Startups Stack Exchange Archive

What’s the best way to gain insight on competitors?

I have a SaaS (API), that is about to go into beta with a handful of companies.

We have a couple of key competitors in our space, and have tried emailing/calling for sales demos, pricing etc, without much luck at all. It seems they aren’t taking us as serious potential customers (for good reason).

How would you suggest getting access to their pricing, sales techniques, and in-depth product info?

Answer 11818

No easy answer. The information you seek is a closely guarded secret on purpose. However I think you are approaching this the wrong way. Attempting to replicate someone elses business does not guarantee you that you can replicate their profit margins.

You can perform some research: You can try some things and make some guesses. Depending on what country you are in, you might be able to get a copy of their tax filing. Different laws apply in different jurisdictions and if the company is public or private. It could list their threats (which you might be able to use to your advantage), it could give an idea on how many customers they have, their biggest selling service, new growing service and/or the numbers of customers or licenses that were sold during the past year.

I would suggest you look within.

Ignore price for the moment - What makes your service any better? If I am happy with your competitor, and you offer me the service at a 25% discount, I still have the risk of jumping ship to a new provider. Sometimes that 25% discount is not worth the risk of going to an unknown or lesser known business which implies price alone is not your biggest problem. Quality of service is.

Answer 11823

Part of a sales person’s job is to only spend time on qualified leads. The odds are you didn’t do a great job at communicating that you are such a lead before calling or emailing your competitors.

A few pre-flight checks that sales do before getting into a call FWIW:

  1. Google you.
  2. Check your company’s website.
  3. Check your LinkedIn profile.

Once they’re in a sales call, before deciding to take the conversation any further in order to avoid wasting any of their time on you, they’ll check that you:

  1. Are a good fit for their product or service.
  2. Are not a NINA. (“No Influence, No Authority.”)
  3. Have a sensible timeline. (As in not “by yesterday” or “by Q4 next year.”)
  4. Have a sensible budget.

If you’re not ticking all of the boxes then no half-decent sales will waste their time on you. If they Google you and discover you’re CEO or CTO of a competitor then they won’t waste their time on you either. (You might get their boss though, as they may end up wanting to probe into what you’re up to and see if you’re shopping around for a partnership.)

The way to do this type of stuff is to:

  1. Come up with a fake persona and a fake company name.
  2. Make things look legit, i.e. have a fake “coming soon” website, relevant email addresses, dummy LinkedIn profiles for key staff, perhaps even some social network or forum presence with the personae.
  3. Come up with a targeted scenario to approach each competitor.
  4. Refine the scenario(s) by rehearsing.

Put another way, plan. Then call them.

Also: don’t sound too knowledgeable when in a sales call. If you do, you’ll either get dismissed as “they don’t need us because they know too much about this and can actually do themselves” or they’ll (correctly) conclude it’s a fishing expedition.

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