This interview is with Paul Towers, Founder & CEO, Playwise HQ.
Paul, as Founder & CEO of Playwise HQ, how do you introduce your expertise in B2B sales intelligence and competitive strategy to new audiences?
When I introduce my expertise in B2B sales intelligence and competitive strategy to new audiences, I start by defining what I believe the real problem to be: companies that ignore the value of great competitive intelligence are leaving “money on the table,” even if they have great sales representatives on their team. I bring over 15 years of experience in B2B sales and sales leadership to the conversation. As the Founder and CEO of Playwise HQ, a B2B competitive intelligence platform, I gain firsthand insight into how sales organizations across the globe are struggling with their competitive intelligence programs and what they are doing to try and fix it.
At Playwise HQ, we have seen time and time again that organizations are often relying on outdated practices that are manual, rarely updated, and fail to give their sales representatives the confidence they need to rely on the intel when it matters most: when they are mid-pitch with a prospect. My focus, and by extension the benefit of Playwise HQ, is that we help organizations operationalize competitive strategy with a modern AI-first approach—turning insights into battle cards, objection handling, and positioning that actually benefits representatives in live deals.
What key experiences from your 15 years in sales and sales management most directly led you to start Playwise HQ, and how did they shape your view of B2B rivalry?
Over 15 years in B2B sales and sales leadership, I kept seeing the same painful pattern: deals weren’t lost because the product was worse or the solution was more expensive; they were most often lost at the moment a competitor entered the conversation and the rep didn’t have confident, trusted answers. In those situations, a “crack” emerged in the deal, allowing a competitor to start prying open the door.
In many of those instances, competitive intelligence did exist, but it was usually buried in outdated PDFs, scattered documents, or was “tribal knowledge” in the minds of a few experienced sales reps. Managing teams through high-stakes competitive cycles shaped my view that B2B rivalry isn’t just about features or pricing; it’s about preparedness, positioning, and the speed of competitive insight. If a sales rep in one region hears a new competitor objection that affects their deal, how do they quickly share that insight in one central location so the entire sales organization can benefit?
These experiences are what led me to start Playwise HQ: to make competitive knowledge operational, current, and usable for sales reps in real-world sales moments.
When designing Playwise HQ’s battlecard approach, what single decision most improved reps’ ability to win head-to-head deals?
The single most important decision is that Playwise HQ’s competitor battlecards are designed with Sales Reps (sellers) in mind, not marketers or analysts. Instead of long, static competitor reports, we focused on delivering concise, action-oriented insights that sales reps can use instantly when a competitor is mentioned: the key differentiators, the most common objections, and the best positioning plays.
Adopting this approach of offering rep-focused, “in-the-moment enablement” is regularly seen by our customers as the number one reason why they chose Playwise HQ and a key component in why the platform gets such strong adoption across their sales team.
In your own practice, what concrete signals tell you a competitor deserves deep tracking this quarter rather than light monitoring?
For me, the clearest signal is when a competitor starts showing up repeatedly in active deals, especially late-stage opportunities where the stakes are high. I look for shifts in buyer messaging, for example, if prospects are referencing a new capability, pricing change, or narrative that the competitor is pushing.
In essence, deep tracking is warranted when a competitor is influencing win rates and deal confidence, not just when they exist in the background.
Can you walk us through a recent deal where rival tracking prompted a mid-cycle pivot that shortened the sales cycle or lifted win rate?
One recent example came from a SaaS vendor we were pitching who had around 50+ salespeople. The initial discovery call and demo went great, and Playwise HQ was shortlisted as the front-runner. In our post-demo follow-up call, we identified some messaging and feature cues that aligned with what we know about one of our key competitors in the competitive intelligence sector. At Playwise HQ, we use Playwise ourselves to track competitors, their strengths, weaknesses, and common objections we face, so this immediately triggered in my mind that this was a competitive threat to this particular deal.
Because Playwise HQ lets me and my team walk into every competitive situation prepared, we were able to pick up on this talk track, ask some qualifying questions, and understand the situation in front of us. As it turned out, one of our competitors had their demo session scheduled after ours. While Playwise HQ was still the front-runner, one of their features had resonated with the prospect’s Head of Sales. We asked further questions to determine the value of this feature to the business and the ROI they believed it would deliver. As a very similar capability was already on our roadmap, we pulled development forward and committed to showing them that capability in our next call. We were able to deliver on that, and in doing so, negated the impact of the competitor, signed them to an enterprise deal, and won the business.
This is a great example of how Playwise HQ, as a modern competitive intelligence platform, drives real-world value for sales teams, reduces sales cycles, and improves win rates.
You’ve driven traction by commenting on industry news—how do you convert breaking competitor news into concise, usable guidance for your sales team within hours?
The key here is focusing on the right type of news and treating any relevant news as a sales enablement event, not a three-week-long research project.
Firstly, you need to make sure the news you are reading and providing guidance on is relevant. Things such as new product announcements, pricing changes, and major partnerships can all impact sales. Updates on the competitor’s sponsorship of a sports team don’t warrant that same level of attention.
Secondly, once there is news worth providing guidance on, you want to ensure that within days that information is translated into three things a rep actually needs: what changed, why the buyer will care, and what the exact talk track or question is that they can use on their next call. You want to keep the update tightly structured: a short update, the competitive implication, and a recommended response, rather than a long analysis.
Where has pairing AI with domain expertise inside Playwise HQ produced the clearest ROI for customers, and what made that workflow succeed?
The clearest ROI has come from applying AI to competitive intelligence workflows. We have customers who report that the AI battlecard generation process has cut the time to create competitor battlecards by 80% and allowed them to cover far more competitors without adding any additional headcount. In fact, many of our customers now cover three times as many competitors as before, allowing them to cover smaller and more niche competitors, who can still directly impact deals, with ease.
With a strong competitive intelligence platform in place, our customers then report shorter sales cycles, as their reps are better prepared to identify and combat competitive situations, as well as higher closed-won rates through improved rep confidence and better competitive positioning.
The AI workflows developed in Playwise HQ succeed because AI handles the heavy synthesis and structuring, while domain expertise ensures the outputs are accurate, relevant, and grounded in real sales conversations. That combination helps accelerate the development and sharing of competitive insights and ensures the content provided is something reps can actually trust and use in live deals.
For founders who are the early sales engine, what weekly rival-tracking habit has given you the highest return on time?
The highest-return habit is a simple weekly review of competitive mentions in active deals. I ask, “Which competitor came up most this week, and what objection or claim did buyers attach to them?” Some weeks, this can be a light review, especially if the claim or objection is a common one that we already have logged in Playwise HQ. However, every now and then, a new insight emerges, and we spend 30 to 45 minutes unpacking it, considering the competitive implications, and then updating the guidance we have in our own objection handling strategies, win/loss themes, or general competitive overview.
For founder-led sales, I believe that focus beats breadth, so track what’s actively impacting the pipeline, not what’s happening in the abstract.
Looking toward 2026, what shift in buyer research or use of LLMs will most change how sellers position against competitors, and how should sales leaders prepare?
In 2026, buyers will increasingly use LLMs as their first layer of vendor research. This means that your competitor positioning will be shaped before a representative ever gets on a call. Instead of comparing websites manually, prospects will ask AI tools, “Who’s better for my use case?” and arrive with pre-formed narratives about differentiation, pricing, and risk.
Sales leaders should prepare for this by treating competitive positioning as a living system:
- Continuously updated battlecards
- Clear proof points
- Messaging that reflects what the market (and AI-driven research) is actually saying
The teams that win won’t always have the better product; they’ll have the faster, more trusted competitive clarity in the moments that matter.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and expertise. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
One additional point I’d highlight is that competitive advantage compounds when it becomes a shared habit, not a one-off project. The best teams treat competitive intelligence as a part of their sales rhythm – capturing frontline insights, updating positioning continuously, and reinforcing confidence through repetition.