Brian Groth’s view of some of the items that make up a good Competitive Intelligence program, which covers Overview & Approach, Getting Started, Supporting Sales & Marketing, and Taking your CI program further.

1. Competitive Intelligence
Brian Groth’s view of some of the items that make up a good Competitive
Intelligence program
February 2013

2. Table of Contents
1. Overview & Approach
2. Getting Started
3. Supporting Sales & Marketing
4. Taking your CI program further

3. Overview & Approach

4. A good Competitive Intelligence Program
A good Competitive Intelligence Program needs to drive product
innovation, forecasting and sales & marketing strategy through competitive
product evaluations, sales analysis and market research that together
provides in-depth competitive profiles and strategic direction. All together,
this enables an organization to:
 Optimize distinct business capabilities to gain competitive advantage
 Perform analysis that allows senior management to make more informed
decisions that then influence product planning, product marketing, etc.
 Improve understanding of the industry you compete in, for better
forecasting and planning
 Drive product, sales and marketing innovation and strategy

5. Mission, Strategies, Activities & Deliverables
Evolve and maintain a scalable competitive intelligence program to drive
product, sales and marketing innovation and strategy through competitive
Mission product evaluations, sales analysis and research that together provides in-depth
to guide
the competitive profiles and strategic direction
strategies
Competitive Product Competitive Sales Analysis Competitive Research
Evaluations
Strategies
to identify
each
activity
Competitive Partner & Developer, Win/Loss Customer & Industry Analyst Quarterly & Market
Labs Customer Integrator, Analysis Partner Perception Reports & 3rd Annual Opportunity
on-going interviews Admin and (CRM data) Interviews through Party Data Financials Analysis
& on-site & at Marketing & Ad-Hoc on-site & at Events & (MOA) &
Activities
as-needed events Materials Via Sales events Social Customer
The day- Media Needs
today work
Establish a rhythm to update content and create new content as-needed based on new product releases or announcements.
Deliverables
Ensure the content is discoverable and searchable, with applicable permissions as needed. Content includes:
• Sales guidance and competitive product overviews
• Technical product evaluations and comparisons
• Marketing briefs with suggested marketing strategies and tactics
• Executive-Level SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat) reports and metrics with revenue and market share trends

6. Areas of Influence
Product Planning
Areas to Influence: Product, Sales, Marketing, and
Physical Cloud-
hosted
Executives for investment, M&A and directional input
Lab
Product Labs Activities: To produce content & insights that are
Evaluation
used for everything from day-to-day sales and
s
marketing efforts to executive-level
Focus on
presentations
competitors in Campaig Deliverables: The content delivered to key
Sales the strategic ns,
Approach grouping for your MarCom stakeholders
product ms, - Technical evaluations to explain the
Events
competitive product
- Marketing briefs to explain the competitors
Go-To-
Win/Loss Market marketing and positioning
Analysis Approach
Analyst - Sales briefs to explain how the competitor
Reports &
Quarterly
sells and to help overcome common
Financials objections versus them
- Executive-level summaries to explain the
competitor’s financials, trends and overall

7. Getting Started

8. Start Small, Plan Big
1. Competitive Profiles:
Start with a focus on helping sales, which will grow content and create in-depth competitive profiles
while immediately making an impact and learning about the top competitive needs to support sales
2. Strategic Direction:
Work towards the mission to also provide strategic direction using these questions to help evaluate the
competitive landscape:
1. Strategic Groups: What are the right strategic groups to focus on?
2. Business Focus: What are the competitor’s objectives and strategies? What's their level of
commitment to this business?
3. Positioning: What's their product's positioning and the overall company's positioning?
4. Distribution: What's their distribution and partner (direct sales, integration, etc.) strategy?
5. Partners: Which partners may eventually offer competing products?
6. Customer Satisfaction: Where do they rank in customer satisfaction surveys?
7. Technology: Who may become a competitor as technologies merge? What new technology has
the potential to disrupt the market?
8. M&A: Which weak competitors might merge or be bought out to strengthen another competitor?

9. Which competitors to start with?
Get Opinions Analyze Data
Ask executives, sales, engineering, Use internal sales opportunity (CRM),
customer and partners the following revenue data and existing Market
questions, making note of the products & Opportunity Analysis to determine:
competitors: 1. Which solutions are the top revenue
1. Which competitors are we seeing in drivers, and which competitors offer
top accounts (losing to or evaluated similar solutions?
against) and why? 2. Which competitors are identified the
2. Which competitors do you feel are the most in sales opportunities in CRM?
greatest threat today and why? 3. Which solutions and industries will drive
3. Which competitors will be our greatest future revenue, based on the MOA?
threat in the future and why?
Aggregate the results, initially giving more weight to the input & data from Sales to select
the first few competitors to focus on
Eventually, group the competition based on technical capabilities, reach/distribution capability, geography, industry
focus, solution type, target audience, price points, analyst reports, or our own segmentation. This will give us
competitive groups for strategic direction and focus for future competitive intelligence.

10. How to gather competitive information?
1. Getting hands-on with the product is the first approach, but not always possible.
2. Interview customers and partners about competitive products if possible.
3. Look at what strategic grouping your product fits into. Such as, communications, news
service, gaming. Or more specific, such as instant messaging, e-mail, online portal, first-
person shooter gaming, etc.
 Who do analysts (Gartner, Forrester, etc.) compare you against in these groups? Or even, which group do
the analysts place you in? (you might have to pay for these)
 Who are the competitors in these groups? If you don’t know, take a look at free analyst reports and
search for your product at sites such as:
 http://www.crunchbase.com/ - search for your product name and see who they list as competitors
 http://compete.com – free metrics and a view of the competitor’s metrics
 http://Wikipedia.org – there is usually a list of competitors or links to a list of companies in this industry (aka, strategic
grouping)
 http://quora.com – search for your product name

11. Supporting Sales & Marketing
Deliver: Through:
• Competitive product overviews • Win/Loss Analysis (CRM)
• Competitive sales guidance • Customer & Partner Interviews
• Searchable/discoverable content • Hands-on Labs
• Ad-hoc requests as needed • Ad-Hoc Sales Feedback
• Content update rhythm • Social Media Listening & industry events

12. Primary types of competitive sales and marketing materials
Competitive Sales Content Competitive Marketing Content
This should be focused on a single competitor and 1. How the competitor presents themselves in the
quickly explain: industry at/with details focused on:
1. How the competitor sells (their sales pitch, • Events they participate in or host
with/through partners, etc.) • Advertising for their products and overall
Guidance
2. Overcoming sales objections versus the brand
competitor with guidance when a defensive • Social media efforts
position is needed • Case studies
3. Sales guidance for times when you can take the 2. How the competitor markets with or through
lead against the competitor using our strongest partners
selling points 3. Customer satisfaction ratings for the competitor
4. Insights from competitive win/loss analysis against versus us
the competitor
1. Details of the competitive product 1. Details of the competitive product
Product Details
2. Their strengths versus our product 2. Their strengths versus our product
3. Their weaknesses versus our product 3. Their weaknesses versus our product
4. Screenshots and/or videos 4. Screenshots and/or videos
5. Opportunities we have in the marketplace against
the competitor’s product
6. Threats we face with the current or assumed
future of the competitor’s product

13. Tiers of Competitors to guide focus & content
• Technical product evaluations and comparisons based on product installs or
customer interviews
• Marketing briefs with suggested marketing strategies and tactics
• Sales briefs and battlecards with suggested sales strategies and tactics
Top
• Executive-Level SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat) reports and
Competitive competitor summaries
Threat • Metrics with revenue, market share and so on
• Technical product evaluations and comparisons based on product installs
or marketing materials
Medium • Sales briefs and battlecards with suggested sales strategies and tactics
Competitive Threat
• Technical product evaluations and comparisons based on
marketing materials
Minor
Competitive Threat
back

14. Taking your CI program further

15. Topics that a Competitive Intelligence Program includes are:
CI Usage and Allocation: Create a communication and governance framework to insure relevant competitive intelligence usage for multiple end users
 Determination practices for defining who are the end users and what are their unique needs
 Create consistency in reports for usage among different organization units
 Maximize the ROI through effective usage of competitive intelligence
Scenario Planning & Modeling: Anticipate competitor actions and reactions to enable action and optimize response
 Use systems thinking to develop scenarios that predict future market and competitor behavior
 Develop a system of rank-and-order to evaluate the likelihood of outcomes
 Employ scenario planning to break traditional organizational “world views”
Establishing Competitive Intelligence : Value & ROI Effectively managing CI initiatives to ensure the most value-add possible
 Unlock the value of competitive intelligence
 Discover where competitive intelligence can generate high ROI
Competitive Landscape Analysis: Tools and techniques to identify existing and emerging competitive elements
 Identify latent (unspoken, unmet) and future customers needs
 Address the full breadth of the competitive landscape
 Learn the science-based framework for forecasting the future of competition and objectively identifying strategic opportunities and threats
Social Media Intelligence: Use social media to gain competitor insights and anticipate future customer behaviors
 Listen, categorize and analyze social media conversations to gain intelligence
 Data management practices for effective usage and analytics
 Converting social media data into customer and competitor insights
 Evaluate tools and techniques for collecting and categorizing social media data

16. Contact
 Brian Groth
 Groth.Brian@gmail.com
 @BrianGroth
 http://www.BrianGroth.com
 http://BrianGroth.Wordpress.com