilt around what reps encounter in active deals: the integration-depth objection raised by an incumbent's SE, the pricing trap a competitor introduces during procurement, or the technical gap a prospect's security team will investigate. We test them with sales before release, not after a quarter of silence from the field.
For positioning, we turn competitive signals into messaging input and roadmap discussions with product. If three competitors have just consolidated detection and response into a single SKU, that affects how you describe your own architecture whether or not your roadmap changes. We embed with your team as an operator, not an outside firm that drops off a deck and walks away.
Measurement starts in week one: which battlecards are used, which deals identify competitive positioning as a factor, and how win rate changes against the leading competitors we're monitoring. We report trends, not vanity dashboards.
The model is fractional by design. You receive senior competitive intelligence judgment at a cadence aligned with your deal velocity, without supporting a full-time analyst headcount that remains idle between market shifts.
What we deliver
- Competitive tracking system: defined source list, monitoring cadence, and an owner inside your team so it survives past the engagement
- Sales battlecards built from real win/loss interviews, tested with reps and updated on a fixed cycle, not left to go stale
- Rapid-response playbook for breach disclosures and M&A moves, so positioning reacts in days instead of the next campaign cycle
- Quarterly competitive briefing for product and leadership tying market movement to messaging and roadmap input
Your competitors won't announce their next move. They'll simply make it. The company that spots it first can respond; the one that learns through a lost deal has to explain.
Our Methodology
We deliver this as a 90-day sprint rather than an indefinite retainer. Days 1-30 focus on assessment and infrastructure: auditing existing intelligence, interviewing sales and product, selecting the true competitive set, and launching the tracking system with defined sources and an internal owner. Days 31-60 move into execution: win/loss interviews, the first set of rebuilt battlecards, and a functioning rapid-response process tested against whatever occurred in the market that month, whether an acquisition, a funding round, or a breach disclosure involving a competitor.
Days 61-90 focus on showing that the system operates without significant involvement from us. Battlecards receive a second revision based on field usage, the briefing cadence with product and leadership is formalized, and ownership of the tracking system is handed to the person on your team who will manage it moving forward, generally someone in product marketing or sales enablement.
Here's what separates us from a traditional research or analyst-relations firm: we don't deliver a static competitive landscape document and vanish. We develop your team's ability to keep intelligence current once we're gone, while staying close enough to sales to ensure the output is applied in active deals rather than filed away in a folder.
Our Approach
The first 30 days center heavily on discovery: interviews with sales leadership, several reps, product, and whoever currently owns (or partially owns) competitive knowledge. We map what's factual against what's merely assumed. By day 30, you'll have a defined competitor set, a source list, and an initial battlecard covering the top one or two threats.
During days 30-60, the system begins generating output on a consistent cadence: weekly win/loss interviews, battlecards progressing from drafts to tested assets, and the rapid-response process receiving its first live test against whatever the market brings.
By day 90, your team operates the tracking system under our oversight instead of relying on us to run it. We can remain involved on a lighter cadence afterward if the client wants continued support, but the objective is always internal ownership rather than dependence on us.
We operate as an embedded part of your team, not a vendor emailing decks. Expect direct Slack access, working sessions alongside sales and product, and output made for people working deals every week, rather than for a board meeting.
- A competitive intelligence system your team owns and runs after the engagement, not a report that goes stale in 90 days
- Sales battlecards reps actually pull up mid-deal, built from real objections instead of a marketing team's assumptions
- Faster reaction time to market moves like M&A, breach disclosures, and analyst repositioning
If your cybersecurity company needs competitive intelligence leadership, we should talk.
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Frequently asked questions
What does a competitive intelligence engagement cost?
Fractional competitive intelligence engagements for cybersecurity companies at this stage generally cost $10K-$25K per month, based on the number of competitors being tracked and the depth of the win/loss interview process. Pricing scales with deal volume and market complexity, not headcount. Serving a company tracking three consolidating point solutions costs less than supporting one in a crowded, M&A-heavy category such as SIEM or MDR.
How soon will we have usable output?
The first usable battlecard typically ships within the first 30 days and focuses on whichever competitor is costing you the most deals today. The complete tracking system and rapid-response process require the full 90-day sprint to mature because win/loss patterns need several interviews before they're dependable enough to guide action.
Will we need to hire someone to manage this after the engagement?
A new hire isn't necessarily required. The 90-day process includes identifying someone on your current team, typically in product marketing or sales enablement, who can take ownership of the tracking system. We design the process to require a few hours each week, not a full-time position, although some companies eventually hire a dedicated analyst when deal volume warrants it.
What makes this different from hiring a market research or analyst relations agency?
Most research agencies provide a static landscape document before moving to their next client. We create a system your team operates continuously, collaborate directly with sales reps to test battlecards in active deals, and remain close enough to product to bring competitive signals into roadmap discussions. The output serves people closing deals this week, rather than filling a slide in a board deck.
How is competitive intelligence ROI measured?
We monitor battlecard usage in your CRM, win rate specifically against the competitors under review, and whether reps identify competitive positioning as a deal factor in closed-won and closed-lost notes. We won't take credit for revenue that can't be linked to a specific battlecard or talk track; instead, we report the trend lines that can genuinely be attributed.
What type of cybersecurity company is the right fit for this?
Series A through growth-stage companies at $5M-$100M ARR competing in an actively consolidating category, common examples include EDR/XDR, SIEM, MDR, or identity security, see the greatest value. If your sales team keeps losing deals to the same one or two competitors and can't explain why, or your latest competitive battlecard is older than your current product, that's the sign that it's time.
