It’s too much work for the people who know the most about competitors (sales reps and applications/systems engineers) to enter and keep the data fresh in a repository somewhere. Plus these field folks aren’t motivated to input competitive information.

So what should you advise your Product Marketing Manager to do? I recommend you send the practices below to them so they can do a better job gathering and disseminating competitive intelligence on an ongoing basis.

Customers
• Losses —just ask the customer for a de-brief on why you lost. Sales reps can usually book a phone call with the customer as part of a post mortem, and customers are only too eager to justify their purchase to you. Push for this.
• Wins – some customers may even share competitive documents and pricing with you even though they are not supposed to do so. Ask them how all the vendors fared against their evaluation criteria and what the deal came down to in the end.

Sales
• Befriend the top performing reps and ask them the following questions:
• Which competitors to you run into the most often?
• What differentiators do you find work the best? Why?
• What is the real “street price” that you see versus our list price?
• What competitive traps do you set? For example, if the customer is writing an RFP, what requirements should they bake into the RFP doc?
• What are our biggest strengths? Weaknesses?
• Application/system engineers are among the best source since they pay extra attention to product differentiation. Ask them the same questions above.

Partners:
• VARs/SI’s often resell competing products and have a vested interest in improving your competitiveness if it will help them make more money by hitting their volume targets. Behind closed doors, ask them the same questions you ask your sales rep. Believe me, your competitors’ reps are doing this already so you can’t afford not to do so.

Web:
• Download and read whitepapers off their site even if it means using a dummy hotmail account. Count on them doing the same for your collateral.
• Type in your competitor’s product/company and other words like “complaint” or “disappointment”. You might pull up comments in a blog that some of your customers are using actively. And, by the way, you might be surprised what you discover about your own company.
• Scan industry analyst reports, editorials, and job postings on the company’s site to see if something is up—new partnerships, acquisitions, rumors, etc.

Best Practices:
• Customer Advisory Board -- dedicate a session on competitive inputs –customers may give harsh criticism but it is all intended to force improvement in the product/company that they chose in the first place.
• Competitive alerts -- email weekly or on-demand snippets to your sales force alerting them to competitive moves. Ideally, make them one screen worth (no page downs) and state succinctly: what’s new, why they should care, and what they should say in response when customers ask about it.
• Sales meetings -- ask for 15-20 minutes of time at a sales manager’s district meeting to present a few competitive nuggets, ask a few open questions and shut up and listen to what the reps are seeing out there—what is working and what’s not?
• Customer visits – I used to make my Product Marketing Managers at HP present at least once a week to customers during executive briefings at the customer visit center. You may not do so as often but make it a goal to have reps want to invite you to present on important topics—product roadmap, architecture, industry trends, and customer requirements in general.

Your product marketing managers can usually handle many of theses practices by just reserving 2-3 hours per week. Remember, being smart about your competitors builds their credibility within the organization, makes them more valuable to you and the field, and ultimately results in winning products in the marketplace.