Competitor Analysis

Competitive analysis should form a key part of your business strategy. It is your assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors.

When it comes to competitor analysis, there are 12 points the CEO of a technology product company must be able to answer:

Who are the sweet spot customers for our product(s)? What are their important characteristics? How well do we really know them?
What pain do our target customers have. Why does this pain exist?
What is the measurable value of eliminating or reducing our target customers' pain? How do we explain this in a way that our customers can understand?
Do we understand all elements of the whole product solution for our customer's pain? Does a solution depend on other complementary products or services?
What are the key marketing and sales decisions over the next 6-12 months? How will we make them?
What are the key drivers of our company's sales? Do we understand them? How could we double our sales?
What are our most effective ways to generate leads? How do we validate them?
How much does it cost us in time and resources to secure each new customer? How much to close each sale?
What is the sales life cycle of our products? Do we understand it? What factors drive success rates and speed in closing sales?
Do we have the sales capacity (internal and external) to be able to deliver our sales targets?
Do we have a sales pipeline that provides visibility of sales performance? Does it allow us to identify problems early and take corrective action?
How reliably can we predict our sales? What impact does this have on our business?