Finding Your Strength by Analyzing the Competition

The competitive analysis template provides an analytic matrix of your company’s products or services and your competition. Filling out a competitive comparison, such as this, forces you to evaluate what is important, how you rate, who are your competitors, and how you compare with them in the eyes, minds, hearts and pocketbooks of customers.

This table and, more importantly, the research behind it, are critical to developing your brand and programs. I cannot tell you how many clients discuss the uniqueness of their ideas, when there are pages of competitors who are frequently more experienced, cheaper, and even better, on Google or Amazon. In particular, we are all frequently quilted of what I call “positive bias.” Specifically, we believe our products or services have better people, better processes, excellent characteristics, better service, better quality, and are differentiated from our competition with little objective analysis or comparison.

The research can be mostly completed with internet research on the competitors and the industry. However, it should be supplemented with actual store visits, phone calls, and product reviews, wherever possible.