Competitor comparisons

What a competitor comparison is

A competitor comparison is a short document, two to four pages per rival, that sets what you sell beside what they sell and says plainly which buyer each suits. A salesperson reads it before a call and sends it to a buyer who asks. It is written on the assumption that the competitor will read it, because sooner or later one of them will.

It is not a comparison page, which is published on your website for a stranger and carries all its own context. This one is internal or semi-private: held by your sales team, handed over on request, and far more detailed, because a person is there to explain it.

It is also not a battlecard, which tells a salesperson how to handle a rival: where they are weak, what to ask, what goes wrong in their deals. A battlecard is written for your side of the table and never shown to a buyer. A comparison is written to be shown, and that difference decides every sentence in it.

When you need one

You need one when the same two or three names come up in most of your quotes and each salesperson answers differently. Buyers compare notes more than sellers expect, and two answers from one firm is worse than one unflattering answer.

You need one when a buyer asks outright and somebody sends a hurried email with a claim in it that is a year out of date. That email is a document too, just an unreviewed one.

You do not need this if the reason you lose is not a named rival. Price, timing, doing nothing and keeping it in-house account for most lost deals, and those belong in a written set of answers to the reasons people say no, which costs less and covers more. If nobody has read the other side's material properly, a look at what they actually claim comes first, because a comparison written from memory is where inaccuracies start.

What goes in it

The document is arranged so the honest parts come first. That order is what makes the favourable parts land.

• Who each supplier suits, in two sentences. At the very top. A buyer who recognises themselves in the sentence about the other firm should go there, and you have lost nothing you would have won.
• Where they are genuinely better, named. Coverage, hours, a capability you lack, a lower entry price. Specific and unhedged. This section buys credit for everything below it.
• What is the same. Most suppliers in a trade share most of what they do, and saying so removes the suspicion that the document has been arranged.
• The differences that decide it. Three to five, each in a paragraph rather than a tick: who does the work, what response looks like in practice, contract length and what happens at the end, and how each side is paid.
• The sources. Every claim about the other firm carries where it came from and the date it was checked: their published pages, their terms, their documentation. Never what a customer said they were quoted.

The governing rule is one sentence: nothing goes in that you could not show the competitor. If a claim would embarrass you in a room with them, it is unverified or unfair or both, and it is cut. This is not politeness. A buyer who catches one exaggeration discards the whole document.

What you get

The comparison. Two to four pages per competitor in an editable file, in the order above, with a date on the front and the name of whoever keeps it current.

The email version. A paragraph a salesperson can paste when the name comes up in a thread, so the short answer and the long one never contradict each other.

The source sheet. Every claim, its origin and the date checked, so a refresh is an hour's work rather than the whole job again.

The review schedule. A stated interval and a list of what to re-check: a full review every three months, plus a same-week check of anything a competitor announces publicly. The document carries a line saying that once past its review date it is withdrawn rather than sent, so a stale claim never goes out under your name.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A Victoria firm providing managed IT support to small offices loses most of its competitive quotes to two national providers, and its three salespeople each describe the difference differently. Two documents are built, three pages each.

The first one opens by saying that an office with fewer than ten staff and no compliance obligations will be well served by the national provider and will pay less, which is true. The section on where that provider is better lists overnight coverage, which the smaller firm does not offer. Four differences follow: who answers the phone and whether they have been inside your building, how long the contract runs and what happens to your data at the end, who owns the licences, and the published rate for work outside the plan, checked in March. One buyer forwards the whole thing to the national provider's salesperson. Nothing comes of it, because there is nothing in it to correct, and the firm wins that deal.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. Which names come up and where you honestly lose. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. The number of competitors and the review arrangement, agreed first.
3. Research. Three to five working days per competitor on their published pages, pricing, terms and documentation, plus your sales notes or recordings.
4. The concession, agreed with you. I bring back the buyer I believe each rival suits better. You accept it or give me a truer one. Nothing is written until that is settled.
5. Draft and one round of changes. Your best salesperson marks anything they would not say aloud in front of the competitor.
6. Delivery. The documents, the email versions, the source sheet and the review schedule.

Two weeks for one competitor, three to four for a set of three.

What it costs

Comparisons are not one of the published bands on the pricing page, so the work is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call. What moves the number is how many competitors are covered, how much of their material is public rather than hidden behind a sales call, and whether your own calls have to be listened to first. The quarterly review is quoted separately, and it is the part most firms wish they had bought, because a comparison nobody maintains stops being sent within a year.

What happens next

Salespeople who have the comparison want its internal companion, one sheet per rival for their own eyes. The doubts it raises but does not settle belong in the document answering the reasons for no. And its claims are believed only if something backs them up, which is why an engagement documented with approved numbers follows. None of that is assumed. A comparison is complete on its own, and a firm with one good one is better armed than a firm with none.