By Jatin Modi, founder of Renaissance Group · Published 28 September 2026 · Updated 13 October 2026
What is in the two-page market brief?
Three sections fill two pages: competitors, customers and regulation. Every item carries one line on what it means for your team, so the reader gets the consequence along with the headline.
| Section | What Hastings reads | What you receive |
|---|---|---|
| Competitors | Competitor sites, trade press, news and patents | Launches, moves and published price changes, each with what it means for you |
| Customers | News about your customers | Events at your customer accounts |
| Regulation | Regulators and news | New rules, with the clients or products they touch |
The head of business development forwards the brief, and the leadership team reads the market in five minutes.
How does the weekly watch run?
The watch reads every week and sends alerts between briefs. Hastings collects from news, trade press, regulators, competitor sites, customer news and patents, selects the items that matter to your business, and writes the two pages. The brief arrives in Outlook or Gmail with a copy in SharePoint or Google Drive.
A person on your team approves everything that goes out. In practice the head of business development reads the brief first, edits the readings of what each item means, and forwards it. During setup Hastings configures which competitors, customers and regulators the watch follows and which items raise an alert.
How should a team choose what to watch?
- Name the five to ten competitors that appear in your deals.
- List the customer accounts whose news changes your plans.
- List the regulators and standards bodies that can change your products or your buyers.
- Decide what raises an alert, for example a price change, a leadership move or a product launch, and who reads the brief first.
What does a leadership team get in the first week?
Setup connects your CRM, email, calendar and market sources and configures the first jobs, as the pricing page describes. For this job the market sources are the main work: the list of competitors, customer accounts and regulators to follow.
The pilot calendar puts connection and knowledge-base build in weeks 1 to 2 and the running jobs in weeks 3 to 12. When the watch runs alongside Tender and RFP desk, the competitor section also tells the bid team who else is active in the same buyers.
Which tools do AI answers cite for competitor monitoring?
On 9 October 2026 we asked five AI engines two questions about tracking competitors and market news for sales teams, twice each. The 20 answers cited 131 pages from 46 domains (source: Hastings answer panel, method below). klue.com took 19 citations, a 15% share, and appeared in 9 of the 20 answers. ChatGPT returned the most citations (43) and Google AI Mode the fewest (13).
| Cited domain | Citations | Answers citing it |
|---|---|---|
| klue.com | 19 | 9 of 20 |
| autobound.ai | 11 | 9 of 20 |
| kompyte.com | 7 | 4 of 20 |
| youtube.com | 6 | 4 of 20 |
| crayon.co | 6 | 4 of 20 |
| visualping.io | 6 | 3 of 20 |
The table gives a buyer a shortlist to test. Whichever tool you test, ask which sources it reads, whether alerts and the weekly brief are separate, and whether each item says what it means for your business. Hastings states all three: sources above, weekly brief plus alerts, and one line of consequence on every item.
Where does the watch stop?
- It reads public sources. A competitor price that is only ever quoted in private never appears in the brief, while a price published on a competitor site does.
- The cadence is weekly, with alerts between briefs for items that cannot wait.
- The reading of what an item means for you is a draft. The head of business development edits it before it travels.
For individual accounts, Relationship watch follows promotions, moves and news for each contact, and Battlecards turns competitor intelligence into talking points for the sales team.
What is on record for the system behind the watch?
The system behind these jobs runs live in the marketing organization of a global industrial major operating in more than 100 countries, with 160+ agents in production (source: the Hastings homepage). For your company, the first jobs are configured for your own sales or business development work.
Questions buyers ask
Can AI monitor competitor news and pricing changes for a sales team?
Yes, from public sources. Hastings reads competitor sites, news, trade press, regulators, customer news and patents each week, so a published price change appears in the brief with what it means for you.
How often does the brief arrive?
Weekly, with alerts between briefs for items that cannot wait.
How long is the brief?
Two pages, written so that a leadership team reads it in five minutes.
Where does the brief land?
In Outlook or Gmail, with a copy in SharePoint or Google Drive.
Which sources does the watch read?
News, trade press, regulators, competitor sites, customer news and patents.
How was the panel run?
The Hastings answer panel asks ChatGPT (with web search), Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode each prompt twice, in English for the US market, through the DataForSEO service. The prompts for this page were “AI that tracks competitors and market news for sales teams”; “AI that monitors competitor news and pricing changes for a sales team”. The run date is 9 October 2026 and it produced 20 answers. A citation is one linked page in an answer, and the answers column counts how many of the 20 answers cite the domain.