Knowing how to gather competitor intelligence statistics provides you with information vital for good business and marketing decisions.

You start by answering two important questions:

Who Are Your Major Competitors?

What Competitors’ Intelligence Statistics Influence Your Business Success?

Who Are Your Major Competitors?

Your first tip is to identify all your competitors. Until you know who they are, you don’t know which businesses to gather competitor intelligence statistics on.

So you have to know which businesses are your competitors. Your competitors usually include more businesses than you think.

Now don’t answer this question quickly. Give it some serious thought and research before you begin gathering competitor intelligence statistics.

Too many business owners think that only products, stores, or service providers just like theirs are competitors, but that just isn’t the case.

If you are a carpenter making cabinets, your competitors are more than just other carpenters. Any business that makes storage units of all kinds are your competitors.

Once you’ve completed identifying the businesses that comprise your competitors, it’s time to start accumulating competitor intelligence statistics on them:

Get a list of each competitor’s officers.

Determine each competitor’s perception in the market,

Note the major product for each competitor,

Uncover how that product contributes to each competitor’s total sales.

Determine which competitors are incorporated and sell shares,

Determine how many shares, that public corporation competitors still own,

Provide each public competitor’s recent share price,

Know how much cash each competitor has on hand.

Reveal each competitor’s venture backing,

Discover the primary investors for each competitor,

Locate sales information over the past two years for each competitor,

Detemine what percent growth this meant for each competitor, and

Locate each competitor’s primary sales channel.

When you have gathered these competitor intelligence statistics and information, you will have a good understanding of your major competitors.

How Do You Determine Your Competitors’ Intelligence Statistics?

Once you’ve determined your real competitors, you’re ready to start accumulating even more detailed competitor intelligence statistics.

This competitor intelligence statistics includes:

How each competitor prices competing products or services,

The quality of each competitors product or service,

How well each competitor serves its customers,

The full range of products that each competitor sells,

How each competitor distributes products,

The market share captured by each competitor,

How much profit each competitor makes,

Plus additional statistics that help you to understand how you measure up to your competitors.

To easily visualize the results of all your research, list each competitor and rank each by every statistic with:

1 for an extremely weak competitor, to

ten points for each that a competitor does well.

Using this approach to competitor intelligence statistics, you will make more informed business decisions and make your products and services more competitive. So waste no time in gathering your own competitor intelligence statistics.