Conversational Competitive Intelligence Notebook
Turn battle-card evidence into instant, sourced answers for sales conversations
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 99%
The Conversational Competitive Intelligence Notebook converts static battle cards into a searchable sales assistant. A team creates a notebook for each major competitor and loads top talking points, feature comparisons, customer proof, switching outcomes, market research, and customer research. During a call, a representative describes the prospect, objection, or scenario in natural language. The notebook returns recommended responses, supporting statistics, customer evidence, and citations to the underlying sources, while allowing follow-up questions. The same corpus can generate audio overviews or internal podcasts after major competitor announcements, offering alternative ways to absorb the intelligence. The system reduces the burden of remembering where information lives and lets each representative retrieve a more personalized response instead of manually adapting generic collateral under time pressure.
Origin
Rachel Leist demonstrated HubSpot's competitor-specific NotebookLM setup, assembled by Ben Conti, and described rapidly increasing usage among sales representatives.
Core principles
- 01Salespeople need answers at the moment of objection
- 02Competitive recommendations should point back to evidence
- 03Organizing intelligence by competitor reduces retrieval friction
- 04Multiple retrieval modes make dense information more accessible
How to run it
- 1
Partition by competitor
Create a distinct notebook for each important competitor so the evidence and answers remain focused.
Pro tip Use a consistent structure across notebooks.
Watch out Combining unrelated competitors can blur important distinctions.
- 2
Load competitive evidence
Add approved talking points, feature comparisons, customer proof, switching outcomes, and relevant research.
Pro tip Attach dates and source labels to time-sensitive claims.
Watch out Never load unverified rumors as competitive facts.
- 3
Test scenario prompts
Ask realistic questions about objections, prospect concerns, and situations in which your product should win.
Pro tip Request the sentence, statistic, and source together.
Watch out A plausible answer without evidence should not be used on a call.
- 4
Deploy to sales
Teach representatives to describe the customer and objection clearly, retrieve an answer, and adapt it to the conversation.
Pro tip Maintain a small library of proven prompts for common scenarios.
Watch out Representatives must not read model output mechanically or ignore prospect nuance.
- 5
Offer multiple retrieval modes
Generate audio summaries, internal podcasts, or follow-up explanations so users can consume the intelligence in their preferred format.
Pro tip Create a fresh audio briefing after a major competitor announcement.
Watch out Summaries should not replace access to underlying sources.
- 6
Refresh continuously
Update claims and evidence whenever competitors, pricing, products, or customer outcomes materially change.
Pro tip Assign ownership for each competitor notebook.
Watch out Outdated competitive guidance can damage trust and create legal risk.
In the wild
A sales representative enters, "I'm on a call with a prospect who is concerned that they won't grow with HubSpot. What should I say?" The notebook returns key talking points, relevant statistics, customer proof, and the sources from which those claims were drawn.
→ The representative receives an immediate, evidence-backed response tailored to the live objection.
Common mistakes
Uploading claims without sources
The notebook may repeat persuasive statements that salespeople cannot verify or safely use.
Treating retrieval as enablement
Giving salespeople access without training them to frame scenarios and adapt answers limits the system’s value.
Ignoring competitor changes
Old comparisons and pricing details can quickly turn a useful assistant into a source of misinformation.
Is it for you?
Best for
B2B sales teams with substantial competitive research and recurring objections across live prospect conversations.
Not ideal for
Teams whose competitive claims are unverified, outdated, or legally restricted from use in customer-facing conversations.
From the transcript
“I know our reps are using it on calls to basically ask, well, you know, this objection just came up. What do I say? And…”
“I would say top talking points, the feature comparisons between like yourself and your competitors, any type of customer proof, anything around what has happened…”
“They just can quickly get the answers. It's amazing.”
From the episode
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