competitive-exec-brief

Competitive Exec Brief (SHARP Framework)

Transform competitive intelligence into a polished executive-ready brief with a single PowerPoint slide that tells the competitive story at a glance.

When to Use

• Board meeting competitive updates
• Leadership team strategy reviews
• Investor presentations (competitive landscape slide)
• Quarterly business reviews
• Pre-launch executive briefings

What You'll Need

Critical inputs (ask if not provided):

• Battle Scanner output (or competitor list + your product)
• Audience (board, C-suite, investors, team)

Nice-to-have:

• Market Analyzer output (market sizing context)
• Recent win/loss data
• Brand/color guidelines for PPTX

Process

Step 1: SHARP Distillation

Take the full competitive analysis and distill into 5 executive-ready elements:

Element	What It Captures	Max Length
Situation	Current competitive landscape in 2-3 sentences	50 words
Highlights	Top 3 competitive moves/changes since last review	3 bullets
Advantages	Our top 3 defensible differentiators with proof points	3 bullets
Risks	Top 3 competitive threats ranked by likelihood x impact	3 bullets
Plan	Recommended competitive actions for next 90 days	3 bullets

Rule: Executives need signal, not noise. Every word must earn its place.

Step 2: Positioning Map

Create a 2x2 positioning matrix:

• Choose the 2 axes that most differentiate you favorably
• Suggested axis pairs: Ease-of-use vs. Power, Price vs. Completeness, Innovation vs. Maturity, Vertical-specific vs. Horizontal
• Place all Ring 1 and Ring 2 competitors on the map
• You should occupy the most attractive quadrant
• If you don't, explain why and what the plan is to get there

Step 3: Competitive Snapshot Table

One row per competitor, maximum 6 competitors:

Column	Content
Competitor	Name and logo (if available)
Positioning	Their tagline/positioning in 5 words
Strength	Their #1 advantage over us
Weakness	Their #1 exploitable vulnerability
Our Win Rate	% of competitive deals we win against them
Trend	Arrow: improving, stable, declining

Step 4: Executive PPTX Slide

Generate a single PowerPoint slide containing:

• Title: "Competitive Landscape -- [Quarter/Year]"
• Left half: 2x2 positioning map with competitor logos/names plotted
• Right half: SHARP summary (Situation + Highlights + Advantages + Risks + Plan)
• Footer: Key metric -- overall competitive win rate and trend

Use the ppt-deck-generator skill or python-pptx to create the actual .pptx file.

Slide design rules:

• Max 40 words of body text (the rest is visual)
• Use color coding: green = advantage, red = risk, blue = neutral
• One clear takeaway in the slide title (not generic "Competitive Landscape" but specific like "We're winning on [X] but losing ground on [Y]")

Step 5: Talking Points

Prepare 5 executive talking points (for the presenter):

1. The headline: What is the competitive situation in one sentence?
2. The change: What has shifted since last review?
3. The opportunity: Where can we gain ground?
4. The risk: What keeps you up at night competitively?
5. The ask: What do you need from leadership to win?

Output

Save to:

• outputs/competitive-brief-[YYYY-MM-DD].md (the full brief)
• outputs/competitive-brief-[YYYY-MM-DD].pptx (the exec slide)

Deliverables:

1. SHARP Executive Brief: 1-page written brief with all 5 elements
2. Positioning Map: 2x2 visual with competitors plotted
3. Competitive Snapshot Table: At-a-glance comparison of top competitors
4. PPTX Slide: Single exec-ready PowerPoint slide for presentations
5. Talking Points: 5 presenter-ready points for the executive meeting

Chain Connections

• Next skill: Run position-lock to lock down your positioning based on competitive insights
• Also feeds: enablement-forge (brief becomes a sales enablement asset), launch-command (competitive readiness is a launch gate)
• Enhanced by: Run after battle-scanner (provides the raw competitive intelligence to distill)