competitive-analysis-templates

What this skill does

# Competitive Analysis Templates

Templates for analyzing competitors, enabling sales teams, and defining strategic market positioning.

## When to Use This Skill

**Auto-loaded by agents**:

- `market-analyst` - For competitor deep-dives, battle cards, and positioning maps

**Use when you need**:

- Analyzing competitor strategies and offerings
- Creating sales battle cards
- Building feature comparison matrices
- Tracking competitive intelligence
- Conducting win/loss analysis
- Defining differentiation strategy
- Monitoring competitive threats
- Positioning against alternatives

## What is Competitive Analysis?

Competitive analysis helps you:

- **Understand** your market position and competitive landscape
- **Identify** differentiation opportunities and white space
- **Enable** sales teams to win competitive deals
- **Inform** product roadmap and strategic decisions
- **Monitor** competitive threats and market shifts

**NOT**: Copying competitors or building feature parity
**BUT**: Finding defensible differentiation and strategic positioning

**Good competitive analysis**: Actionable, evidence-based, honest about trade-offs, regularly updated

**Bad competitive analysis**: Feature lists without context, outdated, biased, not used by teams

---

## Evidence Standards

**Core principle:** All competitive intelligence must be based on verifiable public sources. Strategic analysis and recommendations are core value, but factual claims require source attribution.

**Research requirements:**

1. **Use verifiable public sources**
   - Competitor websites, product pages, and documentation
   - Pricing pages (with URLs and date accessed)
   - Review sites (G2, Capterra, TrustRadius) with specific review citations
   - News articles, press releases, and public announcements
   - Product demos, trials, and publicly available materials

2. **Source attribution**
   - Every claim about competitor features, pricing, or strategy must cite source
   - Format: "[Feature/Claim] (Source: [URL], accessed [Date])"
   - Review quotes must cite specific review with link
   - When multiple sources confirm: cite 2-3 representative sources

3. **When data is unavailable**
   - Explicitly note: "[Pricing not publicly available]", "[Requires product trial]"
   - Never fabricate competitor information to complete analysis
   - Recommend steps to gather missing data (demo request, trial signup)
   - Note limitation in battle card or analysis

4. **What you CANNOT do**
   - Fabricate competitor features, pricing, or capabilities
   - Invent user testimonials or review quotes
   - Make up market share numbers or competitive statistics
   - Create fictional customer case studies

5. **What you SHOULD do (core value)**
   - Provide strategic analysis of competitive landscape
   - Identify differentiation opportunities based on research
   - Recommend positioning strategy against competitors
   - Guide battle card creation and sales enablement
   - Teach competitive intelligence methodologies
   - Help interpret competitive data for strategic decisions

**When in doubt:** If public information is unavailable, note the limitation explicitly rather than inventing data. Your strategic expertise in competitive analysis and positioning is your primary value.

---

## Three Core Templates

### 1. Competitor Deep-Dive Analysis

**Purpose**: Comprehensive competitive intelligence for strategic decisions

**Use when**:

- Quarterly competitive reviews
- Market entry planning
- Product roadmap planning
- Understanding new competitive threat
- Executive briefings

**Key sections**:

- Company overview (size, funding, strategy)
- Product analysis (features, UX, pricing)
- Go-to-market strategy (sales, marketing)
- SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats)
- Customer intelligence (reviews, win/loss)
- Competitive response strategy

**Template**: `assets/competitor-deep-dive-template.md`

Complete template with all sections, example content, intelligence sources

**Time investment**: 8-12 hours initial, 2-3 hours quarterly updates

**Comprehensive guide**: `references/competitive-intel-guide.md`

Intelligence gathering, research techniques, analysis frameworks, organizing intelligence

---

### 2. Battle Card (Sales Enablement)

**Purpose**: Quick-reference competitive enablement for sales teams

**Use when**:

- Sales team faces competitor regularly
- New competitive threat emerges
- Need to improve win rates vs. specific competitor
- Onboarding new sales reps

**Key sections**:

- Quick stats (foundational context)
- When you'll face them (common scenarios)
- Where we win (strengths with proof)
- Where they win (their strengths + how to counter)
- Common objections & responses
- Discovery questions (uncover our advantages)
- Proof points (customer stories, data)

**Quick skeleton**:

```markdown
# [Competitor] Battle Card

## Quick Stats
- Founded: / HQ: / Funding: / Employees:

## Where We Win
- [Advantage 1]: [proof point]

## Where They Win
- [Their strength]: [our counter]

## Top Objections
- "[Objection]" → [Response with proof]
```

**Full template**: `assets/battle-card-template.md`

Sales-ready format, specific talk tracks, objection handling, proof points

**Format**: 1-2 pages maximum (quick reference for calls)

**Update frequency**: Immediately on competitor changes, monthly review

**Comprehensive guide**: `references/battle-card-guide.md`

Creating effective battle cards, sales enablement, training, maintenance, metrics

---

### 3. Positioning & Perceptual Mapping

**Purpose**: Strategic market positioning and visual competitive landscape

**Use when**:

- Strategic planning (annual/quarterly)
- Defining product strategy
- Finding market white space
- Developing messaging
- Repositioning product

**Key sections**:

- Perceptual maps (visual market positioning)
- Positioning statement (April Dunford framework)
- Differentiation matrix
- Value proposition map (jobs, pains, gains)
- Strategic positioning grid
- Brand positioning
- Messaging framework

**Template**: `assets/positioning-map-template.md`

Perceptual mapping formats, positioning frameworks, differentiation analysis

**Use cases**: Strategic planning, market entry, messaging development

**Comprehensive guide**: `references/positioning-guide.md`

Positioning frameworks, differentiation strategies, perceptual mapping, repositioning

---

## Choosing the Right Template

**For strategic planning** → Use all three:

1. Deep-dive analysis (understand landscape)
2. Positioning map (define your position)
3. Battle cards (enable execution)

**For sales enablement** → Battle cards:

- Quick reference during calls
- Specific talk tracks and counters
- Updated frequently

**For product strategy** → Deep-dive + Positioning:

- Feature gap analysis
- Market white space
- Differentiation strategy

**For one competitor** → Start with deep-dive, then battle card

**For market overview** → Positioning map first (landscape), then selective deep-dives

---

## Competitive Intelligence Process

### 1. Gather Intelligence

**Primary sources**:

- Competitor website, demos, trials
- Customer reviews (G2, Capterra, TrustRadius)
- Win/loss interviews
- Customer feedback

**Secondary sources**:

- Press releases, news
- Job postings (strategic direction)
- Social media, podcasts
- Analyst reports

**Source citation requirements:**

- Document URL and access date for every source
- Cite specific G2/Capterra reviews with links for user quotes
- Note when information is unavailable: "[Pricing not public]"
- Never fabricate data to fill intelligence gaps
- Recommend additional research steps for missing data

**Detailed guide**: `references/competitive-intel-guide.md`

Research techniques, intelligence sources, ethical guidelines, source citation best practices

---

### 2. Analyze Patterns

**Look for**:

- Feature launch velocity (product strategy)
- Market expansion signals
- Pricing changes
- Partnership announcements