4 steps for building a strategic competitive intelligence program

This article is based on Maureen West’s talk at the Product Marketing Summit in Chicago. As a PMA member, you can enjoy the complete recording here. For more exclusive content, head over to your membership dashboard. 

Hey there! I'm Maureen West, Director of Product Marketing at Cytel. 

Today, I’m going to share how you can create a competitive intelligence (CI) program and apply the knowledge you gather to make better, more informed decisions that’ll drive business growth. 

We’ll dig into each of the four key steps involved in building a CI program:

1. Get executive buy-in
2. Develop a collection and analysis process
3. Implement and communicate
4. Monitor performance

Let’s get right into it.

Step one: Get executive buy-in 

If you want to do anything worth doing in product marketing, you need to get executive buy-in first. It's a pain in the ass, but doing it upfront pays off big time. 

Lay out the objectives and scope of your program

To get execs on board with your competitive intelligence program, you first need to paint a picture: why is CI important? How will it benefit the business? Who are the stakeholders? Make sure you align the objectives and scope of your program with the company’s overarching goals.

Give an overview of the market landscape

As you're painting the picture of your CI program for execs, lay out what the market landscape looks like. 

While your executive team is likely familiar with analyst reports like Gartner's Magic Quadrant or Forrester Wave, they may not understand what these reports mean to them. Take the opportunity to remind them that analysts and customers both define categories and have expectations of what software should do within them. 

Showing an impartial, third-party view demonstrates who your competitors are and where your company fits in the market from an outside perspective. This opens up the conversation about how best to position or re-position your organization. 

Hone in on your key competitors

When discussing key competitors, it's critical to focus on the direct competitors that are most relevant to your business. I once worked at a company that thought they had over 35 competitors when the reality was far fewer. Use data on who you win and lose deals against to accurately define your competitive set.

As you’re making the case for a CI program, make sure you highlight how much revenue you're losing to competitors. This revenue impact will get their attention and get them thinking, “How can we start winning more deals and making more money?” 

You likely already have win/loss data in your CRM that you can share. Presenting tangible numbers on revenue lost to specific competitors lets you have a focused discussion and create a shortlist of your key competitive threats.

Outline your business challenges

Once you have your shortlist of key competitors, you might want to put together a product comparison chart like the one below. 

This is a pretty popular tool, but to be honest, I kind of hate it. Why? Because the only thing you can ever be 100% certain about is your own product's info – the competitor details are always out of date as soon as it's published. Salespeople constantly find new competitor offerings that haven’t been captured. 

Despite their shortcomings, these charts can be valuable for making informed decisions about your company’s future direction. Seeing how you stack up against competitors is also a good starting point for your product roadmap.

Let’s say you’re going for a funding round – you need to clearly articulate your positioning versus competitors to investors. This type of chart succinctly conveys where you fit into the market landscape. Plus, sharing this chart means that when you’re discussing your roadmap later on, you've already provided vital context.

Define your differentiators

While you have the executive team's ear, it's also a great time to align on your true differentiators. If you ask your sales team, executives, and marketers separately, you'll likely get different answers from each group. You need one consistent message defining your unique value rather than letting individual internal groups define you.

Differentiators aren't always product or feature-related. In fact, unless you're truly on the cutting edge, your product is unlikely to be your company’s biggest distinguishing factor. Look at areas like pricing – making it simple and easy to understand can be an important differentiator for customers.

Step two: Develop a collection and analysis process

Once you’ve got executive buy-in for your CI program, the next step is developing your collection and analysis process. Where will you gather competitive intelligence? How will you analyze it? And how will you communicate findings and recommendations? 

Let’s break all this down.