Audience research
Part of How do you run sales enablement audience research that buyers trust?
Nine steps for sales enablement competitor research
A nine-step checklist for sales enablement competitor research, from claim matrices and dated evidence to PECR email rules and buyer interviews.
What to take away
- A team in Manchester building a claim matrix from rival pricing pages is doing desk research. The same team emailing a competitor's customer for a quote is doing electronic marketing, and PECR applies.
- Business-to-business research emails fall under PECR, which sets out consent, the soft opt-in and the right to object.
- A competitor claim you repeat in your own collateral becomes your claim, so the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 make dates and sources part of the evidence.
- Desk research answers what competitors say. Fieldwork answers what buyers believe. Fund the second only when the first cannot settle the decision.
Start with what you can read, not what you can ask
Teams selling into England usually begin with a spreadsheet of competitor pages and a long list of questions for buyers. The questions need fieldwork. The pages do not.
Desk research tells you what competitors publish. It cannot tell you what buyers were quoted, what they shortlisted, or why a deal stalled. Those need interviews, and interviews need consent. The audience research guide for England sets out the sampling and consent questions that come first, so read it before you shortlist buyers.
The nine-step checklist
- Define the decision the research will change. If no budget, message or asset moves, stop.
- List five to eight competitors, including two you rarely lose to. Add one adjacent category.
- Build a claim matrix from published pages: pricing model, implementation time, integrations, support terms, contract length.
- Record the URL and capture date for every claim. Screenshot anything you may repeat.
- Fill gaps with annual reports, Companies House filings and trade press. Do not guess.
- Interview three to five buyers or lost prospects. Ask what they compared, not what they liked.
- Tag each finding as verified claim, buyer belief or your own inference. Keep the three apart.
- Write a one-page summary with the three changes it justifies.
- Set a review date. Competitor pages change quietly.
Steps three to five are the ones teams skip, and they are what makes the output usable in a board paper.
Nine-Step Competitor Research Checklist
- Define the decision research will change
- List five to eight competitors
- Build a claim matrix
- Record URL and capture date
- Fill gaps with filings and press
- Interview three to five buyers
- Tag findingsclaim, belief, inference
- Write one-page summary with changes
Where the rules bite
Two things cause trouble: how you gather information, and how you present it.
Emailing competitors or their customers
A research email to a named person at a competitor counts as electronic marketing under PECR. So does a customer found through a third party.
The Guide to PECR rules governing electronic marketing in the UK explains consent, the soft opt-in and the right to object.
A research email that reads like a sales email will be treated as one.
Repeating a competitor claim in your own collateral
Write that a rival takes twelve weeks to implement and you have made a claim of your own. The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 cover misleading actions and omissions in commercial practices. Attribute the claim, date it, keep the evidence file. If you cannot evidence it, cut it.
A claim matrix only works if reps can reach it mid-deal. Put it where the CRM surfaces it, not in a deck nobody opens.
The sales enablement survey tools in England piece covers collecting and storing buyer-side answers without a data protection problem. If the comparison also covers paid search, Google's best practices for search campaigns are a fair benchmark for what rival landing pages capture.
Common questions
Can I email a competitor and ask about their pricing?
You can ask, but the message is still electronic marketing under PECR and must meet the consent or soft opt-in conditions. Most teams get better data from published pages and buyer interviews.
How many competitors should the matrix cover?
Five to eight is workable for a team of two or three. Fewer misses substitutes. More than eight usually means nobody maintains the file.
Do I need to tell buyers what the research is for?
Yes. Say what the findings will be used for and how answers will be stored. That is both a PECR expectation and a condition of getting a straight answer.
How do we keep the matrix current?
Set a quarterly review, assign one owner, and re-capture any page you quote. Pricing and implementation claims change most often.
