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March 20, 2015
How Well Do You Know Your Competitors?
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Every sales leader wants to know what their competitors are doing. Knowing how your competitors are enabling their sales force can provide an advantage. But most Sales VPs don’t know how to do it. They confuse competitive profiling and benchmarking.
We get asked to benchmark the competition frequently. Although benchmarking includes competitors, it is not competitive profiling. Benchmarking allows a comparison of you against your peers. This peer group is typically made up of 30-40 companies. Alternatively, competitive profiling enables you to deeply understand one competitor. This is extremely beneficial when targeting a single company. And there are specific ways to accomplish and use the data to be effective.
We recently advised a client how to perform a competitive profile. Why? There was a 67% increase in lost business to one competitor. The past 6 months have been brutal. The win/loss interviews were too general to really uncover the root issue. Lost customers indicated they ‘matched the solution to the problem’ better. Or they felt a ‘better level of trust’. Another mentioned ‘superior installation references’. Not one thing stood out. It was time for a competitive profile.
We brainstormed with the client and decided to limit our investigation to three items. We chose these:
We then developed questions to ask the competitor. And started asking:
We also conducted deep analysis on their website. Did their content tell us something? We then went back and reviewed all win/loss interviews. We looked for patterns. Had we missed someing? Finally, we outsourced calling into the competitor and mystery shopping to fill in the gaps.
The questions were created using three tips. These tips are the foundation for best in class competitive profiling:
The competitive profile found some interesting information for our client. The implications for this company meant examining their sales process and territories. Important focus was placed on these specific areas and the results were signficant. Revenue increased double-digit in the following year.
So, What’s Next?
Finding out what your competitors are doing can be very valuable. Don’t fall behind. Instead, subscribe to the SBI Magazine. We’ll bring you the latest insights on what your peers are doing, every quarter of the year.
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© 2018 Sales Benchmark Index (SBI), B.V.
A Business Strategy Consulting Company
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