Discovery
Competitive analysis
One row for each competitor covering the segment they serve, their positioning claim, entry price, what their customers praise, what those customers still ask for, and where you are the better fit. Every claim carries a source and the date it was checked.
What it is
A competitive grid records what other products do, who they do it for, and what their customers say about them, with a source and a date against every claim. The sourcing is what makes it useful. A competitor grid gets copied into a deck within the week and quoted for a year, so an unsourced row becomes a fact nobody can check.
It answers a narrow question well. What has been built, for whom, at what price, and where you fit better. It does not tell you whether a need is real or how large it is, and reading it as though it does is how teams end up building what a competitor already built for a market neither of them has measured.
The most valuable column is the one recording what customers still ask for. That is where the gap you can serve usually appears, and it comes from buyers and public reviews rather than from your own team's impressions.
When to use it
- Sales keeps losing to the same two products and nobody has written down why.
- You are positioning a product and need to state where you fit better in terms a buyer would recognise.
- A stakeholder claims a competitor has a feature and you want the claim sourced before it shapes a roadmap.
- You are entering a new segment and need to know what buyers there already use.
The columns
- Competitor
- Who they serve
- Positioning claim
- Entry price
- What their customers praise
- What their customers still ask for
- Where we are the better fit
- Source and date checked
The template
| Competitor | Who they serve | Positioning claim | Entry price | What their customers praise | What their customers still ask for | Where we are the better fit | Source and date checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meridian | Finance teams in companies of 200 to 2,000 staff | Close the books in three days | 39 per user per month | Fast onboarding, strong month end reporting | Permissions that work across multiple legal entities | Groups running more than five entities | Two buyer calls, 12 Aug 2026 |
| Harbourly | Agencies billing by project | Every project profitable | 19 per user per month | Time capture that people actually complete | An approval step before an invoice goes out | Teams that need sign off before invoicing | Public reviews, read 14 Aug 2026 |
| Kite Ops | Operations teams in logistics | One board for every shipment | Quoted per site | Custom fields and views | Reporting across sites without an export | Anyone comparing sites in one report | Win and loss notes, Q2 2026 |
Filling it in
- Who they serve. Write the segment their pricing page and their case studies point at, not the one their homepage claims.
- Positioning claim. Quote their own line. Paraphrasing it here is how a straw man gets into a sales deck three weeks later.
- Entry price. The lowest price a real buyer can start at, with the currency and the billing period. Note where pricing is on request rather than guessing at it.
- What their customers praise and still ask for. Both columns come from buyers, users and public reviews, never from your own team's impressions.
- Where we are the better fit. A situation, not an adjective. "Groups with more than five legal entities" is usable. "More flexible" is not.
The column that matters
The last column is the point of the sheet. Every claim gets a source and the date you checked it, because a competitor grid is copied into a deck within the week and then quoted for a year. Anything older than two quarters should be checked again or deleted, and a row nobody can source should come out entirely rather than sit there looking researched.
What this sheet does not answer
It tells you what other teams have built and who they built it for. It does not tell you whether the need is real, how large it is, or what a customer would pay to have it met, and those questions need discovery rather than another column.
Questions people ask
- How many competitors belong in the sheet?
- The three or four a buyer actually considers. A grid of twelve is a research exercise, and nobody reads past the fourth column.
- Where should the information come from?
- Buyer conversations, win and loss notes, public reviews, and the competitor's own pricing page. Your team's impressions are the one source that should never fill a cell.
- How often does it need refreshing?
- Check anything older than two quarters. Pricing and positioning move quickly, and a stale row does more harm than a missing one because it gets quoted with confidence.
- Does this tell me what to build?
- No. It tells you what exists. Whether anyone needs it, and what they would pay for it, comes from talking to the market.