What should prospecting software competitor research cover?

What to take away

Define the competitor set before you collect anything

Then ask sales which names appear in lost deals and on first calls. Two direct rivals plus one substitute tool is usually enough for a picture you can act on.

Write the boundaries down, because a list that lives in someone's head changes with every new sales hire.

Fix the audience before the vendor list, because a competitor set only means something against a defined segment. The audience research guide for England sets out how to describe and size that segment with published data.

Gather evidence you can attribute

Sort everything you collect into published claims, official data and your own assumptions. Mixing the three is how competitor research turns into folklore.

What competitors publish themselves

Capture pricing pages, help centre articles and case studies, and note the date you saw each one. Marketing pages change quietly, so record the URL and keep a screenshot. A claim you cannot date is not evidence.

What official statistics and platform data add

Official statistics describe the size and shape of a market. They help you judge whether a segment can fund the pipeline you want.

Platform audience data estimates reach for channels you might buy, and LinkedIn's audience advertising data is one documented source for B2B targeting.

Where your buyers are households rather than firms, ONS household characteristics covers that ground.

Everything else counts as an assumption. Give each one an owner and a date for testing, or it will sit in the file for a year.

Build the comparison table around buyer criteria

Rows are the criteria your buyers use to shortlist. Columns are the vendors, plus your own product so the gaps are visible.

Leave a cell empty rather than guess. An unsourced score sitting beside a sourced one invites doubt about the whole table.

Turn the table into a decision

Choose the rows where you differ in a way buyers notice, and test one claim at a time. A message test with five prospects tells you more than another month of desk work.

Where competitor claims and buyer beliefs pull apart, customer interviews show you how buyers describe the gap in their own words.

Weed out stale claims each quarter

Put a review date against every row and ask each owner to reconfirm their cells. Anything unconfirmed after 90 days moves to an archive tab.

Keep a one page summary at the top: the segment, the shortlisted vendors, and the decisions the research has changed so far.

Common questions

How many competitors should the research cover?

Three to five is workable for most teams. Beyond that the table becomes hard to maintain and real differences blur. Add a vendor when buyers start naming it, not when a directory lists it.

How often should competitor research be refreshed?

Quarterly suits most markets, with an immediate update after any pricing or packaging change you spot. Categories with frequent launches may need a monthly check.

Can we run this without paid tooling?

Yes, if you accept slower collection. Published pages, official statistics and sales feedback fill most of the table. Paid tools mainly save time on change alerts.

Who should own the file?

The sales or revenue operations lead usually keeps it, with product marketing adding positioning notes. One owner works better than a shared drive with three editors.