Research methods
Competitor analysis: how to research competitors, including their customers and former staff
How to do a competitor analysis: list real alternatives, gather public facts, interview buyers who compared, and talk to competitors' former staff without asking for secrets.
A competitor analysis lists the options your buyers could choose instead of you, and explains why buyers pick each one. The options include direct competitors, indirect ones, and doing the job another way, such as a spreadsheet or an extra hire. Public sources tell you what competitors say about themselves. Buyers who compared or switched tell you why they chose. People who used to work at a competitor can explain how the market works, as long as you do not ask for confidential information.
A worked example: scheduling software for commercial cleaning companies
Suppose you are building software that schedules crews and tracks site visits for commercial cleaning companies. Two established software products sell to the same companies, and many smaller firms run everything on spreadsheets and group texts. You want to know where you can win before you set prices and choose which features to build first. This example is hypothetical and used throughout the page.
List the alternatives buyers actually consider
The SBA's guide to market research and competitive analysis suggests identifying competitors by product line and market segment, then assessing their market share, strengths and weaknesses, how important your target market is to them, barriers to entry, and indirect or secondary competitors.
Your own list of competitors is usually incomplete. Ask five or six recent buyers, including some who did not choose you: "What else did you look at, and what were you doing before?" In the cleaning example, the answers might include the two software products, a general-purpose scheduling app, and "our office manager handles it in a spreadsheet." That last one is often the option you most need to beat.
Collect what competitors publish
Start with public material and record where each fact came from and when you saw it:
| What to record | Where to find it | What to watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Who they sell to and what they claim | Website, case studies, ads | Claims are marketing, not evidence |
| Prices and packaging | Pricing page, sales quotes you received as a buyer | Many B2B products show no prices; list prices differ from what customers pay |
| What the product does | Help docs, changelog, free trial | Docs show features, not how well they work |
| Where they are investing | Job postings, press releases | A hiring push is a hint, not a plan |
| What customers complain about | Public reviews, forums | Reviewers are a self-selected group |
| Business, risks and competition | Annual reports of public companies | Private competitors generally do not file them |
For a public competitor, the annual report on Form 10-K is worth reading. Investor.gov's guide to reading a 10-K explains that Item 1 describes the business and may cover the competition it faces, Item 1A lists the most significant risks, and the management discussion gives the company's own view of its results. 10-Ks are available to the public on the SEC's EDGAR website. Patents are public records too, and SCIP's ethics guidance treats reviewing them as expected.
Talk to buyers who compared you
Public material tells you what competitors offer. It does not tell you why a buyer chose one of them. For that, interview three groups: customers who chose you over a competitor, prospects who chose a competitor, and customers who left you for one.
Ask them to walk through the decision in order: what started the search, which options they looked at, who was involved, what they tested, and what settled it. Ask what the competitor did well. Buyers are often more specific about a competitor's strengths than about yours. How to interview customers who chose another product and how to interview churned customers cover these conversations in detail.
It also helps to talk to people who run the work, not only people who bought software. In the cleaning example, an operations manager at a cleaning company can explain which scheduling problems cost them money, whichever tool they use.
Talk to former employees of competitors, ethically
People who used to work at a competitor, for example in sales or customer support, understand how buyers in the market evaluate vendors and where implementations tend to go wrong. They are also bound by duties to their former employer, and you should respect them.
The SCIP Code of Ethics, which SCIP describes as the most widely embraced set of ethics guidelines for competitive and market intelligence work, gives practical rules:
- Say who you are. Disclose your identity and organization before every interview. Do not pretend to be a customer, recruiter or anyone else to get information; SCIP notes that kind of misrepresentation may be illegal depending on the jurisdiction.
- Tell former employees up front that you do not want confidential information. SCIP's guidance says former employees owe a duty of confidentiality to their previous employer and that you should tell them before the interview that you do not want confidential information.
- If something confidential comes up anyway, do not use it. SCIP advises reporting it to your management or legal counsel.
- Stay within the law. Getting a password to a competitor's system without authorization is illegal.
SCIP notes its guidance is not legal advice. If you are unsure about a specific situation, ask a lawyer.
| Fine to ask | Do not ask |
|---|---|
| How buyers in this market usually compare vendors | Customer names or customer lists |
| Which kinds of customers are hard to serve, in general | Internal pricing rules, discounts or contract terms |
| What usually goes wrong during rollout | Win rates, revenue or other internal numbers |
| How the market has changed over the years | Unreleased products or plans |
| What they would look for as a buyer today | Anything they say they cannot discuss |
Open the call with a short statement like this:
Before we start: I run a company that competes with your former employer. I'm not looking for anything confidential, so no customer names, internal numbers, pricing rules or plans. If a question gets close to that, say so and we'll skip it.
If they decline a question, move on. What to do when an expert cannot share information covers how to handle that moment.
Turn the research into decisions
Write one short section per competitor: who chooses them and why, where buyers say they fall short, and which buyers you will not try to win from them. Mark where each point came from: public material, buyer interviews, or a former employee's general view. A claim with a single source is a lead to check, not a finding.
Then write down what it changes. In the cleaning example, you might learn that both software competitors focus on larger firms and that small firms leave them because setup takes weeks. That points you toward the spreadsheet users, fast setup and a price small firms can approve on their own.
Markets change, so repeat the public review on a schedule that suits you and refresh the interviews when you see a new pattern in lost deals.
Your next step
List the alternatives your last five buyers considered, including the non-software ones. Then pick the one you lose to most and schedule three conversations with people who chose it.
When the people you need are outside your network, Instant Expert can find people who match a description you write, such as "operations managers at commercial cleaning companies" or "former account executives at facilities software vendors." You review who it finds, it sends your invitations, and you pay only for calls that get booked. Put your no-confidential-information line in the invitation, not only on the call. The directory pages for operations professionals in facilities management and sales professionals in facilities management are one place to start.