# Adaptive Messaging

> Use this skill when a new competitor move, market event, or sudden change in buyer language requires a rapid messaging response. Triggers include 'competitor launched', 'competitor moved', 'rapid competitive response', 'new competitive objection', 'market shift', or 'sales needs updated talking points'. Implements Detect → Decide → Draft → Deploy and outputs a competitive response brief plus sales-ready battlecard. Do NOT use for evergreen battlecards, routine objection handling, general sales materials, brand voice work, or net-new positioning; use `sales-enablement` for evergreen deal support.

- Skill: `dirknicol/adaptive-messaging` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 2 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add dirknicol/adaptive-messaging`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/dirknicol/adaptive-messaging/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Marketing & Growth
- License: MIT
- Author: dirknicol (https://skillmd.com/u/dirknicol)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/dirknicol/adaptive-messaging

---


# Adaptive Messaging

## What this skill does

When a competitor moves, market shifts, or buyer language changes suddenly, the messaging response usually arrives too slow and too inconsistent — sales reps improvise, marketing scrambles, and three weeks later there's a battlecard nobody remembers.

This skill implements a 4-step framework — **Detect → Decide → Draft → Deploy** — that compresses competitive response from days to hours by clearly dividing labor between the PMM (judgment, strategy, sign-off) and AI (gathering, drafting, formatting).

## When to invoke

- A direct competitor has launched a feature, pricing change, or campaign that affects your positioning.
- A market shift (regulation, technology, customer behavior) is changing buyer language.
- Sales is reporting a new objection at scale and needs a consistent answer fast.
- A PR/analyst event has shifted how your category is discussed.

## Prerequisites

1. **Read `pmm-context.md` first when available.** If it is missing, offer to run `pmm-context`. If unavailable or declined, collect a minimum brief covering product, affected audience, current positioning, competitor or market event, proof points, claim boundaries, and voice. Mark assumptions and continue.
2. **Check for existing positioning artifacts.** If positioning was recently done (see `positioning` skill outputs), reference its unique attributes and trade-offs.
3. Ask the user: what triggered this? Get specifics: which competitor, what feature/move, what messaging they used, what your sales team is hearing.

## The framework

| Step | PMM action | AI role |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Detect | Define the threat: what changed, why it matters, who is affected. | Inspect supplied evidence and public competitor pages when tools and permissions allow; summarize messaging, review/social reactions, and changes from prior positioning with sources. |
| 2. Decide | Choose response posture: ignore, acknowledge, counter, reposition. Set boundary on what's true vs. spin. | Generate decision options with trade-offs. Surface internal context (recent positioning work, existing claims, customer commitments). |
| 3. Draft | Approve angle, voice, claims. Sign off on accuracy. | Draft battlecard sections, objection handlers, sales talking points, internal FAQ, customer-facing statement (if needed). Generate variants by audience and channel. |
| 4. Deploy | Brief sales/CS leaders. Decide cadence and channel. Schedule follow-up review. | Format for Slack, sales enablement tool, deck slide, email. Generate a 60-second video script for the sales kickoff video. |

## Workflow

### Step 1 — Detect

Capture the trigger event in structured form:

```markdown
## Trigger event
- **What:** [exactly what happened — feature launch, price change, repositioning, etc.]
- **Who:** [which competitor / market actor]
- **When:** [date, freshness]
- **Source:** [URL, screenshot, sales call recording, analyst note]
- **Their messaging:** [paste their words verbatim — do not paraphrase]
- **Reach:** [is this a soft launch or a global announcement?]
- **Strategic intent (your hypothesis):** [why are they doing this?]
```

Then ask: **what's our exposure?** Specifically:
- Which of our personas are most affected?
- Which deals in pipeline are at risk?
- Which of our claims are now harder to defend?
- Which of their previous weaknesses did this fix?

### Step 2 — Decide

Choose a response posture. Show the user this matrix and ask them to pick:

| Posture | When to use | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| **Ignore** | Their move doesn't actually affect your value or your ICP | Free — but only if you're right |
| **Acknowledge** | Their move is real but doesn't change your differentiation | Low — internal FAQ, light battlecard |
| **Counter** | Their move attacks your value; you have a defensible answer | Medium — battlecard, sales talk track, possible blog post |
| **Reposition** | Their move neutralizes your core differentiation | High — invoke `positioning` skill, this is no longer a messaging exercise |

If user picks **Reposition**, stop this skill and invoke `positioning`. This skill handles the first three postures.

### Step 3 — Draft

For Acknowledge / Counter postures, generate the response artifacts:

#### A. One-page battlecard

```markdown
# Battlecard: Response to [Competitor] [Move]

_Internal use only — last updated [date]_

## The move
[2-3 sentences: what they did, when, why it matters]

## Our position
[Single-paragraph statement of how we frame this. Defensible, accurate, on-brand.]

## Talk track for sales (when a prospect brings it up)
- **Acknowledge:** "[Empathy + short factual recognition]"
- **Reframe:** "[Pivot to your unique value]"
- **Proof:** "[Specific evidence — customer story, metric, capability]"
- **Close:** "[Forward-motion question]"

## Top 3 objections + responses
| Objection | Short response | Deeper response |
|---|---|---|
| | | |

## What we DON'T say
[Important — explicit guardrails on claims that aren't true or that overclaim]

## Proof points to cite
- [Customer logo / quote]
- [Metric / data point]
- [Third-party validation]

## Escalation
[When to bring in the PMM or product team — e.g., "if prospect has signed POC with competitor"]
```

#### B. Sales Slack message
A 100-word post for the sales channel. Tone: confident, plainspoken, action-oriented. Includes link to battlecard.

#### C. Internal FAQ
5-8 questions sales/CS will get internally. Short answers, with links to deeper docs.

#### D. Optional: customer-facing statement
Only if the move is public and customers will ask. Keep short, factual, non-defensive.

### Step 4 — Deploy

Tell the user the deployment checklist:

1. **Brief:** 15-minute call with sales/CS leadership. Walk through battlecard, take questions, get sign-off.
2. **Distribute:** Post in sales Slack, attach to relevant CRM deals, upload to sales enablement platform (Highspot, Seismic, Showpad).
3. **Train:** 30-minute optional drill on the talk track with 2-3 reps before scaling.
4. **Track:** Tag deals where the topic comes up. Review hit rate in 2 weeks.
5. **Refresh:** Schedule 30-day review. Competitive responses decay fast.

## Outputs

The user should walk away with:
- Filled-in trigger event capture
- Chosen response posture with rationale
- Battlecard (markdown, ready to paste into sales enablement)
- Sales Slack post (copy-pasteable)
- Internal FAQ
- Deployment checklist with owners and dates

## Quality bar

- **Speed over perfection.** A B+ response in 4 hours beats an A+ response in 4 days. Sales is already improvising.
- **No spin.** Anything the PMM wouldn't say to the competitor's face is removed. Sales reps lose trust in battlecards that overclaim.
- **Sales-first language.** This is internal copy. It must sound like how reps talk, not how marketing writes.
- **Trade-offs visible.** Always include "what we DON'T say." Reps need to know the boundary.

## Anti-patterns to refuse

- Generating a battlecard before identifying response posture (skip step 2 = wasted effort)
- Generating customer-facing public statements as a default (only when truly warranted)
- Writing battlecards in marketing-deck voice instead of sales-conversation voice
- Skipping the "what we don't say" section
- Treating every competitor move as an existential threat