How can you use competitive analysis to convince your team to improve the product?

As a project director, I leverage weekly data dashboards for competitive analysis. These insights help us pinpoint performance areas, fostering healthy competition among team members to collectively improve. It guides us in setting achievable targets, adapting to market changes, and optimizing overall project performance within defined constraints.

As a PM I find that doing the work to understand market needs, the solutions available, and how they compare really helps me understand the market better My first goal is to understand the space - so will only pick a minimum set of data points As I position my product I will pick one or two competitors to drill down and figure out basic objection handling As I go to market and encounter real world objections and competitors I will further expand the insights I consider. All the while trying to minimize the competitors and data points to while effectively support GTM, and for us to maintain

With competitive intelligence, I’ve learned it’s about more than just spotting gaps or seizing opportunities—it’s about winning early and decisively. What’s our aim? To outmaneuver competitors, focusing sharply on our strengths, whether that’s in product usability, pricing, or marketing innovation. The choice of our battles—be it against direct, indirect competitors, or substitutes—is critical. It’s essential to focus intensely on the critical business issues we address best. This strategy not only keeps our approach targeted but also challenges the conventional, prompting others to reconsider their strategies. It’s about setting a new benchmark in the competitive landscape, ensuring we’re not just participating but leading the race.

It is critical to know who you want to be as a company as well to ensure the products support the company’s strategy. Do you want to be know for product leadership? Do you differentiate with customer intimacy? Do you have operational excellence? Answering those questions directs you in what you expect from your product.

I agree with Simon here.. important to identify your addressable target market and only look at competition within that space. Also Jenny's comment regarding alignment with your company values/goals. Can you be top of the pack - what investments will be required to get you there and stay there? Will you get buy in for the investment and does the med-long term reward justify the investment? If not, is it still a product space you want to participate in?

If the goal is to convince your team, you need to think of them as the conversion objective, and while quantitative data is great at supporting evidence, it is not the best at evoking the emotions that spark action. That’s where qualitative evidence comes in. Of all the qualitative methods, User Testing is the easiest, fastest, and possibly cheapest way to illustrate to everyone change is needed. Take your user journey maps, turn them into user test cases, then send three users through you and your top 2 or 3 competitors. Make clips, stitch your story and ask people to simply watch. Have some quantitative data ready to support your conclusions and be ready to temper knee-jerk reactions by leading the conversations into proper testing.

Visualising product performance versus importance provides valuable insights. You can company your product’s performance to competitive solutions. Make sure to consider both competitive solutions that are similar products and those that may be a different way to solve the problem. For example, an umbrella is a different solution than a rain jacket to stay dry.

I have seen the Macquarie Technology Group study trips do this well. When seriously considering the direction, finding a non-competitive market and seeing how similar companies succeeded, are struggling or failed and what their learnings were is important in the process when the investment proposed will be significant. Having that exec inclusion and participants from various areas of the business involved can result in a very clear picture of the next steps, and already has multiple stakeholders buy-in.

Competitive analysis is one of key activity to understand where your product stands with respect to other competitors. I love doing perceptual maps!! I ask the team to come up with attributes or features we want to rate and we float the survey within our team and teams closely working with us.. Using Multi Dimensional Scaling - the survey data comes back to paint a picture for the team. With a clear picture of what we want to achieve and the data proving it, life of PMs becomes easy. It helps in refining and development as well!

Collect data on competitors' features, pricing, user experience, and customer feedback. Organize this information into a comprehensive comparison chart or report. Highlight key metrics, user reviews, and market trends to provide a structured overview for your team. This organized data will serve as a foundation for discussing improvements and making informed decisions.

Gather Data: Collect comprehensive data on competitors, including their features, user feedback, market share, and customer satisfaction. Identify Gaps: Highlight gaps or weaknesses in your product compared to competitors, backed by data-driven evidence. Benchmarking: Provide benchmarks that showcase where your product stands in terms of performance, pricing, or user experience. User Insights: Share user feedback and reviews that point out areas where competitors excel or where your product falls short. Market Trends: Discuss emerging market trends and how competitors are adapting to them, emphasizing the need for your product to stay competitive.

Storytelling is a very underrated skill for Product Managers. As you gather insights on your competitors, focus on how you will share this information in a compelling way to drive alignment and conversations with stakeholders & engineers to improve your product. The competitor data alone is not enough - saying “we should do X because our primary competitor is doing it” does not inspire stakeholders or engineers to build something. Instead, say - “I talked to a customer that uses our product and XYZ company…they prefer our brand but shared with me they have trouble navigating our app to complete tasks”. Providing REAL feedback from users as you gather competitive insights will grab the attention of your team to improve the product.

Just a small note here from my side – it's really important to track the results of applications of the analysis and share them with the team. It will show what worked and what didn't and give you and idea how to improve your approach to competitive analysis in the future.

Effectively communicate your competitive analysis by emphasizing opportunities for improvement and potential benefits. Use data-driven insights to show how addressing identified weaknesses can enhance the product's market position. Tailor your message to align with the team's goals and the overall vision for the product, making a persuasive case for necessary enhancements.

Competitive Analysis is only good when you are able to motivate your team to realise the vision and end goal. Even with all the facts and data sometimes it becomes hard to break down the collective mindsets and enable the change. That is when you need to first get to know and feel the resistance and root cause of it. Before showing your vision/goal to the team, you must know how they feel about it in present conditions and if they are ready to accept, adapt and commit to it. Learning this definitely helps to address the concerns proactively and tailor the rewards which would work as a motivation of the workforce. I have learnt this from my senior that, "Read the room first and then bring in the treat." Hope this helps.

Good products sometimes have pricing issues, average products, a perception issue, & bad products, a “not trying hard enough” issue. If you aren’t the best product out there, can you be the second best? If yes, then what’s the revenue potential in being #2 over being #4 & how many dollars will it incur to shift 2 places? If the revenue differential isn’t atleast 1.5X of your current revenue levels then it’s pointless. In short, build a persuasive case for what’s missing and what’s it costing you and your firm after which you make a case for how high you can go, how many dollars will get you there & how many additional dollars will it add to the topline. Persuading internal stakeholders requires nuance and a positive kind of doggedness.

Competitor Analysis, although very important, can be very distracting for people who don't understand the main purpose behind it. Now, it might be different depending on your product, but in most cases, CA is there to inform you, that is it, it is not to there to dictate to you, or to tell you what works vs doesn't. You can literally match a competitor 1 for 1 and sitll do well because you are based in a different location, or have a different price. Use CA to inform your decisions. But make decisions based on the fundamental reality: In order to have a better product - Either do more for the same price Or do the same for a cheaper price Or do what no one else can afford to No other way around it in most cases.

If you dig deeper, you can also get insight about the risks of a product segment or industry by analysing the competitor products and their history. The pitfalls or the mistakes they made which might be applicable to you as well being in the same industry.

I think product is of course important, but customer experience is the true differentiator. How you show up, how you care, and how you listen matters. If you put customer at the centre of how you go to market and where you prioritise you would be better off.