One of the key questions that needs to be determined by sales reps is “against whom am I competing?”  The answer determines not only pricing, but overall positioning of your firm’s value proposition and how to avoid the likely traps competitors will set for your firm.  If the rep cannot get a direct answer from a customer or prospect, they should be able to infer this information via other means.  Here are some tips for inferring competitors when your prospect or client won’t name them: 

• The incumbent: Who is the incumbent?  If this is a new product or service for the prospect, which of your competitors has a prior relationship with them?
• The mindshare leader: Is there a vendor that has a strong brand in the marketplace and is usually included in the vendor mix (e.g. Salesforce.com for hosted CRMs)?  Do they show up often enough that you should assume that they are included in the mix?
• The “quadrant” leaders: If your prospect is using the language and posing the key questions of the technology market research firms (e.g. Gartner), who are the top vendors according to these firms?
• Desired Value Proposition: What are the dimensions they are emphasizing (e.g. Price, Total Cost of Ownership, Support, Quality, Up-Time, Leading Edge Features) and which firms position to those dimensions?
• The RFI / RFP / RFQ: Unless your firm was directly involved in shaping the RFP, you should look closely at the questions.  Are they asking for services or features that are provided by your key competitors?  What terminology are they employing?  Do they use any trademarked or company specific terminology?  Also, if there is a pushback process for clarifying the RFP, the questions are generally published to all participants with the answers.  While the source of each question is generally non-attributed, you can often determine your competitors by the positioning of the questions.  If the sales rep cannot discern at least one competitor from the RFP and pushback processes, they should forward the RFP and pushback Q&A to a Competitive Intelligence manager for interpretation.  Much can be discerned from the shadows cast by the RFP process.
• Public Data: Governments publish the request for bids and contract award histories.  This can be used to identify incumbents or competitors that have a strong relationship with the RFP publishing agency.  For example, the US FedBizOps database will provide award histories and has a taxonomy for product / service types.  FedBizOpps covers bid opportunities beginning at $25,000.  You can find this data through subscription news services, company research services, government RFP services, or via the FedBizOpps website.  The feds have even gone so far as to make the FedBizOpps database available via FTP as a daily XML file!
• Questions asked during demos: Are they regurgitating the positioning points made by your competitors?  Hopefully, your company provides training on traps (to lay for your competitors) and landmines (set by your competitors and how to diffuse them).  If not, you should integrate these topics into your standard training along with the appropriate tools.  With this knowledge, sales reps can discern likely competitors, avoid their landmines, and lay traps for them.
• Decision makers: Are you interfacing with only one or two members of the review team?  If so, firms will often assign different individuals to manage each vendor.  If you can get some one-on-one time with the other individuals on the decision committee, they may let slip (either directly or via terminology) some of the other vendors’ names.

Tags: Competitive Analysis