Question 1 of 5
01
How does your team track competitor activity?
This is the foundation. Everything else depends on how information flows in.
Ad hoc
Someone Googles a competitor when a deal comes up. No systematic process.
Basic alerts
Google Alerts or news feeds set up. Information comes in but is not organized.
Assigned responsibility
Someone owns competitive intelligence part-time. Regular competitor updates shared with the team.
Systematic program
Dedicated CI function or tool. Structured data collection, analysis cadence, and distribution across teams.
02
How does competitive intelligence reach your sales team?
The fastest signal of CI maturity is whether sales has what they need when a deal gets competitive.
They figure it out
Reps research competitors on their own. No battlecards. No competitive playbooks.
Occasional briefs
Marketing or product shares competitive summaries sometimes. Not consistently updated.
Battlecards exist
Competitive battlecards are maintained and accessible. Updated at least quarterly.
Integrated into workflow
CI surfaces automatically in deals. Real-time alerts, CRM-integrated, with win/loss feedback loops.
03
When a competitor makes a major move, how fast does your leadership know?
Speed of intelligence is a competitive advantage in itself. Late information is often useless information.
Days to weeks
We usually hear about competitor changes from customers or the press, well after the fact.
Within 48 hours
Alerts or team members usually surface major news within a couple of days.
Same day
Monitoring catches most announcements and changes on the day they happen.
Ahead of announcements
We track hiring patterns, patent filings, beta features, and job postings to anticipate moves before they are announced.
04
How does competitive intelligence inform your product and strategy decisions?
CI that does not change decisions is just entertainment. This question separates reporting from impact.
Rarely considered
Product and strategy decisions are driven by customer feedback and internal roadmap. Competitors are an afterthought.
Reactive input
We look at competitors when something happens. Feature parity requests from sales drive some prioritization.
Regular input
Competitive analysis is part of quarterly planning. Product and marketing factor in competitive positioning.
Strategic driver
CI informs pricing, positioning, roadmap, and M&A decisions. Board gets regular competitive landscape updates.
05
Do you measure win/loss rates against specific competitors?
The most actionable metric in CI. If you do not know who you lose to and why, everything else is guesswork.
No tracking
We know our overall win rate. We do not track it by competitor.
Anecdotal
Sales has a sense of which competitors we struggle against. It is not systematically tracked.
CRM tracked
Competitors are logged in deals. We can pull win/loss rates by competitor from the CRM.
Analyzed and acted on
Win/loss analysis drives battlecard updates, positioning changes, and product decisions. Regular reviews with stakeholders.