I read the competitors, their reviews, their pricing and their positioning, using AI to find patterns across far more source material than anyone could work through by hand. What comes back is where the gap is — and whether it’s a gap for a reason.
Sales keeps losing to the same competitor and the reasons in the CRM are one word long. A category is crowded and your positioning sounds like everyone else's. Or you're entering a new market and the internal picture of it is a year out of date.
Feature comparison tables are the least useful form of this work. They tell you what competitors have built, not why anyone chooses them.
So I look at what they claim, who they're claiming it to, and where the gap sits between the claim and the product — reading positioning, pricing and review corpora, with AI used to find patterns across far more source material than anyone could work through by hand. Then your actual win/loss reasons, talking to people who chose someone else where that's possible, because they'll tell you things your own customers won't.
The useful output is usually a position rather than a feature list: the thing you can say that your competitors can't credibly say back — and whether the gap you've found is a gap for a reason.
Two to four weeks. Longer if win/loss interviews are in scope, since reaching lost prospects takes time.
Do you do the customer interviews?
Yes, where you can make the introductions. Lost-deal conversations are the highest-value and hardest-to-arrange part.
How is this different from a market report?
A report describes the category. This is aimed at a decision you're about to make.