What ways do you gather competitive intelligence that are ethical and fair?

There's nothing that says gathering intel in standard ways isn't ethical or fair. There are definitely some tactics that might straddle the line and a few that go way over the line that should obviously be avoided. I would rely on approaches that are very common, ethical, and effective: Win/loss interviews Seller interviews Analyst inquiries Analyst category/industry analyses Investor resources Using competitor products (if possible) Competitor websites Competitor community forums Industry commu ...Read More

The key rule of thumb is to always be truthful. Don't lie about who you work for, your role with the company, and what you are looking for. For example: When filling out an online web form to download content from a competitor's website, use your real name and business email address. When approaching a competitor's booth at a trade show, disclose who you are and who you work for. Don't ask anyone else to misrepresent their intentions so that you can get eyes on a competitor's product or get insi ...Read More

There are plenty of ways to do this! Competitor published info: Websites, press releases, annual reports (for public companies), whitepapers, blog posts, and social media profiles are all fair game and can tell you a lot about a competitor's product offerings, features & functionality, support models, target market, and overall strategy. Industry reports: Analyst reports, review sites, Glassdoor, etc. are all great as well. Events and trade shows: Observe competitor booths and attend their p ...Read More

As mentioned in some of my other responses, there are lots of places to gather competitive intelligence that are ethical and fair. Some key ways include: Competitor websites (pricing pages, online demos, self-guided tours, other content, etc) Competitor webinars Competitor social posts Peer review places like G2, TrustRadius etc. Forums like Reddit, Quora, and other industry specific community sites (Pavilion for sales and marketing for example) - read existing responses but don't pretend to pos ...Read More

Interesting question... SO many ways. Win/loss interviews Sales call analyses and sales feedback Just plainly asking your customers (trust me, they're constantly getting bombarded by your competitors) Analyst inquiries and reports Review sites Social media. Reddit and X - gold mines! Alerts and AI tools that track competitor websites, job postings, blogs - all fair game! Competitor websites, their partner pages, documentation Competitor launch events and webinars (yep, we all know when a competi ...Read More

I never thought of checking competitions as immoral or "scammy". I would go and say that I do like to play detective and spy on the best competitors but that's simply called gathering intel.  If I'm being a little bit philosophical here, that's what you do in life as well as in business. You go out and search for success factors that resulted in a positive outcome in someone's life. If you do that on 4-5 individuals you will come up with overlapping patterns and factors that you can (up to a cer ...Read More

I've gathered competitive intelligence in a few ways: 1) Voice of Customer interviews (either conducted by myself or a 3rd party) 2) Market analyst reports 3) 3rd party-conducted interviews of ex-employees of the competitor  4) Review sites such as G2 or Gartner Peer Insights  5) The competitor's website  6) My own internal teams (ie, salespeople) 7) Competitive intelligence tools such as Klue or Crayon Regarding interviews related to competitive intelligence, I've found that it's always best to ...Read More