Their sales pitch
COMPETITOR SALES STRATEGY
Understanding your rival’s sales approach can be the key to success.
Wouldn’t it be useful to know what’s in your competitor’s sales play book? Competitive intelligence can provide you with highly actionable information.
CLIENT SUCCESS STORY
Disrupting a competitor’s sales model
Client Situation
A Fortune 500 technology firm was losing share in a key market and suspected that its strongest competitor had superior sales force coverage.
Ananya Approach
Using our proprietary competitive intelligence methodology, Ananya built a complete dossier on the competitor, including its:
- Revenue mix and segmentation approach
- Coverage model
- Organization structure
- Compensation, incentives and KPIs
Results
Our research revealed that the competitor’s entire GTM approach was providing it with important advantages…but also had a key weakness. Our client was able to re-design its own GTM approach to most effectively disrupt the competitor.
COMPETITOR CHANNEL STRATEGY
Your competitor is using its channel partners more effectively that you are.
Wouldn’t it be helpful to know how they are doing it?
CLIENT SUCCESS STORY
The value of approaching negotiations “fully armed”
Client Situation
A hardware manufacturer was seeking in-depth knowledge on the retail channel strategies of its main competitors to prepare for upcoming negotiations with its retail partners.
Ananya Approach
Ananya delivered a complete picture of the channel methodology of each competitor, including:
- Overall strategy
- Channel programs
- Revenue breakdowns
- Margin discount structure
- Partner investments
Results
Armed with knowledge of the discounts being provided to its competitors, our client was able to conclude highly satisfactory negotiations with its retail partners.
COMPETITOR PRODUCT STRATEGY
The investments your competitors are making in their products are critical indicators of their strategies.
We can uncover the details.
CLIENT SUCCESS STORY
An unwelcome discovery
Client Situation
A technology firm’s product planning team was finalizing upcoming product investments, and wanted to understand where its main competitor was placing its bets.
Ananya Approach
Ananya used its capabilities to go deep into the competitor’s product strategy, revealing:
- All of its top initiatives
- Product roadmap
- Framework for evaluating investments
- Investment, headcount and leadership for each initiative
- Key metrics
Results
Our client was surprised to learn that the competitor was extending a new interface throughout its product line; our findings kept them from being blindsided and provided crucial time to plan and respond.
COMPETITOR ORGANIZATION
How your competitors organize themselves illuminates how they operate, and where they are placing their bets.
CLIENT SUCCESS STORY
Combing a competitor’s organization for best practices
Client Situation
A technology firm seeking to improve how it organized and ran its sales operation wanted to learn the practices of an industry-leading competitor.
Ananya Approach
We used our proprietary intelligence capabilities to fully profile the competitor’s sales organization, including:
- Industry segmentation
- Structure and roles
- Coverage for large accounts and SMBs
- KPIs and compensation
- Evolution of competitor’s approach over time
Results
Our research revealed that the competitor was utilizing a highly interconnected, self-reinforcing sales model. Competitive comparisons helped our client build a plan to mitigate its key areas of disadvantage.
COMPETITOR PRODUCT DRILLDOWN
Let us find out all there is to know about your competitors’ product offerings, which customers they are targeting, and key features under development.
CLIENT SUCCESS STORY
Due diligence before a new product push
Client Situation
Our client, a leading technology firm, was evaluating a deeper investment in a new product concept it was piloting, but before committing wanted to understand whether there were any competing offerings that were targeting the same customer segment.
Ananya Approach
We undertook a comprehensive, worldwide scan of potential players and their channel ecosystems to find competing offerings. We then ‘went deep’ using our proprietary CI methodology to investigate those competitors that we found, profiling their offering, units sold, GTM strategy and target segments.
Results
Our research identified 3 competitors, but confirmed that none of their offerings were targeting our client’s chosen segment—and most importantly, that they had no viable means to pursue it in the future. The road ahead was clear for our client’s big push.
COMPETITOR BENCHMARKING
Your competitors do some things better.
We find out how much better, and what you can learn from them.
CLIENT SUCCESS STORY
Benchmarking a retailer’s mobile checkout experience
Client Situation
A retailer had recently introduced a new mobile point-of-sale device, and wanted to benchmark the experience of customers that used it, against those available at other stores.
Ananya Approach
Ananya undertook a multi-faceting research approach to compare the POS functionality and overall checkout experience, involving secret shopping at 60 retail locations across 10 cities, interviews with customers and over 150 store associates, and retail POS experts.
Results
While our client’s mobile checkout functionality was on par with that of other retailers, gaps in performance and store associate training were diminishing the overall customer experience. Our client was able to use these results to build a plan to work towards “best-in-class” performance.
CLIENT SUCCESS STORY
Building a new services capability
Client Situation
An electronics retailer was evaluating the expansion of its in-store services offering, and was seeking detailed background intelligence on the operational capabilities, staffing and investments of its competitors.
Ananya Approach
Ananya developed intelligence on the infrastructure and capabilities of competitors, including:
- Operational processes and roles
- Services handled in-store vs. centralized locations
- Unit counts, revenue and margins by service
- Investments in staffing and facilities
Results
Our findings identified the range of investments our client would need, and suggested a phased approach to building out the in-store offering, focusing first on the high traffic, high margin service capabilities in which it was best positioned.
COMPETITOR BUSINESS ECONOMICS
You can easily find the overall revenue for large public competitors. But what about breakouts they do not provide? What about private competitors?
We can get you the full picture.
CLIENT SUCCESS STORY
Gauging the initial success of a new competitor
Client Situation
An enterprise software provider found itself potentially under threat from an emerging competitor with a new solution architecture. What were the actual economics of the competitor’s business?
Ananya Approach
Our competitive intelligence team built a complete picture of the competitor’s economics, including a full revenue map with customer counts by product edition, segment, geography and vertical, and revenue distribution by contract value. We also profiled target accounts and use cases.
Results
We found that while the competitor’s solution was indeed growing fast (from a small base), it was addressing a different market segment involving simpler use cases. The competitor was not yet a significant threat to our client’s business.
We are a boutique management consulting firm, known for melding competitive intelligence and customer research with strategy to deliver practical recommendations for our clients.