The Competitive Analysis: Why Should the Prospect Buy from You?

by Nick Terrenzi
Part of a company’s competence is understanding what makes its product or service unique. In other words, why should a prospect buy from you as opposed to the competition? That question would be addressed through a competitive analysis.
As a side note before we get going, I honestly think that many companies overthink dealing with the competition. If a company truly practiced the measures of competence which we’ve laid out in this month’s blog posts—cultivating internal trust between sales and marketing, fully completing marketing and then sales processes, and cultivating trust before the prospect ever meets you—it would completely destroy the competition. Instead, a company tears off on the tangent of, “OMG! We have to conduct a massive, expensive competitive analysis!”
Keeping it Simple
Yet a competitive analysis should be done. Therefore, I have a simple, inexpensive yet clever approach to analyzing the competition that I teach in my workshops. You can utilize this in your company, with your marketing and sales teams, as well as any other relevant public-facing personnel.
The drill is simply this: have the salesperson, or another employee, “become” the competition. Have the person take on the competition’s point of view concerning your company. What would be the competitor’s goal? To destroy you! So, you basically have your personnel become the competition, then look back at your company and figure out how to destroy it.
Note that at this point you have “analyzed” something that is not currently happening but could. You go through all the measures your competition could take to destroy your company, by assuming their point of view. Take careful note of these, as you’re going to address them in the next step.
Turn It Around
Once you’ve gone through and had everyone figure out how they would, if they were the competition, destroy your company, you then turn it around. You have all the same people work out how to resolve each and every one of those methods of destroying your company. Once you have done so, you’ll then have numerous ways to deal with many different prospective measures your competition might take against you in the marketplace.
Company Strategy
This exercise is not only valuable for sales and marketing. On a higher level, it is a great exercise for C-level management to take at the beginning of the year when a company is planning out its strategy. They can then make these “counter-measures” part of the company strategy going forward into the new year.
Personal
You can even bring this drill down to a personal level. Ask yourself, “If someone were trying to compete with me, what are my weak points?” You can then correct those points so that they cannot be taken advantage of.
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