--- name: competitor-teardown description: "Use this skill when you need to understand a competitor well enough to beat them: a deal is going head to head, a new competitor appeared, positioning needs a refresh, or reps keep losing on the same objection. Tears down the competitor's positioning, ideal customer, pricing and packaging, product strengths and gaps, customer complaints, sales motion and recent moves, and produces a teardown with where to compete, where to avoid, and the talk track that wins. Built from public sources and your own win-loss notes." license: MIT metadata: title: Competitor teardown category: research tags: "Marketing, Sales Leaders, Founders, Sales" author: prosyo version: "1.0.0" keywords: "competitor analysis template, competitive teardown, competitor research b2b, claude competitor analysis skill, competitive intelligence" inputs: "Competitor name or site, Your product and pricing, Win-loss notes" outputs: "Competitor teardown, Where to compete and avoid, Win themes, Talk track" --- Use this when a competitor shows up in deals often enough to matter. It produces a teardown that tells sales where to fight, where to walk away and what to say. ## Inputs - Competitor name and site. - Your own positioning, product scope and pricing. - Win-loss notes or rep anecdotes involving this competitor. Even five are useful. ## The play ### 1. Read their story Homepage headline, category they claim, the customer logos they lead with, the use cases on their navigation. Write their positioning in one sentence as they would: "For , is the that ." ### 2. Map pricing and packaging Plans, price points, what is gated to higher tiers, contract terms, free trial or not. Packaging choices reveal who they want and who they tolerate. ### 3. Mine customer complaints Read reviews (lowest ratings first), community threads and public support forums. Cluster complaints into themes and count them. Recurring themes with 5+ mentions are real weaknesses; single rants are not. ### 4. Map their sales motion Self-serve or sales-led, demo gating, typical discount behaviour, implementation time, who they target in the buying committee. ### 5. Read recent moves Launches, pricing changes, leadership hires, funding, layoffs from the last 12 months. Direction of travel matters more than today's feature list. ### 6. Decide where to compete Use the matrix in [references/teardown-template.md](references/teardown-template.md): segments where you win, where you tie and where you lose. Losing segments are as valuable as winning ones; they tell reps when to qualify out early. ## Output format ``` Competitor: | Their positioning: Who they win: Who they struggle with: Pricing:

Packaging traps: Strengths (be honest): <3> Weaknesses (evidence): <3, with count of mentions and source> Recent moves: Where we compete: Where we avoid: Talk track: <3 lines a rep can say, no trash talk> Landmines: ``` ## What good looks like - Honest strengths. A teardown that says the competitor is bad at everything gets ignored by reps who just lost to them. - Weaknesses come with evidence and counts. - Landmine questions are neutral and fair: "How long did implementation take for teams your size?" not "Did you know they're terrible at onboarding?" - It answers when to walk away. The best teams lose fewer deals by qualifying out of the wrong ones faster. ## Rules - MUST use public sources or your own deal notes, and cite them. - MUST date pricing; pricing pages change often. - NEVER disparage the competitor in rep-facing copy. - NEVER use confidential material obtained from a competitor's employees or customers under NDA. ## Example prompts - "Do a teardown of Northbeam versus us. We lose to them in mid-market." - "A new competitor just launched. Tear them down from their site and reviews." - "Turn these 14 loss notes against Acme into a teardown and talk track." --- # Teardown template ## Compete matrix Score each segment from your deal data: win rate against this competitor, and number of deals. | Segment | Deals | Win rate vs them | Verdict | Why | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | SMB, self-serve | 22 | 25% | Avoid or qualify hard | Their free tier and instant setup | | Mid-market, multi-team | 31 | 58% | Compete | Our admin controls and reporting | | Enterprise, regulated | 6 | 50% | Compete with proof | Small sample; lead with security pack | Verdict rules: under 35% win rate on 10+ deals is **avoid**; 35-50% is **compete with a specific play**; over 50% is **compete**. Under 10 deals is **unknown**, so test before deciding. ## Complaint clustering | Theme | Mentions | Example (paraphrased) | Source type | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Slow support | 14 | "Tickets sit for a week" | Reviews | | Price increase at renewal | 9 | "Renewal went up 40%" | Community threads | | Hard to report on | 7 | "We export everything to spreadsheets" | Reviews | Only themes with 5+ mentions go into the teardown as weaknesses. ## Talk track rules - Acknowledge, then differentiate: "They are a good fit for teams that want X. Teams that need Y tend to pick us because..." - Use customer words, not adjectives. - One proof point per claim: a customer story, a number, a demo moment. ## Landmine question bank - "How long did the last team your size take to go live?" - "What happens to the price at renewal once you add seats?" - "How do you report on today?" - "Who on your team owns the tool day to day, and how many hours a week does it take?" Each question should be fair to ask even if the answer favours the competitor.