Steal this prompt for competitive intel (Exit Five Newsletter)

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TOGETHER WITH QUALIFIED

👀 AI SDRs: Do They Work? (Read This Before Building Yours)

Everyone’s talking about AI SDRs. But before you spin one up, there’s one decision that actually matters:

Should you build it or buy something that’s ready to go?

On paper, building sounds simple. But if you’ve ever tried to duct-tape tools together to create a real, external-facing agent… you know it’s a massive time suck.

Qualified put together a breakdown of the build vs. buy decision, so you can make the right call before sinking months (and budget) into the wrong path.

They break down:

• What does a legit AI SDR actually need to do?
• Why “building it yourself” sounds easier than it is
• 14 side-by-side comparisons on time, cost, tech stack, and more

If AI is on your roadmap, and it probably is, you should read this before you go too far down the build rabbit hole.

👩‍💻 How to Do Competitive Research with AI in 15 Minutes A Week

OK, here’s a great use case for AI in marketing: competitive intelligence.

A strong competitive intelligence program can be a huge advantage across the company; this touches sales, marketing, and product. Everyone wants the information. The sales team is begging for competitive intel. Your CEO saw last week’s product launch for your competitor and now he’s yelling about how you have the same capabilities but no one knows!! Your product team needs to know what features everyone else is shipping.

But who has time to manually track every competitor across news sites, social media, and press releases on top of all the other actual “marketing” stuff you need to be doing?

Matt Serna, CMO at Replicant, shared a bunch of knowledge with us on this topic and I wanted to share it with you in this week’s newsletter..

He turned what used to take 20 hours/week into a 15-minute routine using nothing but ChatGPT and a well-crafted prompt. No fancy tools. No dedicated analyst. No massive budget.

And it works really, really well. They're tracking multiple product categories, getting real insights about funding, product launches, and strategic moves. It’s automated enough to save tons of time, but customized enough to actually help.

We’re gonna walk you through his exact playbook. Check it out.

The 5-Step Process That Actually Works

Here's Matt's complete workflow:

1. Run the prompt through Deep Research (using ChatGPT with the O1 model)
2. Review the output and do a lightweight hallucination check
3. Do some lightweight tweaking (edit the "What's the news" and "Why it matters"sections)
4. Delete non-important info or competitors with no meaningful updates
5. Paste into Slack and tag relevant people

That's it. 15 minutes total.

The process itself is really simple, but there's one critical step you can't skip: fact-checking. AI sometimes makes stuff up, so you need to verify the sources it cites before you share anything with your team.

The Prompt That Does All The Heavy Lifting

Matt's team built their prompt using solid prompting best practices:

Give it a persona: "You are a research assistant..."

Give it clear intent: Who it's for and what specific things you're looking for

Break down your product categories explicitly: They have 2 product categories and call them out separately

List your competitors by name: Don't just say "track our competitors" - spell out exactly which companies you want intelligence on, plus a catch-all for anyone else (something like “and any other players you believe are relevant to [insert info about your product/industry]”).

Provide context on what you want to see: Funding news, product launches, leadership changes, etc.

Add explicit guidelines to minimize hallucinations:

• Rely only on factual, publicly verifiable sources
• If no recent updates, note that explicitly rather than guessing
• Always indicate the source

Include an example of your desired output: This massively improves the quality of what you get back

The magic isn't in the prompt itself - it's in being specific about exactly what you need.

What The Output Actually Looks Like

Matt showed a real example from their Slack. Here's the format they get:

Competitor Name #1

• What's the News: Brief description of what happened
• Why It Matters: Analysis of why this matters for their business
• Implications for Us: Specific actions or things to consider

For example:

• A company raising money with context on why that funding round matters
• A competitor getting listed on an industry list with links to the source
• New product features with analysis of competitive implications

The Two-Audience Strategy

Because Replicant has different tools for different audiences, they make sure this competitive content is helpful for the entire team:

The Newsletter (Push Strategy): Goes to product marketing, executives, and product teams. Focuses on longer-term strategic insights like:

• Are we maintaining feature parity?
• New competitors getting momentum we should watch
• What does the funding environment look like in our space?

Compete GPT (Pull Strategy): A custom ChatGPT trained on their competitive positioning that sales reps can query in real-time.

Each tool serves its specific audience perfectly. Strategic teams get proactive intelligence for planning. Sales teams get instant answers when they need them most.

Where They're Taking This Next

Matt's team is building this into Gumloop (an automation platform) to move from weekly newsletters to real-time Slack alerts.

The vision: instead of waiting for weekly batches, they want to catch competitive news as it happens, analyze what it means, and automatically notify the right people ASAP.

But you don't need to wait for that level of automation. The weekly version already delivers massive value.

Your Checklist To Bring This To Life

This week:

• List your top competitors by name
• Identify your product categories
• Write down what types of news matter to you (funding, product launches, partnerships, etc.)

Next week:

• Build your prompt using Matt's framework
• Run it through ChatGPT with Deep Research
• Set up a Slack channel for weekly competitive updates

This month:

• Establish the weekly rhythm (ideally the same person will be doing it consistently)
• Build your sales-facing competitive GPT with your positioning docs
• Start tracking what intelligence actually influences decisions

The bottom line? This approach works because it's systematic without being complicated. Your competitors are probably still doing this manually (if they're doing it at all). 15 a week could give you a serious advantage.

- Dave

P.S. Matt’s biggest piece of advice really hit home for me. Don't just delegate this to someone else. Learn the tools yourself first. Because when you understand what's actually possible, you can guide the team and push them to do more.

Did you like this one? Let me know what could be better. We’re trying to make this thing something you’re actually excited to open twice a week.

📺 UPCOMING EVENTS

[OCTOBER 7TH] Beyond Copy: How To Use AI to Build GTM Systems That Scale

OK, we get it. You can do cool things with AI in marketing. But what? Do you have any examples beyond the fluff? Beyond just writing copy? Beyond creating more AI slop? Yes we do and I think you’ll get a ton of examples from this one.

In this free live session, we’ll skip the theory and dive straight into practical implementation of AI for B2B marketers. No endless slide decks — expect live builds and no-BS demos tackling real marketing challenges.

Dave Gerhardt (Founder & CEO, Exit Five), Eoin Clancy (Head of Growth, AirOps), and Dan Guenet (GTM Engineering Lead, Compound Growth Marketing) will share practical frameworks and examples of how B2B marketers are using AI to drive real results. From automating insights out of sales calls, to creating content humans actually want to read, to increasing visibility in AI search, you’ll see it all in action.

What we’ll cover:

• How to build AI workflows that tie directly to your GTM strategy
• Real examples of scaling content and insights without sacrificing quality
• Where AI can automate the manual parts of marketing (and where it can’t)
• Frameworks for evaluating AI tools and picking what’s worth your team’s time
• Live demos of AI in action

This is a free, live session open to all B2B marketers, Exit Five members and non-members alike. Can’t make it live? Register anyway and we’ll send you the recording after.

Save Your Spot

🏢 Open Roles

Who's hiring right now?

Tatari is hiring a Senior Manager of Customer Marketing to own lifecycle and customer marketing programs that drive retention, expansion, and loyalty. The ideal candidate is a B2B SaaS marketer with experience building integrated campaigns, managing marketing automation, and partnering with Sales and Customer Success to turn clients into long-term growth.

Other open roles on the Exit Five job board this week:

• Dragon360 is hiring a Demand Gen Strategist
• Vapi is hiring a Head of Marketing
• Paramark is hiring a Marketing Manager
• Doist is hiring a Lifecycle Marketer
• Tatari is hiring a Digital Marketing Manager
• Enumerate is hiring a Senior Product Marketing Manager
• Red Stag Fulfillment is hiring a Director of Growth Operations
• Dynamic Lifecycle Innovations is hiring a Director of Marketing
• Offsite is hiring a Field Marketing and Partnerships Lead
• BrightHire is hiring a Social and Community Marketing Manager

See all open roles

Have an open role and want to make sure the best B2B marketing talent sees it? Just reply to this email and we'll send over more info on how you can post it on our job board + get it in front of 42k+ marketers.

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