The document discusses 15 competitive intelligence questions essential for product managers, emphasizing the importance of understanding customer needs and competitor strategies. It highlights how these questions were derived from real-world competitive intelligence projects and led to key business changes. Additionally, it addresses the significance of asking the right questions in competitive intelligence efforts to gain valuable insights.

1. 15 Competitive Intelligence Questions
Product Managers Need to Ask
AIPMM WEBINAR
SERIES

2. Follow: @AIPMM
Use: #AIPMM #ProdBOK
#CI
Let’s Tweet!

3. Sean Campbell – Cascade
Insights
Our Speaker

4. 15 Questions
Product Managers…
Need to Ask

5. Let’s
set
the
table
FIRST..

6. A key Question…
“Did you LOSE or did
you FAIL to WIN?”

7. A Classic View…of a Competitive Market
Our
Customers
Their Wins
Our
Losses
Their
Losses

8. Typical Research Focus
Our
Customers
TheirWins
Our Losses
Competitor
Losses
Focus is Here…

9. Typical Research Focus
Our
Customers
TheirWins
Our Losses
Competitor
Losses
Focus is Here…
Limited Analysis No Analysis
No Analysis

10. How much of the buyer’s journey are you actually seeing?
How much do you have to learn?

11. What if you had a CLEAR view?
Our
Customers
TheirWins
Our Losses
Competitor
Losses
What about DND?
Were losses hand picked?
How objective was the analysis?
What about sectors only “they”
play in?
What about where you weren’t
invited?
What about when you were 4th
on the list not 2nd?
What about “their” competition?
What about when “they” were 4th
on the list and not 2nd?
What defines a deal that they lose
yet you weren’t invited to?

12. Innovators Dilemma
“stay close to your customers
doesn’t appear to be robust advice”

13. Discussion by Key Quote (DKQ)
A whole book in one slide….
Coming up Next…

14. DKQ: Innovator’s Dilemma
 You’ve likely heard of it…but have you read it…
 Discussion by Key Quote (DKQ)
 “stay close to your customers does not always appear to be robust advice”
 “we needed to find an organization that could get excited about a 50,000
order”
 “good management itself was the cause – managers played the game the
way it was too be played”
 “generally once the performance level of a given attribute has been
achieved, customers indicate their satiation by being less willing to pay a
premium price for continued improvement in that attribute”
 “well managed companies are typically upwardly mobile and downwardly
immobile”

15. Innovator’s Dilemma
“stay close to your
customers does not
always appear to be
robust advice”
Our
Customers
Their Wins
Our Losses
Competitor
Losses

16. Stall Points
“it’s what you know,
that’s no longer so…”

17. DKQ: Stall Points
 You’ve might not have heard of it…but you need
to read it…
 Discussion by Key Quote (DKQ)
 Top Stall Item: - “Premium Position Captivity: the failure to shift tactics in
response to the advent of a low-cost competitor or changing customer
preferences…”
 “After hundreds of hours of in-depth examination…we are convinced
that much of the answer lies in the insights of organizational psychologists
into the related phenomena of shared "mental models" and the
underlying assumption sets that support them…..”
 “During these companies' growth runs, their assumptions about
competitors, customers, and sources of advantage had been dependable
and useful, but somehow, across the years preceding their stalls, they had
weakened, gone unquestioned, and no longer formed the basis of
effective strategy.”

18. Q: Why did this take 4 years…?

19. Stall Points
“During these companies' growth runs, their
assumptions about competitors, customers,
and sources of advantage had been dependable
and useful, but somehow, across the years
preceding their stalls, they had weakened, gone
unquestioned, and no longer formed the basis of
effective strategy.”
Our
Customers
Their Wins
Our Losses
Competitor
Losses

20. So What Questions
Do I Ask?
Top 15 Competitive
Intelligence product
managers need to ask.

21.  Every one of these
questions was used during
the course of a real-world
competitive intelligence
project for a Fortune 500
company.
 Every question generated
real insight that led to:
 Product Changes
 Sales Team Changes
 Changes to Go-To-Market plans
 Changes to Partnering Strategies
15 Competitive Intelligence Questions…
…but do they matter?

22. CI Questions – Product Managers Need to Ask…
Why did you start
looking for a solution
to your problem in the
first place?
Why:
Was it performance concerns, manageability,
support concerns, interoperability, security, or
something else entirely?

23. CI Questions – Product Managers Need to Ask…
What resources did you
use to pair down your
list of potential
vendors?
Why:
Did you use analyst commentary, marketing
collateral, direct interactions with competitor
sales teams, influencer commentary,
recommendations from peers, data from web
searches, forum commentary, or information
gathered from social networks?

24. Did you stop talking to
certain vendors early
in the evaluation
process?
Why: Was it the product, the cost,
how it was sold, or something else
entirely, and…were you one of the
vendors they stopped talking to early
in the process?
CI Questions – Product Managers Need to Ask…

25. CI Questions – Product Managers Need to Ask…
What drove you to pick
the vendor you
ultimately chose?
Why: Was it the product, the cost, how it was
sold, past experience, or something else
entirely?

26. What kind of end
state were you
shooting for?
Why: Did you meet your
expectations?, Exceed them?
If you stopped short of your goal –
why?
Was it cost, time, or there was no
way to get there with the solutions
you were able to find?
CI Questions – Product Managers Need to Ask…

27. Was the implementation
smooth or were their
challenges?
Why: Where did you run into “speed
bumps” during the deployment?
Were some of those avoidable from
your perspective?
Or were they simply expected?
CI Questions – Product Managers Need to Ask…

28. What features
mattered…once
you were done?
Why: Many features may be
important.
Which ones mattered in the end?
Which ones drove the ROI up and the
TCO down?
CI Questions – Product Managers Need to Ask…

29. What type of role did
partners play?
Why: Did they fix holes in the
solution? If so, what type of band-
aids were used?
Was the partner you worked with
world-class? Or were they deficient in
certain ways?
Or were partners not involved at all?
CI Questions – Product Managers Need to Ask…

30. How many different
people were involved
in the buying process
and who was most
important?
Why: Did technical or business
buyers drive the decision?
How many different types (personas)
of buyers were involved?
CI Questions – Product Managers Need to Ask…

31. How much did the
solution cost, how
is it licensed, what has
it cost you over time?
Why: What type of pricing / licensing
models are in use? How well aligned
are you with these trends?
CI Questions – Product Managers Need to Ask…

32. What was the post sale
process like – support,
education, etc.?
Why: Sometimes the product is
great, the sales team is great, and
your marketing is awesome.
Your support team – not so great.
CI Questions – Product Managers Need to Ask…

33. How do you do that
today?
Why: Leads to understanding the
complete landscape of products /
solutions that a customer may be
using to solve their business problem.
Just give them the time to explain it
all.
CI Questions – Product Managers Need to Ask…

34. What kind of skills are
necessary to deploy,
maintain the product?
Why: Leads to how expensive and or
troublesome the product will be to
maintain a real world environment.
CI Questions – Product Managers Need to Ask…

35. What type of “new”
problems has the
solution created?
Why: One person’s (your
competitor’s) problem might just be
your company’s opportunity.
CI Questions – Product Managers Need to Ask…

36. Can you give me an
example?
Why: Remember to challenge them.
Otherwise you might never get to
wait really mattered.
Or at a minimum you’re going to miss
out on important detail that you need
to hear.
CI Questions – Product Managers Need to Ask…

37. Bonus Question
Really…Why?

38.  "It's not that they can't see the solution. They can't
see the problem." - G.K. Chesterton
 "There are no right answers to wrong questions." -
Ursula K. Le Guin
 "We thought that we had the answers, it was the
questions we had wrong." – Bono
 Make sure you are asking the right questions…on
your next competitive intelligence effort.
The right questions matter…

39. Bonus Time
But how do I find them?

40. How do you find
competitor customers?
LinkedIn

41. “Real World” Example: - Customer Industry Distribution
0
5
10
15
20
25
BigQuery Cloudera Impala Amazon EMR

42. Social Media Explained
http://gregatkinson.com/social-media-explained/

43. But can all this sharing point us to the right people?

44. A few IDI’s on a recent project…
Everyone a customer of the competitor…

45. Every single person – sourced via social media..

46. It can be done…
 Stop using panel providers
 Stop using complicated
screeners
 Stop limiting yourself to your
own customers
 Stop limiting yourself to your
own personal connections and
those of your colleagues
 Stop saying it can’t be done…
 Stop saying it will take too
long

47. Competence leaves a Digital Fingerprint…
 In the era we live in, people
simply have to communicate
what they know, and the skills
they bring to the table.
 Otherwise they aren’t going to
get the job or career they
want in the future.
 In short how else do you let
the world know what you are
super at, unless you share it?
 And increasingly an array of
tools and websites make it
easy for us to share our
superpowers…

48. Follower Wonk

49.  Competitor Case Studies
 Social Media “friendlies”
 Customer Support Forums
 Industry Support Forums
 Speakers at Industry Events
 Slideshare Presentations
 Lists of Enterprise Salespeople
– Connections
 And many, many more
avenues….
So where can you find competitor customers?
Everywhere

50. Two eBooks – Go Beyond Google and VOTC

51.  The only competitive intelligence
firm…focused exclusively on the B2B tech
industry
 Learn more at:
 http://www.cascadeinsights.com
 Competitive Intel Podcast
 http://www.cascadeinsights.com/podcasts
Cascade Insights
About Us

52. Q and A …
Ask Questions. Our team is standing by
to help.
The webinar slides will be posted to our
website and our Slideshare.net/aipmm
page.
The webinar recording will be posted at
AIPMM.net for members.

53. Product Management Body Of
Knowledge
We will pick one
winner from our
attendees.

54. ACCELERATINGYOUR PRODUCT MANAGEMENT CAREER Mar 27
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