Crayon Review: Great CI, Missing the AI Layer

What Crayon Does Well

Crayon has carved out a strong position in competitive intelligence. The platform offers genuine value for sales teams and product marketers who need to track competitor movements.

Automated Battlecard Generation

Crayon's Sparks AI analyzes sales call transcripts and automatically produces battlecards. This isn't gimmicky—it's genuinely useful for sales enablement. When a competitor comes up in a call, Sparks identifies the context and suggests relevant talking points.

Website Change Tracking

The platform monitors competitor websites for changes in pricing, features, and messaging. When a competitor updates their pricing page or launches a new feature, Crayon alerts you. This is table-stakes CI, but Crayon does it well.

CRM Integration

Deep Salesforce and Slack integrations push competitive intelligence directly into existing workflows. Reps get competitor intel surfaced in their CRM records and deal channels.

The Critical Blind Spot

Here's what Crayon cannot tell you:

• How ChatGPT compares you to competitors — When a prospect asks "Compare [your product] vs [competitor]," what does AI say? Crayon doesn't know.
• Whether AI recommends competitors over you — When users ask for product recommendations in your category, who does AI suggest first? Invisible to Crayon.
• AI hallucinations about your capabilities — Is AI telling prospects you don't have features you actually have? Or claiming you have features you don't? Crayon can't detect this.

The Verdict

Crayon excels at traditional competitive intelligence. If you need to track competitor website changes, generate battlecards, and push intel to sales teams, it delivers.

But traditional CI is no longer sufficient. Your competitive position exists in two layers: what competitors say about themselves, and what AI systems tell prospects about all of you.