The root cause of many product and business failures is making product, marketing and sales decisions based on intelligence that originates from any place other than those that will actually be purchasing and using your product—the buyer. You succeed in a market when you and your product are better and faster in those areas that are important to your buyers and ultimately solve their problems. A competitor analysis must be based on the factors that are the most important to your target markets.

Primary Intelligence’s competitor analysis does not focus on widely available information such as market statistics, financial reports, competitor web sites or press releases. While this intelligence can certainly be an interesting benchmark for an organization our experience has shown that this type of intelligence is not generally actionable.

More than a decade of experience analyzing competitors has shown us that the most valuable competitive intelligence, the competitive intelligence that executives, management and employees can leverage to make better decisions, must meet the following two conditions:

1. The intelligence must come from buyers that evaluated the competitor’s solution and either selected them or did not select them
2. Specific actions can be taken based on the competitive intelligence and analysis that will improve your ability to compete with the competitor

The primary objective of a competitor analysis program should be to help you improve your win rate versus that competitor and help you identify opportunities to take market share from the competitor.

Since the late 1990s Primary Intelligence has been perfecting the art and science of talking to buyers to gather actionable competitive intelligence for hundreds of clients in more than 30 industries. Leveraging our considerable experience ensures the success of your competitor analysis program. We can help you with your competitive intelligence objectives if they fall into one of the following competitive intelligence categories:

Product Feature Competitive Intelligence

Valuable product feature competitive intelligence is intelligence that helps you understand not only how well your product features stack up to the competitor’s product features, but also validates those features that are important to your target markets. Customers don’t buy features; they buy solutions that solve their problems and address their needs.

Understanding what buyers identify as the strengths and weaknesses of the competitor’s solution and how important those strengths and weaknesses were in their product evaluation will provide you the most meaningful product feature-related competitive intelligence. Whether buyers identify a feature or feature-set that is missing from the competitor’s solution, or features that don’t work as advertised, you will be able to take action on the intelligence because it comes from those making the purchase decisions and they have indicated that it is important to them.

Product Implementation Competitive Intelligence

Understand the product implementation strengths and weaknesses of the competitor’s product through the eyes of buyers that have recently implemented their solution, or are currently in the middle of implementing the competitor’s solution.

Pricing & Discount Strategy Competitive Intelligence

The pricing component of a sales strategy has less impact on purchase decisions in growing markets where there is a greater reliance upon product differentiation and leveraging brand strengths. However, price is the common denominator in all purchase decisions and understanding your likely price position versus the competitor can still provide significant competitive advantage.

In more mature markets, where there is usually very little opportunity for product differentiation, there is a greater reliance on pricing and discount strategies to create competitive differentiation. And since market share expansion in a mature market generally comes as a result of taking market share from the competitor, comparing and contrasting the competitor’s pricing and discount strategies with your own are critical to improving your ability to compete with the competitor.

Sales-related Competitive Intelligence

Identify and understand the competitor’s sales strategies, including the sales tactics the competitor specifically uses when competing with your organization.

Company-related Competitive Intelligence

Understand how buyers perceive the competitor’s brand and reputation and compare that perception to how they perceive you. Identify company-related competitor opportunities and threats and adjust your sales and marketing strategies and tactics to leverage your strengths and overcome your weaknesses.

Marketing-related Competitive Intelligence

Understand competitor marketing initiatives and the messages that resonate with buyers and cause them to evaluate the competitor’s solution. Identify the positioning tactics being used by the competitor, their marketing strategy and its overall effectiveness in the competitor’s target markets.

Delivering Competitive Intelligence Results

As important as the collection of the competitive intelligence from your buyers is, it is equally important that the gathered data and analysis is made available to everyone in your organization that can leverage it to make better decisions in their respective roles. In addition to the normal MS PowerPoint competitor analysis reports that are delivered at key data point intervals, your organization will also have access to our web-based software as a service (SaaS) competitive intelligence tools:

1. Competitive Navigator — an on-demand competitive analysis management tool designed to help you analyze your competition across more than 50 different actionable metrics
2. Executive Planner — a real-time SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis tool and trend analysis tool to help executives identify competitive opportunities and threats early
3. Sales Explorer — a sales tool designed by sales people to help sales and sales managers better understand the competition’s strengths and weaknesses and your differentiators as identified by buyers
4. Salesforce.com integration delivers the competitive intelligence in real-time to your sales force to help them leverage all of the benefits of your competitive intelligence program while they’re in the sales trenches

Contact Us for a Demonstration Today

Contact a Primary Intelligence representative today for a demonstration of our Competitive Analysis solution. Ask them to tell you about the additional benefits our clients experience with their Competitor Analysis programs, including:

• Identify “poor reference” accounts for competitors
• Improved win rates versus a specific competitor
• Win-back opportunities (lost opportunities that show opportunity for win-back at a future date)
• Discovery of new product opportunities
• Product marketing improvements realized
• Product management improvements realized
• Sales management improvements realized
• Sales performance improvements

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