We're currently looking at ways to report on a variety of competitor trends to the Exec team. Of course, we're tracking closed/won lost as well as closed/won displacement, trending second tier competitors, but curious to understand what other metrics members track. For example, # of competitor visits to review sites, # of customers/prospects looking at competitor reviews, tracking competitor spend on keywords, notable news by competitor, etc. Looking for ideas on metrics to measure as well as your successes on how you share this information internally on a monthly basis.
Discussion
My name is Julien Winkel. I am Co-Founder of InForIntelligence, a startup from Amsterdam
With my team I created a Search Engine for R&D tech scouting, several clients like Akzonobel, Kurita, BAM Infra and more. But I think the algorithm we created can be interesting for competitive intelligence as-well.
Basically, what it is, I created a prototype, where a User can login, type in a company name, (example: Shell ), and you see all partnerships they have with companies. Way more than news outlets / social media shows. With Boeing for example 650 partnerships .However, I am completely not into this market. I do not have the proper knowledge to make our prototype into a MVP. That’s why I call for help!
I try to know the frustrations / needs of people in the CI market who are (partially) responsible for gathering information on competitors/companies.It would be amazing if people are open for a 30 min call with me, then I can also show you the prototype we have.If you have any questions, write a comment, because probably your questions is interesting for everybody.
Besides win/lost rate and share of closed opportunities that teams leveraged CI, I've started to move away from focusing on metrics with our executives. Just calling out metrics led to eyes glossing over there was risk of them thinking of CI as another data-driven analytics suite, which would dilute part of the value of CI. My philosophy is that teams should be data informed, not data-driven.
The new direction that I've been trying to use for the executives is that every report calls out 2 or 3 key facts or competitor insights with and a succinct explanation of Why they should care and How they (or their respective teams) can use this information to help our company succeed.
Thanks for your feedback Jonathan. I like that approach and I can see it really is more meaningful than just the "numbers".
I think it's helpful to have a metric or two that are constant - such as win rates against competitors and displacements - but then other metrics can vary over time depending on current priorities. For example, if there's a priority around a review site campaign, sharing metrics around the reviews that are posted for our own company vs. competitors and trends within them would be good to highlight.
Aside from that, I'm a big fan of what Jonathan described - sharing specific stories. Actually sharing a particular competitive product shift or a competitive deal won (or lost) can get more engagement while getting the same point across.