Company playbook / 01 / Content & trust
Harness
Content that helps a buyer say yes
Harness is useful because the content and the sales approach fit together. Its articles help engineers compare options. Its research gives people a reason to pay attention. Its sales process asks what improvement the customer needs before discussing a contract.
01 / What they actually did
A comparison written for a real sales question
Harness says its original Harness-versus-Jenkins comparison was written in 2018 because customers needed a write-up for internal discussions. The updated piece explains setup, maintenance, CI/CD differences and total cost—not just a feature grid. [H2]
A research report that became an event
The 2025 State of Software Delivery report surveyed 500 engineering leaders and developers. Harness then ran a virtual event with sessions around the findings and speakers from engineering companies. One research asset became a report, discussions and event content. [H3] [H4]
Customer stories with numbers
Harness published a Zeotap story reporting 36× higher deployment frequency, and a OneAdvanced story reporting 10× ROI in two months. These are customer-reported results, not guarantees. [H5] [H6]
A sales process with a measurable before/after
Jyoti Bansal describes setting a deployment baseline and target during sales—for example, frequency, hours spent and failure rate—and checking after implementation whether the customer received that value. [H1]
02 / What you can learn
Lesson to keep: Start with a decision the buyer has to make, not a keyword. Then connect education, proof and evaluation. A good article can be something your champion forwards to a manager.
Don’t over-copy: The 2025 research/events are evidence of Harness at a later stage. Public evidence does not prove those programs drove its first $10M ARR.
03 / How to do something similar
- 01Ask sales for the five questions prospects repeatedly ask before buying. Pick one question per article.
- 02Publish an honest comparison: who each option suits, setup work, limitations, ongoing cost, and migration steps.
- 03Publish one quantified customer story with the starting point, what changed, time taken and caveats.
- 04If you have real data, turn it into a small research study; host a discussion on the findings.
- 05Give the sales team the article, checklist and measurement worksheet as one buyer toolkit.
Examples you could publish or run
What to measure
How often is the content used in live deals? Assessments requested; evaluation-to-close rate.
04 / Copy the framework
Inspired by Harness + PostHog
Competitor comparison page
A page people can forward when choosing between two products.
TITLE: [Tool A] vs [Tool B] for [specific workload] WHO THIS IS FOR: [team size / stack / use case] 1. The decision: what should the reader optimize for? 2. Quick verdict: choose A when [...] / choose B when [...] 3. Setup: steps, dependencies, time, team skills 4. Real cost: license + infrastructure + engineering time 5. Trade-offs: performance, maintenance, limits, security 6. Migration: what moves, what breaks, how to test 7. Honest recommendation with assumptions 8. One downloadable checklist / working demo CHECK: Have an engineer review all claims. Link vendor docs. MEASURE: Product evaluations influenced and opportunities created.
05 / Original sources