You are not doing business in isolation

Love it or hate it - you are competing against alternatives

Jan 25, 2024

Dear GTM Strategist!

I was down because I lost a prospect.

It was an interesting technology company that works in an integration space and makes 15 million a year. They wanted me to do a 2-day GTM workshop for them during the visit of their international colleagues from the Nordics.

I put together a really nice personalized offer for them with selected case studies for their industry and tactical knowledge of ABM and LinkedIn, which would totally improve their sales process.

Immediately got a reply from my champion in the company that she really liked the offer.

But her boss said no.

I felt like a piece of shit - but I gathered the courage and common sense to ask the champion if she could elaborate on why they did not take a deal.

Dark thoughts came to my mind - was there someone who offered it cheaper, did they just fish for information and I wasted 3 hours for research and preparing this offer?

The champion kindly provided the answer (so cool of her)

“The offer was good, but our manager decided that she will host the workshop herself and the next day we will have fun team-building activities”.

I had no idea how I felt about this answer.

Am I competing against “fun team-building activities” now? Should I take a standup comedy class?

Until I remembered a lesson from the GTM Strategist book:

“Sometimes you are competing against “doing nothing” or “that they will do it themselves”.

Interesting.

There was not an “evil competitor who won the business”; I lost it to “DIY + fun team-building activities.” They were my competitors for the budget.

So this week, I want to take you on a trip of researching the competition arena and generating intelligence for smarter go-to-market moves in the future.

Sounds good?

Let’s go!

#1 Rule - Do not compare yourself with companies that are 10,000x larger than yourself

Whenever my designer/developer brings up Apple in our discussions, I roll my eyes a little:

“We are not Apple which made $383.29 billion last year.

Can you find us more relatable examples for our moodboards, please?”

Inspiration comes from all sorts of places - from music, giant companies, companies outside your industry - but these are aspirational competitors. They are great for vision boards, but terrible for business benchmark sheets.

You should come up with a list of direct and indirect competitors where:

You actually have generated evidence that your buyers are comparing them against you - they are targeting the same segment.
They are up to 10-50x larger than you, which is a way more realistic comparison in terms of resources, focus, and positioning on the market (the legacy of brands).
It is really difficult to monitor 50 companies and get good insights from them all. For benchmarking, first focus on 3-10 direct competitors. Later on, you can expand your research.

How to compare the competitors?

Choose criteria that are actually relevant to your buyers. Understand how your customers are making the purchasing decisions and compare the players in the market. If you can, get their comparison sheets or at least do interviews with your clients, churned prospects, or industry experts such as consultants to understand that.

Here is an example of the competitor comparison sheet:

#2 Rule - Have a system in place to monitor your competition. It is not a set-it-and-forget-it exercise

In analysis, I usually follow the following aspects of my competitors:

Ads
Social media posts
Marketing and PR content
Landing pages - changes in offers and CTAs
Pricing pages - and changes there
Sometimes I also analyze onboarding and conversion flows

I used to have calendar reminders every 3 months to go and do a bunch of screenshots for my swipe file. It took me an hour to organize this and get it to my experimentation backlog.

Until I discovered the Competitors App.

Here is how this analysis is done and delivered daily in my inbox so I always get new ideas and stay on top of what is going on in the industry:

#3 Rule - Use this knowledge to differentiate yourself

Forget desktop research - competitors that are running Google Ads or are indexed higher are rarely the ones that you end up competing with in your Ideal Customer Profiles’ (ICP) decision-making process.

It is essential to understand what your buyer considers a competitive alternative.

Not only do you have to do better than selected competitors, but you also have to develop unique value propositions against “doing nothing” and “let’s do it ourselves (DIY).”

GTM Strategist book collaborator and positioning expert Andrej Peršolja suggests this type of analysis:

Your turn: Get this knowledge to practice:

Beginner: Do the competition analysis - if you are just starting with market research, use the general framework, but if you already know your Ideal Customer Profiles (ICP) options, use the competitive alternatives framework.
Advanced: Next time you lose a deal - ask why. If against a competitor, double down on understanding what a prospect found better in their offer and work on this intelligence.
GTM Ninja: Ask your customers or colleagues in the industry to send you some comparison tables or offers from competitors. Study them and find out how you can do better.

My turn: Choose at least 1 of 3

Legend: Take Competitors App (https://competitors.app/) for a spin and run your analysis of marketing, pricing and SEO or your competitors like I’ve shown you in the video. They supported this Substack, so give them some love in return. They are a really cool startup team from the UK - let’s support them. ❤️
Scholar: Send me more examples of how you run the competitive analysis or other interesting frameworks that you use. I’d gladly feature you in the Substack.
Supporter: Recommend the GTM Strategist book to a colleague who will benefit from it, and make sure to review the book on Amazon or Goodreads after you have read it.