How to Read G2 Grid Reports Like a Sales Pro: Category Strategy and Competitive Positioning

Only 4% of products on G2 earn a Leader badge in any given quarter. Out of more than 200,000 listed products across 2,000+ categories, the vast majority never crack the top-right quadrant of the Grid. Yet most sales and marketing teams treat G2 reports as a simple pass/fail: either you have a badge or you do not.

That misses the point entirely. The G2 Grid is not a trophy case. It is a competitive intelligence system -- one that reveals exactly where your product sits relative to every alternative in your market, broken down by company size, user role, and specific feature set. If you know how to read it, it tells you which deals you are likely to win, where you are vulnerable, and what your competitors are doing about it.

This guide breaks down how the G2 Grid actually works, how to use its data for competitive positioning, and how to build a category strategy that gives your sales team a structural advantage.

How the G2 Grid Actually Works

The G2 Grid looks straightforward -- a four-quadrant chart with products scattered across it. But the scoring methodology underneath it is more nuanced than most people realize.

The Two Axes

Every product on the Grid is scored on two dimensions, each weighted equally at 50% of the overall G2 Score:

• Satisfaction (vertical axis): Derived entirely from user reviews. This includes product satisfaction ratings, NPS scores, review quality (thorough reviews carry more weight), and review recency. This is the axis you can directly influence.
• Market Presence (horizontal axis): Incorporates 15 different factors combining G2 review data with third-party signals -- company size, web traffic, social following, employee count, and market share indicators. Product-specific metrics receive greater weight than general company metrics.

The key insight for sales teams: Satisfaction is entirely within your control. A 20-person startup with fanatical users can outrank a publicly traded competitor on the vertical axis. Market Presence takes years to build, but satisfaction can shift in a single quarter with the right product experience and review strategy.

The Four Quadrants

G2 normalizes all scores to a 0-100 scale within each category, then plots products into four quadrants:

• Leaders (top right): High satisfaction and high market presence. These are the products that both users love and the market recognizes. Only 3-4% of listed products earn this badge in any quarter.
• High Performers (top left): High satisfaction, lower market presence. Often smaller or newer products with excellent user experiences but limited brand recognition. This is where many fast-growing startups live.
• Contenders (bottom right): Lower satisfaction, high market presence. Large, well-known products that have brand recognition and market share but mediocre user reviews. Legacy enterprise tools often land here.
• Niche (bottom left): Lower on both axes. Products that serve specific segments well but lack both broad user satisfaction and market visibility.

For competitive selling, the most interesting dynamic is the tension between High Performers and Contenders. When a High Performer competes against a Contender for the same deal, the smaller product has user satisfaction data on its side, while the larger one has brand familiarity. Understanding this dynamic is critical for building competitive talk tracks.

Review Decay: Why Recency Matters More Than Volume

G2 applies an exponential decay function to review scores, compounded daily. In practical terms, this means roughly -3% per month or -30% per year. A review maintains its strongest weight for the first 90 days, holds reasonably well through 18 months, then decays more aggressively. After about three years, a review retains only ~3% of its original scoring impact.

The implication: a company that collected 200 reviews during a product launch 18 months ago and stopped is losing ground every day to a competitor that generates 10 new reviews per month. Review velocity matters more than review volume. And importantly, G2 resets the decay clock if a reviewer updates their existing review -- which is why prompting customers to update reviews during major product releases is a high-leverage move.

Beyond the Grid: Report Types That Most Teams Ignore

The standard Grid report gets all the attention, but G2 publishes over 26,000 reports per quarter across multiple report types. Sales teams that only look at the main Grid are leaving valuable intelligence on the table.

Segment-Specific Grids

G2 publishes separate Grid reports for three company segments based on reviewer self-selection:

• Small Business: Reviews from companies with 50 or fewer employees
• Mid-Market: 51-1,000 employees
• Enterprise: 1,001+ employees

This is where the real competitive intelligence lives. A product might be a Leader on the overall Grid but a Contender in the Enterprise segment -- meaning enterprise buyers have measurably different experiences with it than smaller teams. If you sell to mid-market companies and your competitor leads the overall Grid but ranks lower in the Mid-Market Grid, that is a concrete competitive advantage you can surface in every deal.

Momentum Reports

Momentum Reports track which products are gaining or losing ground over time. The scoring factors include employee growth, review volume growth, social following growth, and web traffic growth -- all measured as year-over-year changes. This report answers the question prospects always ask but rarely get honest answers to: Is this product on the way up or on the way down?

For sales teams, Momentum data is powerful in two scenarios. When you are the one gaining momentum, share the Momentum Grid in competitive deals to demonstrate trajectory. When a competitor is losing momentum (declining reviews, stalled growth), that is a buyer signal data to target their customer base with displacement campaigns.

Index Reports

Index Reports break down performance along four specific dimensions: Usability, Implementation, Relationship, and Results. Each index isolates a single factor from the overall review data, giving buyers a focused comparison. If your product wins on Implementation speed but loses on breadth of features, the Implementation Index becomes a powerful competitive asset for deals where time-to-value is the primary concern.

Category Strategy: Why Where You Compete Matters as Much as How You Score

G2's Winter 2026 reports span more than 1,300 categories. A single product can be listed in multiple categories, and your ranking can vary dramatically across them. This makes category selection one of the most underappreciated levers in B2B marketing.

How Categories Are Defined

Every G2 category has a set of feature-based inclusion criteria. A product must meet all the feature requirements to be included. Categories are defined by functionality (what the product does), not use case (what it is used for) or buyer persona (who uses it). This means a single AI-powered sales platform with diverse capabilities can legitimately appear in many categories.

For a category to become Grid-eligible, it needs at least six products with over 10 reviews each and at least 150 total reviews across all products in the category. New categories are created when G2's analyst team identifies a distinct feature set not represented by existing categories, and at least 10 companies exist in the space.

Multi-Category Positioning

This is where category strategy gets interesting. Consider a sales engagement platform that also has built-in analytics, email tracking, and AI writing capabilities. It could plausibly appear in Sales Engagement, Email Tracking, AI Writing Assistant, and Sales Analytics categories -- each representing a different buyer search path.

The strategic considerations:

• Category size vs. competitiveness: A large, established category (like CRM) has massive search traffic but is dominated by entrenched leaders. A newer, more specific category (like AI Sales Assistant) may have less traffic but far less competition.
• Buyer intent alignment: Which categories do your ideal customers actually search? A VP of Sales Development searching "sales engagement" has different needs than a RevOps leader searching "sales analytics." Your category presence should match your target personas' search behavior.
• Ranking feasibility: It is better to be a Leader in three focused categories than a Niche player in ten broad ones. Concentrate review collection efforts on the categories where you can realistically reach the top-right quadrant.

Category Timing: Riding New Waves

G2 added 16 new Grid-eligible categories in the Winter 2026 quarter alone, many tied to AI adoption and emerging technologies. The AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) category, launched in March 2025, grew from 7 products to over 150 within a year.

New categories represent a land-grab opportunity. The first movers who collect reviews in a new category face far less competition and can establish Leader positions before the category matures. If your product's capabilities overlap with an emerging G2 category, getting listed and generating reviews early is one of the highest-ROI marketing activities available.

Using G2 Data for Competitive Displacement

One of the most valuable applications of G2 data is fueling competitive displacement campaigns -- systematically targeting accounts that use a competitor's product and giving them a reason to switch.

Mining Compare Reports

G2 Compare Reports let buyers see head-to-head comparisons between up to four products based on satisfaction ratings across dozens of attributes. As a seller, these reports are a goldmine for building competitive battle cards.

Here is how to extract maximum value:

1. Identify your winning attributes. Pull the Compare Report for you vs. each major competitor. List every attribute where you score higher. These become the foundation of your competitive messaging.
2. Find your competitor's weak spots. Look for attributes where the competitor scores below 7.0 -- those are pain points their users are experiencing. Build outreach messaging around those specific frustrations.
3. Track changes over time. Run Compare Reports quarterly. If a competitor's satisfaction in a specific attribute is declining, that is an active opportunity to target their customer base.

Turning Competitor Research Activity into Outreach Triggers

Competitive signals are among the highest-volume buyer intent signals on G2. When a target account visits a competitor's G2 profile, views their pricing page, reads their alternatives page, or compares them against other products, G2 captures that activity and surfaces it through Buyer Intent.

The practical playbook for competitive displacement:

• Account viewing your competitor: They are actively evaluating alternatives. Trigger immediate personalized outreach highlighting your specific advantages for their use case.
• Account viewing your competitor AND your profile: They are in active comparison mode. Send a curated Compare Report showing where you outperform, along with relevant customer references.
• Account browsing category alternatives: They are early in evaluation. Enroll in a nurture sequence with educational content that positions you as a thought leader, not a sales pitch.

One limitation worth noting: G2 intent data is account-level, not contact-level. It tells you which company is researching, but you will need tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator or Autobound to identify the right contacts within the account and personalize outreach to them.

How Top Sales Teams Actually Use G2 in Their Workflow

Understanding G2's methodology is useful. Turning it into a repeatable sales advantage is what matters. Here are five concrete ways high-performing teams integrate G2 data into their daily workflow.

1. Prospect Research with Grid Context

Before any outreach to a prospect, check whether their current vendor appears on the same G2 Grids you do. If the prospect's existing tool is a Contender (high market presence, lower satisfaction), your messaging should emphasize user experience and satisfaction. If their tool is a High Performer in a different segment than the prospect's company size, highlight that the product may not be optimized for their scale.

2. Deal-Specific Social Proof

G2 reports are most powerful when matched to the specific deal context. Instead of sending a generic badge, pull the segment-specific Grid that matches the prospect's company size. If they are a 200-person company, show them the Mid-Market Grid, not the overall Grid. If they care most about ease of implementation, share the Implementation Index. Precision builds credibility.

3. Competitive Battle Cards Backed by Data

Build your competitive battle cards around G2 Compare Report data rather than internal product comparisons. When a prospect says "we are also looking at [Competitor]," responding with "here is how our users rate us vs. them across 40+ attributes on G2" carries far more weight than a vendor-created comparison sheet. 88% of B2B buyers trust peer reviews as much as personal recommendations, making third-party data your most credible competitive weapon.

Related: signal-based selling guide.

4. Objection Handling with Review Timeline

When a prospect raises a concern that maps to an older negative review, show them the review timeline. "Users raised this in Q2 2024. We shipped [specific feature] to address it. Here is what reviews from the last 90 days say." This approach demonstrates responsiveness and continuous improvement -- two things that matter enormously to B2B buyers who are committing to a long-term vendor relationship.

5. Win/Loss Analysis Using G2 Attributes

After every closed deal (won or lost), compare the outcome against G2 attribute scores. If you consistently lose deals where "Reporting/Dashboards" is a top priority and your G2 score in that attribute is below 7.0, that is a clear product feedback loop. Conversely, if you win deals where "Ease of Setup" matters most and that is your highest-rated attribute, you have identified your ideal customer profile in data terms.

Building a Review Engine That Sustains Your Rankings

Because of G2's decay mechanism, maintaining rankings requires a sustained review generation strategy, not a one-time campaign.

Trigger-Based Review Requests

The highest-quality reviews come from customers at their peak satisfaction moments:

• After a win: A customer just closed a deal using your tool. They are in the best possible mindset to describe the value you delivered.
• After a milestone: Usage milestones (100th email sent, first campaign completed, first integration activated) signal engagement and provide specific material for detailed reviews.
• After a support resolution: A customer whose problem was resolved quickly and thoroughly often writes the most compelling reviews because they can describe both the challenge and the response.

The Review Quality Multiplier

G2's algorithm weights thorough reviews more heavily than brief ones. A detailed review that discusses specific features, implementation experience, and measurable results carries significantly more scoring impact than a five-star review with a one-sentence comment. When prompting customers for reviews, give them specific questions to answer: What problem were you solving? How long did setup take? What results have you seen? This both improves review quality and the resulting G2 score.

Responding to Every Review

Prospective buyers read vendor responses to reviews -- both positive and negative. G2's own guidance emphasizes that vendor engagement with reviews demonstrates commitment to customer feedback. Responding to negative reviews with specific details about how you have addressed the issue is particularly powerful. It shows prospects that you take feedback seriously and act on it.

The G2 + AI Sales Stack: What Changes in 2026

G2's marketplace now reaches more than 100 million global buyers annually, with web traffic growing 20%+ year over year even as many brands see traffic decline. The platform has surpassed 3 million total reviews. This scale makes G2 data increasingly central to how both buyers and sellers operate.

On the buyer side, roughly half of B2B buyers now start their software search with AI chatbots rather than Google. AI tools pull heavily from review platform data to generate recommendations, making your G2 profile a critical input to AI-mediated buying decisions.

On the seller side, the sales intelligence market is projected to reach $8.19 billion by 2030, growing at 13% annually. As AI-powered B2B prospecting guide tools like Autobound become standard parts of the sales stack, the ability to incorporate third-party validation data -- including G2 scores and competitive positioning -- into personalized outreach becomes a meaningful differentiator. Reps who can reference specific G2 data points in context ("your team rated ease of implementation as a top priority on G2 -- here is why our 30-second setup matters") outperform those sending generic pitches.

The AI-powered sales tool market is expected to grow from $3 billion to over $10 billion by 2035. Within that landscape, the tools that win will be those that synthesize multiple data sources -- including review platform intelligence -- into actionable, personalized outreach. G2 is not just a badge factory; it is becoming an essential data layer in the modern sales infrastructure.

Your 30-Day Category Strategy Action Plan

Here is a concrete plan to implement the ideas in this guide.

1. Week 1: Audit your G2 presence. Pull your Grid position, segment-specific rankings, Momentum score, and Index scores across every category you are listed in. Identify where you are strongest and where you are weakest. Pull Compare Reports against your top three competitors and document your winning and losing attributes.
2. Week 1: Map your category opportunities. List every G2 category that matches your product's feature set. Check whether you qualify for inclusion. Identify new or emerging categories where early positioning is possible. Prioritize categories by buyer persona alignment and competitive feasibility.
3. Week 2: Build your competitive playbook. Create battle cards for your top three competitors using G2 Compare Report data. For each competitor, document: their Grid position by segment, their weakest attributes, their review trends (growing or declining), and your specific advantages. Distribute to the sales team.
4. Week 2-3: Launch a review generation engine. Identify trigger moments (wins, milestones, support resolutions) and build automated review request flows. Focus on collecting detailed, thorough reviews that discuss specific features and results. Target the categories and segments where you need the most review lift.
5. Week 3-4: Integrate G2 into sales workflows. Train AEs to pull segment-specific Grids and Compare Reports for active deals. Build G2-sourced competitive talk tracks into your sales playbook. Set up Buyer Intent alerts for target accounts researching your category or competitors.

The Bottom Line

G2 is the largest B2B software review marketplace on the planet, with 200,000+ products, 2,000+ categories, and 3 million+ reviews. But most teams engage with it at the surface level -- collect badges, post on LinkedIn, move on.

The teams that extract real competitive advantage from G2 treat it as an intelligence system. They understand the scoring methodology well enough to influence it. They read segment-specific and momentum reports, not just the headline Grid. They mine Compare Reports for competitive ammunition and feed G2 intent signals into their prospecting workflows.

In a market where 94% of B2B buyers use review sites to make purchasing decisions, your G2 strategy is not a marketing nice-to-have. It is a competitive weapon -- but only if you know how to use it.