Competitive analysis template

Here’s a template to help you position your product (opens in Google Docs). Feel free to copy it and adapt. If you want to build a winning product, you have to articulate to all audiences involved why it’s better. More specifically, why it’s better than the competition in the areas that buyers value the most. This template is going to force you to look hard at each feature that you built and the competition built, and see how you stack up.

You can use this type of document to train your sales people to fish for pain points in areas where you’re strong. Your lead generation people can use it to hone in on the right kind of buyers. And your engineers can focus on building around high differentiation.

Broadly speaking:

• The stuff in green is your ace-in-the-hole features that will help you command a premium in the market. Ultimately they are the reason why you’ll become a dominant player or get acquired.
• The stuff in yellow is where you can build confidence in your price points, because it’s valued and you have an advantage. There are lots of buyers who care about the stuff in yellow, and it’s hard to hit ever bigger numbers if you don’t do well there.
• You make promises to customers who ask for the stuff in purple, because the majority of your roadmap items should be in those categories, so it means they will be available soon, right?
• Buyers who value the stuff in red are hard to win with your product proposition. You need to have the discipline to say lots of “no” to people asking for these things. Or steer away from the product into a relationship or non-functional advantage value proposition.

If you want to learn more about this stuff, I recommend the guys at Pragmatic Marketing.