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2026 Conference Agenda
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6:00PM
to
8:00PM
Monday March 16
Monday Night Welcome Networking Reception
Whether you just arrived or have been attending all-day workshops, kickoff your Competitive Marketing Summit experience with our networking reception.
Tuesday, March 17
7:00AM to 8:00AM
Registration, Breakfast, & Sponsor Expo
Begin the day with breakfast, while having an opportunity to network with your competitive marketing peers.
8:00AM to 8:10AM
Conference Opening - Welcome
Welcome and opening remarks from the founder and prinicpals of the Competitive Marketing Summit
Ben Scheerer
Conference Host
8:10AM to 9:15AM
Conference Keynote
Inside the Analyst Mind: The Competitive Intelligence Goldmine You're Not Mining
Analyst opinions drive billions in technology investments and can make or break vendor reputations. Yet most organizations don't understand how analysts actually work, and they're missing opportunities to shape market perception and accelerate growth.
This opening keynote takes you behind the scenes of the analyst ecosystem, showing how these industry influencers research markets, evaluate vendors, and shape enterprise buying decisions. We'll walk through their complete workflow from initial research through final publication and explain how they gather competitive intelligence that can transform your positioning strategy.
Key takeaways:
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The real factors that drive analyst evaluations
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How to anticipate analyst perspectives before your next engagement
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Practical strategies for building authentic relationships that strengthen market position
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Ways to leverage analyst insights for your own competitive intelligence
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A proven framework for turning routine analyst engagement into strategic advantage
Leave with actionable strategies to establish category leadership by understanding how analysts think, work, and influence your market.
Renee Murphy
Formerly at Verdantix and Forrester
Session 1: Crafting Winning Product Strategies with Competitive Intelligence
9:15AM to 10:00AM
In today’s fast-paced markets, where customer needs and competitive landscapes can shift in an instant, product managers must consistently develop strategies that not only meet but exceed market expectations. How can you ensure your product strategy stays ahead of the competition and resonates with what customers truly want?
This session will take you on a journey through the complete product lifecycle—from ideation and competitive analysis to execution and delivery. It will showcase how integrating competitive intelligence at every stage provides critical feedback and insights, enabling product managers to adapt dynamically and make informed decisions.
Discover actionable frameworks and methodologies that go beyond traditional approaches, uncovering hidden opportunities and helping you deliver exceptional value. Learn how competitive intelligence can be your guide, helping you navigate market shifts, meet evolving customer requirements, and develop strategies that truly leave the competition in the rearview mirror.
If you’re ready to gain elevated insights and master the balance between innovation, execution, and adaptability, this session is for you.
Key learning objectives
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How the process of ideation really works
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Why disruption without differentiation is just noise
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Why not understanding the hidden competitors is a recipe for disaster
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Why asymmetrical data is the key to outpacing your competitors and market
Jay Nakagawa
Dell Inc.
10:00AM to 10:30AM
Break & Sponsor Expo
Grab a quick refreshment as well as have time to speak with the sponsors and network with your peers.
10:30AM to 11:15AM
Session 2: The AI-Augmented Strategist: Evolving Your CI and PMM Role for Speed and Scale
The role of Competitive Intelligence (CI) and Product Marketing is evolving rapidly. Now is not the time to fight this change, but to embrace the tools that can elevate our strategic impact. While Primary Intelligence—the gathering of proprietary insights through interviews and deep research—remains a deeply human endeavor, Artificial Intelligence offers a powerful engine to accelerate our output.
In this session, we will move beyond the hype to explore the practical intersection of human expertise and machine speed. We will discuss how to embrace AI as a force multiplier for analyzing interviews, synthesizing research, and uncovering trends without losing the nuance that only a human can provide.
We will walk through real-world examples using readily available tools, demonstrating exactly where to exploit AI for efficiency and, crucially, where to exercise caution regarding hallucinations and data privacy. Join us to learn how to evolve your workflow and deliver faster, deeper insights.
Key Takeaways
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The Human-AI Hybrid Workflow: Learn a clear framework for distinguishing which parts of the intelligence cycle are best suited for AI automation versus those that require human intuition and verification.
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Practical Tool Application: Walk away with concrete examples of how to use accessible AI tools to transcribe, summarize, and extract patterns from primary research and interviews in minutes rather than hours.
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Risk Mitigation & Quality Control: Gain strategies for identifying and mitigating AI "hallucinations" to ensure your deliverables remain accurate, credible, and trustworthy.
Ben Scheerer
Red Hat, Inc
11:15AM to 12:00PM
Session 3: Designing a Trusted Competitive Data Layer to Power AI Workflows
AI helps revenue teams move faster, but without accurate competitive intelligence, that speed can come at the expense of accuracy.
In this session, we’ll explore how CI teams can leverage continuously updated competitive intelligence as the data layer powering AI workflows across the revenue organization.
You’ll learn:
Why generic LLM outputs often lack defensible sourcing, recency, and relevance in live competitive situations
How to enable sales to use LLMs grounded in trusted CI to answer critical deal questions, handle competitor objections, and generate tailored emails and executive briefings
How to inform product decisions with real voice-of-customer and competitive data—not gut feel
Katie Berg
VP Marketing
KLUE
Lunch, Birds of a Feather, & Sponsor Expo
12:00PM to 1:00PM
Enjoy lunch at a table with a subject matter expert & your peers while discussing a topics of interest. Spend time speaking with our sponsor to better understand how they can help your business
Session 4: The Corporate Narrative Advantage: How Storytelling Shapes Competitive Intelligence
1:00PM
to
1:45PM
Competitive intelligence has long focused on collecting facts, monitoring signals, and mapping competitors. But in today’s environment—where information is abundant and differentiation is scarce—facts alone are not enough. What wins attention, trust, and ultimately market share is the story an organization tells about itself, its customers, and its category.
This session introduces corporate narrative—a structured storytelling framework that aligns strategy, positioning, and communication into a cohesive storyworld. Drawing on lessons from startups that scaled to IPO, as well as global brands navigating crowded markets, I will demonstrate how narrative clarity creates a durable competitive edge.
The framework is detailed in my forthcoming book, The 10 Commandments of Successful Corporate Narrative (to be released in 2025). At its core, a corporate narrative answers three timeless questions every buyer, partner, and analyst is asking:
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Why does this company matter?
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Why now?
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How will my world be better if I choose them?
When competitors struggle to articulate their value, a well-crafted corporate narrative turns complexity into clarity. It enables competitive intelligence teams to go beyond tracking what rivals are doing and instead analyze how rivals are positioning themselves—and whether those stories will stick.
Attendees will leave with practical tools to identify narrative gaps in their own organizations, decode the story strategies of competitors, and build story-driven positioning that resonates across customers, employees, investors, and partners. In an AI-driven world where information is cheap and sameness is everywhere, your story is the one thing competitors cannot copy. This session will show you how to wield it with intent.
Key learning objectives
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Grasp narrative as a source of competitive edge.
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Decode competitor stories for strengths/weaknesses.
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Align internal strategy with clear messaging.
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Apply storytelling to stand out in crowded markets.
Alan Berkson
Intelligist Group
Session 5: The Art of Human Intelligence in Competitive Marketing
1:45PM to 2:30PM
Despite the advantages of new technologies and data access via AI, human intelligence remains a core element to achieve Competitive Marketing success.
While information and data are critical to accuracy and thorough research, and speed up the process through efficiency, human intelligence is still proving highly important as a way to know and out-compete your competitors. Sourcing significant and accurate Humint is an art - requiring experience, training, and other skills.
Claudia Clayton, a former President of the CI Fellows, with a CI and product marketing/development background over 35+ years, and colleague Sandy Almazan also with a long background in CI and research, will explain why, how, and when human intelligence is key to your success, and how to build or utilize resources for this important element of the process.
Key learning objectives:
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Why HUMINT is an art + essential in competitive marketing for precision in findings, insights, decisions & strategies.
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How/when to include HUMINT within your organization internally or externally.
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Ways to learn and execute HUMINT without ethical or challenging issues.
Claudia Clayton
Pinnacle Insights
Sandy Almazan
Healthcare & Investigative Consultant
2:30PM to
3:00PM
Grab a quick refreshment as well as have time to speak with the sponsors and network with your peers.
Break & Sponsor Expo
3:00PM to
3:50PM
Session 6: Winning on Value, Without Losing on Price
Most pricing challenges come from the same root problem: teams are making high-stakes decisions without a clear understanding of their own value proposition. When value is a mystery to the buyer, price becomes the only lever they know how to pull. Organizations often find themselves trapped because:
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They do not know where their value sits relative to the market.
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Their defined value is not aligned with actual buyer priorities.
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Sales teams cannot support value claims with real-world facts and evidence.
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Internal alignment is lacking, leading to outdated pricing and inconsistent communication.
In this session, Layton Cox, Sr. Director at Sedulo Group, will share how to avoid these traps by identifying the "Value Drivers" that actually move the needle for your buyers. Joining the session is Abby Stewart, Marketing Lead at JLL Corrigo, who will share how she recognized these pains inside her own organization and addressed them by building a "Value Pyramid" rooted in verifiable evidence.
You will walk away with a diagnostic toolkit and a "Monday Morning Checklist" to repair your value gaps and start realizing your true price potential.
Layton Cox
Sedulo Group
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BIO
Abby Stewart
Product Marketing JLL Technology
3:50PM to
4:45PM
Session 7: Return to Basics in CI
Competitive Intelligence (CI) professionals face a critical inflection point in today's rapidly evolving business landscape. The a vent and proliferation of advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools offer powerful new capabilities, yet they also create new issues, so we are going back in time to : Return to the basics of CI. This panel discussion will argue that to thrive—not just survive truly—CI teams must anchor their work in foundational principles while leveraging new technology as an accelerator, not a crutch. We will discuss Porter's five forces, war gaming, primary intelligence, and other resources to help CI teams.
Key learning objectives:
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What to teach the new generation of CI the basics.
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How to ensure the success of the profession going forward
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Real-world example of how we have brought it back to basics
Pat "Why am I here with these two?" Wall
Alysse
"Always Drinking on Stage" Nockels
Matt
"Old man yelling at Clouds" Krumholz
Dave
"Hearding Cats" Bryson
4:45PM to
5:30PM
Competitive Intelligence Mentorship Meet-Up: Connecting Professionals Across Experience Levels
Session Summary:
Join us for an engaging meet-up designed to connect emerging and experienced professionals in competitive intelligence (CI). Sponsored by the Council of Competitive Intelligence Fellows, this session welcomes both members and non-members to participate as mentors or mentees. Attendees who sign up in advance will be matched for informal, high-value conversations about career development, skill building, and best practices in CI. Whether you're looking to share your expertise or seeking guidance as you grow, this meet-up provides a welcoming environment to network, learn, and form meaningful professional relationships. Ideally, a mentor/mentee relationship could continue post-conference.
Who Should Attend:
CI professionals at all career stages; students; early-career analysts; experienced practitioners interested in mentoring; anyone curious about CI career growth.
Format:
Guided networking, mentor/mentee breakout discussions, and facilitated group Q&A.
Takeaways:
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Build targeted mentoring relationships
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Gain insights on CI career paths, skills, and resources
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Expand your professional network within and beyond the organization
Tracy Berry
Berry Insights
VP CI Fellows
Evening Networking and Cocktails
5:30PM to
7:00PM
Enjoy light appetizers and refreshments while networking after the Day 1 of the Competitive Marketing Summit