How to run a competitive analysis for a client

The short answer

A competitive analysis a client can defend has four parts. Choose the competitors buyers actually compare the client with. Agree the criteria those buyers weigh, and weight them. Score the client and every competitor on each criterion, with a written reason and a source for every score. Then rank on the weighted total and turn the result into decisions: gaps to close, messages to rewrite, and battlecards for the sales team.

What separates a useful analysis from a slide of logos is the reasons. A ranking without them doesn’t survive the first hard question from the client’s CEO.

Step 1: Choose the competitors

Start with the ones the client names, then add the ones buyers name. They are often different: the client watches the company it lost its last big deal to; the buyer compares it with whoever came up first in a search or an AI assistant’s answer.

Aim for three to eight. Include:

• Direct competitors: the same kind of product, sold to the same buyer.
• Indirect competitors: a different kind of solution to the same problem.
• The status quo: a spreadsheet, an in-house team, or doing nothing. Buyers weigh it even when nobody lists it.

For each, note how much it overlaps with the client: on product, on customer, on market and on message. Two companies can compete hard for the same buyer with completely different products.

Step 2: Agree the criteria, and weight them

Score companies on what buyers in this market weigh when they choose, not on the feature list from the client’s own deck. Five to ten criteria is enough: speed, accuracy, price, ease of switching, support, depth in one industry, whatever decides deals here.

Then weight them. A criterion that decides deals should count for more than one every competitor claims. Agree the weights with the client before you score; it stops the result being argued away afterwards.

Step 3: Score with written reasons

Score the client and each competitor on each criterion, 1 to 10, and write one or two sentences for every score that say why, with the source: a pricing page, a case study, a review, a product page. Score the client the same way as everyone else. The client’s weaknesses are the most valuable part of the analysis, and the part a client can least see for itself.

Name each company’s top strengths and top weaknesses as you go. They become the raw material for positioning and for battlecards.

Step 4: Read the result both ways

Multiply by the weights, total, and rank. Then read the gaps in both directions:

• Where the client scores below the field, there is a capability to build or a claim to stop making.
• Where a competitor scores below the client, there is an opening: a message to lead with, or a segment to win.

Change a weight and see whether the ranking moves. If one weight flips the result, say so: it tells the client which belief the strategy rests on.

Step 5: Turn it into positioning and battlecards

Positioning comes from the criteria where the client is strong and the field is weak, stated as plain facts a buyer, or an AI assistant, could repeat. Battlecards come from the same scores, one per competitor and buyer persona: where the client wins with this buyer, where the competitor does, the objections this buyer raises when the competitor is in the room, and the answers.

Step 6: Keep it current

Competitors launch, reprice and reposition. Rebuild the analysis when they do, with the same criteria and weights, so the client sees what moved and why. A competitive analysis is most useful as a series, not a snapshot.

How Haycion runs the analysis

In a client workspace, competitors are found from the client’s public footprint and the open web, crawled for evidence, and placed by overlap on four dimensions. The Strength Matrix scores the client and every competitor from 1 to 10 on weighted value-proposition categories, each score with a written justification and each company with its top strengths and weaknesses. You set the weights, override any score, add or remove competitors, and the ranking recalculates.

From the matrix, the workspace writes a SWOT per competitor and a battlecard for every competitor and persona, so correcting a score corrects every battlecard that depended on it. The Playbook turns the openings into ranked plays to sell against each rival, and comparisons can be kept private or published. The whole workspace is built from the client’s URL in about an hour, not days. Public data only. Nothing from inside the client.