🎮 The Next Input — Issue #199

In partnership with

⚡ The Briefing — 60 sec

• OpenAI releases a $230 keyboard for Codex Don’t call me a simp for buying one… I just love Codex, alright? Quirky as hell, for sure, but interesting to note. I’d expect more physical drops like this from the other frontier labs too.

• Microsoft gives salespeople tips to knock down Anthropic and OpenAI Who knew Microsoft sales leaders were holding war rooms solely to talk shit about OpenAI and Anthropic? Funny times we live in, hey.

• Spotify is making AI music easier to detect Might be a hot take, but if you AI-generate a banger? Imma still play it hella times on repeat. Label it properly, pay whoever needs paying and then kindly run that chorus back.

🛠️ The Playbook — AI Vendor Battlecard Engine

Mission
Build a continuously updated system that helps sales teams compete on evidence rather than recycled talking points and frontier-lab tribalism.

Difficulty
Intermediate

Build time
3–5 hours

ROI
Improves competitive win rates, shortens sales preparation and prevents representatives from making claims that legal will later have to explain.

0) Why This Matters

The AI market is no longer just a product race.

It is now a full-stack commercial war involving:

• software

• models

• hardware

• distribution

• pricing

• security

• ecosystem control

• increasingly aggressive sales narratives

That means competitive intelligence cannot live in a dusty PowerPoint updated once per quarter.

Teams need a living system that tracks what competitors launched, what customers actually care about and which claims can be defended with evidence.

Because “our AI is simply better” is not a battlecard.

It is a prayer.

1) Architecture

2) Workflow

1. Capture new competitor announcements, product changes, pricing updates and field objections.

2. Convert each signal into a structured record with source, date, affected product and confidence.

3. Compare the update against your current capabilities and verified customer outcomes.

4. Generate role-specific guidance for discovery, objection handling and executive conversations.

5. Route material claims through product, legal or security review before seller distribution.

6. Track which battlecards are used, which objections recur and which positioning actually influences wins.

3) Example Prompts

Competitive Signal Analysis

You are a competitive intelligence analyst.

Review the supplied competitor announcement.

Extract:
- product or capability introduced
- target customer
- commercial positioning
- likely buyer appeal
- potential weaknesses
- implications for our product
- claims requiring independent verification

Separate confirmed facts from interpretation.

Return a structured competitive-intelligence record.

Evidence-Based Battlecard

Create a seller battlecard comparing our offering with [COMPETITOR].

Use only the approved evidence provided.

Include:
- where we are stronger
- where the competitor is stronger
- qualifying questions
- objection responses
- proof points
- claims sellers must not make
- situations where we should not compete

Keep the language commercially sharp without becoming misleading or childish.

Deal-Specific Preparation

You are preparing an account executive for a competitive sales call.

Customer context:
[PASTE CONTEXT]

Competitor:
[NAME]

Approved intelligence:
[PASTE RECORDS]

Produce:
1. likely competitor angle
2. five discovery questions
3. customer-specific differentiation
4. evidence supporting each claim
5. risks in our position
6. recommended next action

4) Guardrails

• Distinguish verified facts from internal interpretation.

• Date-stamp every competitor claim.

• Never invent roadmap, pricing or security weaknesses.

• Require source links for material comparisons.

• Include areas where the competitor is genuinely stronger.

• Prohibit personal attacks and unverifiable fear tactics.

• Retire guidance automatically when the supporting evidence expires.

• Route legal, regulatory and security claims through named reviewers.

5) Pilot Rollout — 3 hours

1. Choose one competitor appearing frequently in active opportunities.

2. Collect ten recent announcements, customer objections and internal deal notes.

3. Structure the evidence in Airtable or SharePoint using a standard schema.

4. Generate one executive brief, one seller battlecard and one objection guide.

5. Have product marketing and legal approve the material before distribution.

6. Test it across five live opportunities and record seller usage and deal impact.

6) Metrics

• Competitive win rate

• Battlecard usage rate

• Seller preparation time

• Percentage of claims with current evidence

• Objection-to-response coverage

• Competitive intelligence freshness

• Legal or factual corrections required

• Revenue influenced by competitive content

Pro Tip: Talking shit is not a competitive strategy. Talking shit with evidence, approval and measurable conversion uplift is at least an operating system.

🎯 The Arsenal — Tools & Platforms

• Airtable · structures competitor intelligence, claims and approval status · Link

• Azure AI Search · retrieves current evidence across approved sources · Link

• Microsoft Teams · delivers competitive guidance inside seller workflows · Link

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 · connects competitor insights with accounts and opportunities · Link

• LangGraph · orchestrates collection, analysis, approvals and publishing · Link

Copy-paste prompt block:

You are designing an AI-powered competitive intelligence system for my organisation.

Our company:
[DESCRIPTION]

Primary competitors:
[LIST]

Products and services:
[LIST]

Customer segments:
[LIST]

Current intelligence sources:
[LIST]

Sales and collaboration systems:
[LIST]

Design a workflow that:
- continuously captures competitor signals
- separates confirmed facts from interpretation
- generates account-specific battlecards
- requires evidence for material claims
- routes risky comparisons through approval
- distributes insights inside seller workflows
- measures influence on competitive deals
- automatically identifies stale intelligence

Return:
1. data model
2. architecture
3. ingestion workflow
4. battlecard template
5. approval matrix
6. seller delivery workflow
7. governance controls
8. pilot rollout
9. operational metrics

💡 Free Office Hours

The frontier labs are now fighting across models, hardware, enterprise distribution and public narrative. Your business may not need a war room, but it probably needs a reliable way to know what changed before a prospect tells your salesperson.

Book here: https://calendly.com

Your prompts are leaving out 80% of what you're thinking.

When you type a prompt, you summarize. When you speak one, you explain. Wispr Flow captures your full reasoning — constraints, edge cases, examples, tone — and turns it into clean, structured text you paste into ChatGPT, Claude, or any AI tool. The difference shows up immediately. More context in, fewer follow-ups out.

89% of messages sent with zero edits. Used by teams at OpenAI, Vercel, and Clay. Try Wispr Flow free — works on Mac, Windows, and iPhone.

Start flowing free

🕹️ Game Over

The AI wars have officially reached keyboards, diss tracks and corporate battlecards.

Normal industry behaviour, obviously.

— Aaron Automating the boring. Amplifying the brilliant.

Subscribe: link