Round Up The Usual Suspects

If I were to ask you right now who your largest competitor is, what would you tell me? What if I asked who your most dangerous competitor is?

I would probably hear a litany of comments such as “company X is the 800 pound gorilla in the room” or “company Y has a really great sales staff, and they really know their product” etc. There’s always a lot of random anecdotes that are most likely common knowledge. 

However, how many “facts” do you actually know about your competition? 

Unfortunately, many companies fall into what I like to call “Competitive Arrogance” when it comes to what they actually know about their competition. Competitive arrogance is a dangerous trap to fall into because it can be based more on what you think you know, rather than what you should know. It’s built around rumors, random information, and perceptions instead of hard, verifiable data. It can also lead you into even more dangerous territory of making claims or statements you probably can’t back up. Even worse, you could be making product development decisions based around all of this bad data.

Doing and maintaining real competitive intelligence is an art, science, a little mysticism, and a lot of hard work. It takes digging into the details, looking for all the information you can get your hands on, and maintaining a neutral perception to analyze. It should be something that becomes part of the day of whoever is tasked with maintaining it. 

Actually compiling all the information you can is a great first step. You’d be amazed at how much you’ll actually learn from the effort, but other potential ideas and inspirations you might gleam from it. Remember, your competition is just as interested in being successful as you are.

The hardest part comes when you have to take all the information you’ve gathered and put into something useful. This is a critical part of any competitive intelligence effort as what’s the point of having all the data if you don’t have it in a usable form? 

Any report or guide you generate should be a straight up-and-down comparison without any emotional or market spin. It should have all the data in a concise and usable form that’s easy to reference quickly. If you have a features that are similar to your competition, list them straight out. If you have an implementation of a feature you think is better, say why in a relevant manner. Smart customers can see a badly made spin, and it’ll just undermine your position. 

Here’s a quick example:

“Product X’s cabinet is black, which we think clashes against the backdrop” is more opinion and subjective. “Our cabinet is white, which reflects more sunlight and lowers the internal temperature. Product X features a black cabinet, which absorbs more sunlight and increases internal cabinet temperatures” is a much better, usable comparison as an example. 

A well written, real-world comparison guide and/or report is an amazing tool to have not only for your sales staff, but for really any part of your company. It can assist in those instances where features start to matter more than price, and where your sales team needs that little extra edge to close the deal. These types of reports and guides can also assist your product development team in their efforts as well. Is there a feature or technology that you’re developing that could give you an edge over your competition? Is there a hole in your competition’s product line you can exploit? These are all the little details and gems your can mine out of good competitive intelligence. 

If you currently have competitive intelligence activities ongoing at your company, keep it up! If you don’t, or have some efforts that might have fallen behind, there’s no time like the present to get them going. 

If you’d like to get a new competitive intelligence review started, or would like an outside perspective on a current effort, Salyer and Associates is here to help give you all the facts at your fingertips.