Competitive Research
Mapping what buyers could choose instead, problem by problem
About this workflow
Working out what a buyer could choose instead of the product — starting from the problems customers are trying to solve rather than from a list of vendors. The work runs from win/loss conversations and the customer problem set, through deriving the competitor set from those problems and filling a problem-by-alternative matrix, and on to battle cards, head-to-head comparisons and an assembled report.
Its purpose is to stop a company discovering that it is well positioned against the problems it already solves. Problems entered on the strength of something a customer did — a workaround built, a budget spent, a deal lost — hold up in front of a customer; problems back-derived from the product’s own capabilities read as consistent research right up to the moment a rep uses one.
The recognizable task
- Buyers keep raising an alternative that was never on the competitor list
- Deals are being lost and the CRM reason field is the only account of why
- A rep needs something to carry into a deal that is more than a feature grid
- The competitor set is derived from the problems, not from a vendor list drawn up in advance
- Each figure reads as won N of M, with the sampling frame stated before the first number
- Do-nothing, the spreadsheet and the in-house build are carried as competitors in their own right
How the workflow runs
Select an agent to see what it does, what it needs and how to run it.