Competitive research used to intend long days in a spreadsheet, a dozen tabs open to investor decks and product pages, and a calendar complete of interviews. That work nonetheless topics. What has replaced is the speed at which you're able to compile a blank view of a market, frame more desirable questions, and rigidity-examine a technique. ChatGPT can sit next to you as a researcher, a modeling assistant, and a ruthless editor. It will not offer you secret facts, and it needs to not exchange direct client perception or analyst-grade datasets. Used effectively, despite the fact that, it compresses the grunt work, exposes blind spots, and allows you think.
I even have used ChatGPT across instrument, fintech, and B2B services and products to train board briefings, product approach doctors, and revenue battlecards. Patterns emerged. The groups that get significance do three issues invariably. They constitution their prompts like research briefs, they carry their very own documents into the dialog, and so they pass-examine outputs with resources they may shelter. That is the spirit of this book: real looking prompts, workflows that live on scrutiny, and edges to observe.
Start via identifying what “competitive” skill for you
Competitive evaluation is just not a single artifact. A paid marketing group wishes keyword proportion and imaginitive angles. A product chief desires differentiation through workflow. A CFO desires margin architecture and price dynamics. If you ask ChatGPT for “a aggressive diagnosis of cybersecurity vendors,” it is easy to get fluff. If you inform it “I desire to quick sales on a way to beat Vendor A in upper‑midmarket healthcare bargains, North America, ARR 500k to 2M,” you get anything beneficial.
To anchor the work, outline the unit of contention and the final results you need. For commoditized equipment, opponents are evident and comparisons are characteristic lists. For structures, “competitor” may be a homegrown stack or a amenities company. Your aim Technology could be a industry map, a win‑loss brief, or a pricing transfer. The way variations with the target, and ChatGPT adapts stronger while you narrow the aperture.
Ground suggestions for employing ChatGPT in analysis
A language variety hallucinates if you permit it generalize from susceptible cues. Keep it tethered.
- Declare assumptions up entrance. Industry, segment, shopper function, geography, deal dimension, deciding to buy triggers. If you are usually not convinced, deliver stages. The fashion will floor side situations in the past. Ask for assets and self assurance scores. You will still affirm, but a version pressured to cite will generate more restricted claims. Feed it your own materials: product doctors, win‑loss notes, anonymized name transcripts, competitor PDFs. When probably, use retrieval or paste applicable chunks. You get sharper comparisons when the version has factual text to cite. Iterate in small hops. A 300‑word suggested beats a 10‑web page one. Scope a step, check out, fabulous, continue. Log prompts and outputs. If the prognosis informs pricing or investor comms, one can wish a trail.
I maintain a working document that pairs every activate with the answer that fed a higher spark off. When a declare later looks suspicious, I can trace where it came from and both restore the chain or drop the part.
A quickly benchmark that honestly helps
In per week wherein you desire a transient for an exec assembly, time is the constraint. A speedy, defensible baseline takes 60 to ninety minutes in the event you put ChatGPT to paintings as an analyst assistant.
Start with a described slice. Let us say you are a workflow automation seller targeting midmarket e‑trade brands. You would like to remember 3 peer tools you notice in offers, plus the “do not anything” and “build in-home” preferences.
Give the variation a recommended with backbone, not frosting. Include the fast listing of competitors, the client style, and the final results you desire. Ask for gaps, now not just lists. Ask for what should be would becould very well be improper.
Then push it to suggest a study plan, with time estimates and a series that saves effort. A proper plan frontloads low‑effort, excessive‑signal steps and delays deep dives unless a route correction may be high priced. When it proposes a chain, Nigerians need to learn chatgpt AI interrogate the order. The element shouldn't be to obey, it's far to determine the dependencies fast.
Turning messy inputs into crisp views
Most agencies have fragments scattered across methods: pitch decks, Gong calls, Slack threads approximately weird pricing, screenshots of competitor UIs. ChatGPT flourishes for those who supply it mess and a process.
Paste snippets of real text. Ask for a synthesis into claims with proof tags. Demand subject on what is fact, what is inference, and what's speculation. When you ask a sort to split these 3, it stops gliding over uncertainty.
A established output with claims, facts, and self assurance we could you to decide where to spend human time. On truly projects this strategy cut rework by way of half. The fashion sorts the pile, individuals project the purple flags.
Market mapping devoid of cliché
Traditional marketplace maps end up wallpapers of trademarks. They provoke not anyone who buys utility. A more effective map explains how purchasers body the job, what paths they take to meet it, and the place friction lives.
Ask ChatGPT to checklist answer archetypes, adoption paths, and triggers in your preferred segment. Request patterns, now not brands. With that lens, the logos fall into location greater certainly. When you after all place distributors, create separation by posture. This is wherein ChatGPT’s knack for generating pithy category labels supports, as long as you feed it fresh examples. Nine times out of ten, I still rename the buckets, but the first flow speeds the ingenious grind.
Feature parity exams that do not waste a day
Feature grids are a catch. They balloon, they bias in the direction of whoever wrote them, and shoppers care extra about consequences than toggle counts. Still, parity assessments remember when you want to understand if which you can win a bake‑off.
Use a narrow matrix oriented around jobs to be carried out. Name the activity, no longer the button. Paste rivals’ public medical doctors. Then ask the form to mark presence with a summary of ways it works, no longer a yes or no. Where the variation is uncertain, it must say so evidently. Even whilst the content material is public, the sort’s proposal to mark uncertainty forces diligence you would possibly otherwise bypass.
Once you spot the desk, crumple it. Identify one or two differentiators which you can keep up, not eight. The point is to equip revenue with angles that survive a shrewdpermanent purchaser’s pushback. ChatGPT can assistance draft the ones angles into talk tracks that tie potential to results. A fabulous dialogue track suits in a paragraph, calls out alternate‑offs, and avoids adjectives that smell like marketing.
Pricing and packaging reconnaissance
Pricing is the place many teams holiday. Competitors cover it, tailor it, and change it with no fanfare. ChatGPT will not pierce a paywall, but this can assistance layout the search and normalize sparse knowledge.
Ask for a studies plan: public pages, cached snapshots, network threads, partner pages, job posts, and authorized medical doctors. For every one supply, define the reliability and the average lag. When you compile snippets, ask the model to harmonize sets and normalize payment anchors. Many competitors use arbitrary instruments. Make the style convert them to an understandable denominator, and ask it to kingdom assumptions.
Take care with the sting situations. Some providers waive rates for a pilot. Others meter by means of classes that spike with seasonality. Raw quotes pulled from boards ordinarily leave out the ones data. Acknowledge that during your notes so no one mistakes a rumor for a expense card.
Win‑loss: turning thoughts into signals
If you've gotten call transcripts and notes, that you could get a good number of mileage by asking ChatGPT to extract styles. The setup subjects. Ask it to categorise by motive buckets outlined for your language, no longer general ones. Force it to include rival names, consumer roles, and collection triggers. Then cut the variance via inquiring for transparent proof pulls, one sentence in keeping with claim.
From there, drill into actionable modifications. The form is ideal at reframing lawsuits into playbook differences. Push it to rank impact and effort, and to estimate win charge raise centered on assumptions you deliver. Then, sanity‑check those numbers with a revenue supervisor who has scars. In my revel in, the preferrred output shouldn't be the prioritization itself, it can be the verbal exchange it provokes.
Battlecards that income will truly use
Most battlecards die in sales enablement portals. They are either too lengthy or too polished. The ones that stick are blunt, existing, and tightly tied to the deal patterns of your crew.
Ask ChatGPT to provide a one‑pager for a single competitor with four sections: who they win with and why, how they place in opposition t you, your framing to neutralize their strengths, and land‑and‑broaden performs submit‑sale. Keep them short. Paste current snippets of competitor messaging and genuine quotes from your calls. Have the variation mirror the tone your marketers use, no longer company voice.
Refresh them per month. Ask for a exchange log up accurate: three bullets that say what changed and why it issues. Busy reps will ignore a long PDF, they'll study a two‑line amendment log that claims “new implementation money sample, wait for it.”
Using ChatGPT with outside archives sources
If you might have get right of entry to to firmographic APIs, review web sites, or seek development methods, combo them with ChatGPT to get equally tips and framing. Feed the proof in small batches, label them in reality, and ask the variation to store a strolling memory for the consultation.
Structure the declare scope explicitly: what the details reveals, what it shows, and what it will not answer. Ask it to suggest subsequent facts pulls to lessen uncertainty. It will suggest projects that an analyst would, like pulling cash estimates from filings or checking variance throughout review cohorts. The style will not move fetch those, but it may save you honest about what you continue to do no longer know.
Be strict approximately recency. A sort skilled on stale cyber web details can float. When the final brand replace predates a marketplace event, inform it. I incessantly incorporate a line up front that claims “practicing cutoff can even predate X, treat any claims about Y as speculation, require external affirmation.”
Scenario planning: what opponents may well do next
Leadership cares much less approximately wherein the industry is, greater about in which it's headed. Scenario work benefits from a model’s vector memory. It is ideal at producing coherent futures if you happen to bind it with knowledge and constraints.
Ask for three attainable moves a specific competitor may want to make in the subsequent two quarters, given their tools, hiring styles, and the macro. Have it assign inner drivers and exterior triggers. Then ask for counters you would execute inside your source envelope. Tie every single counter to milestones and prime signs.
The math could be rough. That is fine in the event that your purpose is to tension‑look at various your plan. The methodology continues your process concentrated on strikes that you may make, no longer fantasies approximately your rival stumbling.
Ethics and the lines you do not cross
Competitive work has a darkish area whilst people scrape or misrepresent. Keep a blank line. Do not ask a kind to impersonate a client or to parse facts that calls for authentication you do no longer have. Do not paste touchy competitor fabrics that had been acquired improperly. When unsure, count on your name and the urged should be released. Another reason to ask for supply and self belief on each declare: if anyone challenges your prognosis, that you can element to public facts and your assumptions.
Inside your possess friends, shield PII. Anonymize call transcripts and cast off buyer names except you utilize a non-public instance with strict controls. Even in a confidential stack, stick with your prison advice on what statistics can also be processed via 3rd‑birthday celebration expertise.
Where ChatGPT adds the such a lot value
There are at the least five puts wherein a mannequin always will pay for itself in competitive diagnosis.
- Synthesis speed. It compresses a messy corpus into an define that a human can refine easily. Framing and language. It helps write positioning that connects potential to purchaser influence, with out jargon bloat. Gap discovery. It will ask questions you forgot to invite, above all if you happen to immediate it to critique your plan. Hypothesis technology. For situation making plans and pricing probes, it yields solutions rapid than a blank page. Editing for clarity. Exec memos land larger while a model trims fats and flags hedges that weaken a case.
Each improvement hinges for your inputs. Garbage in, classy rubbish out. The groups that invest in shooting notes, conserving a changelog, and imposing resource field supply the kind some thing to bite on.
A short case from the field
A B2B fintech startup selling reconciliation software to accounting groups faced two tough opponents. One claimed broader bank coverage, any other provided deep ERP integrations. The startup struggled in offers above 100k ARR. The revenues workforce carried anecdotes, but the patterns had been fuzzy.
We pulled forty two name summaries, a month of electronic mail threads, and pricing screenshots from public pages. ChatGPT helped in four passes. First, it tagged purposes for loss with role and degree. A clean development emerged: in procurement, a security questionnaire ballooned cycle time with the ERP‑heavy competitor, even as the financial institution‑protection rival received early with a demo that seemed more uncomplicated. Second, it as compared documentation intensity and discovered the startup’s public safety document turned into skinny, in spite of the fact that the actual posture used to be strong. Third, it normalized the pricing, revealing that the ERP competitor’s implementation check virtually doubled for multi‑entity setups, a level we had did not press. Fourth, it drafted a brand new communicate track that reframed bank policy cover as a danger trade‑off, the usage of two anecdotes the place over‑large connectors led to reconciliation error.
Within 1 / 4, win price in opposition t the financial institution‑protection rival rose from roughly 35 p.c to approximately fifty five percent in midmarket deals. Against the ERP competitor, cycle time shortened through two weeks after we posted a greater safety packet and pre‑empted the implementation price with a complete check calculator. Nothing in that work turned into magical. ChatGPT did the sorting and the primary draft. Humans confirmed, filled gaps, and carried the message into real conversations.
When not to apply ChatGPT, or not alone
There are obstacles. Regulatory nuance most commonly calls for a lawyer or a compliance analyst. Technical claims approximately cryptography or safeguard may still be vetted by using practitioners. Market proportion numbers drawn only from a mannequin invite ridicule. If your selection hinges on a parent you can be embarrassed to look after in a board assembly, go get the dataset.
Speed is a double‑edged sword. A quickly wrong answer can set a team down a highly-priced direction. Resist the urge to deliver a neat memo that has now not been checked. Put a label on sections that rely on inference. Ask a peer to attempt to interrupt your claims.
Building a repeatable loop
Competitive research isn't a one‑off undertaking. It is a method that learns. You can use ChatGPT to hold the loop tight for those who set a cadence and put into effect a layout.
- Weekly: compile new intel, ask the adaptation to summarize changes on the grounds that final week, and flag claims that moved self assurance bands. Monthly: refresh battlecards, exchange or retire claims with susceptible evidence, and upload a exchange go surfing suitable. Quarterly: revisit your differentiation and pricing assumptions, run a state of affairs refresh, and investigate whether your win‑loss distribution shifted.
A light governance layer is going a long means. I even have visible a two‑page operating doc preserve a go‑purposeful workforce aligned for a 12 months. It outlined inputs, outputs, vendors, and a calendar. The variation sat within the center, no longer as a sage, however as a quick secretary with a pretty good memory and a skillability for phraseology.
Common pitfalls and how to stay away from them
The most typical failure modes are predictable. People ask for monstrous outputs, get ordinary solutions, and conclude the software is ineffective. Or they be given achieveable claims with no checking. Or they permit the adaptation convert uncertainty into fake precision.
You can steer round the ones traps by narrowing scope, requiring facts, and writing down assumptions. When a claim matters, take a look at it. Ask the version to argue in opposition t itself. The best sessions really feel like a debate in which the brand tries to speak you out of a lazy end. That addiction by myself increases the surface of your research.
Bringing all of it together
Using ChatGPT for aggressive analysis isn't about automating judgment. It is ready reallocating it slow. Spend fewer hours assembling and formatting. Spend extra hours conversing to consumers, reviewing actual demos, and placing traps for rivals. The style speeds the materials that may want to be quickly and makes your questioning obvious sooner. When you spot your thinking at the page, you could fix it.
The subject is still similar to until now: define the hassle sharply, collect honest information, write truly, and take a look at your claims. With these habits, ChatGPT turns into the analyst who not ever will get bored with analyzing an extra PDF, the editor who cuts the fluff, and the colleague who asks the aggravating, practical question at just the exact moment.