Sometimes I get bored reading business or product books. I like to take few months to focus on reading fiction, history and philosophy. Recently I’ve read Foundation from Isaac Asimov. Really fun and provocative book. Worth reading.
You’re a product leader. A C-Level comes to you showing the great feature X that competitor Y has launched. Apparently it is a great success and he thinks this will work for your product too. He wants to launch it soon and asks you and your team what’s the effort to do feature X.
What should you do? Should feature X become a priority? Should you always keep track to what competitors do so you don’t fall behind?
This has always been a tricky question for me. On one side I think it is important to look at what competitors are doing because that gives you insights on how you can solve your own problems. However, being a copy-cat does not add much value to customers in time. You may end up with a similar product offering that your competitors have.
There are several layers to answer the executive in the case above. And, as you may guess, no right answer.
In the remaining of this article I will point out what I normally consider when dealing with questions about competition. If you have anything else please let me know!
Recognize your competitors strengths
If you see a company as a relevant competitor, I’m sure they have a capable team solving problems for the customer. Recognize areas in which your competition is strong and keep a look on what they are doing there.
Remember that your competitors probably face problems similar than yours, and their solution might better than yours. Be humble that they might have had an insight you didn’t have. If so, reconsider your priorities. Maybe testing their solution is the quickest way to obtain better results.
Also remember that they might also be copying you, therefore a feature set should not be the only differentiator between you. That difference will probably disappear in time. That gets us to the next point.
Be clear on what differentiates you from the rest
In This is Marketing, Seth Godin advocates that any company should choose to be the best option in a subset of the market that works for them.
After you pick an attribute with two extremes for the X-axis, find a different attribute and use it for the Y-axis. Plot the options your customer has on this chart. Now you have a map of how the alternatives stack up.
(…) The alternative is to build your own quadrant. To find two axes that have been overlooked.
If you don’t pick your quadrant, you risk becoming a commodity, racing to the bottom while competing in a single axis that is obvious (like price).
Therefore, be thoughtful about how your product evolves to satisfy your customers. Although you may view company Y as your direct competitor, customers may use you and Y for slightly different use cases.
That means you need to deeply understand what makes you different and look at the competition with your own knowledge of your customers. You vision of how things work is probably different from the competition, that’s what make each unique in some sense.
Be consistent with your product vision and objectives
Your product development needs intent. Marty Cagan advocates that intent has two components:
The Product Vision: this describes the holistic view of what the organization as a whole is trying to accomplish.
The Business Objectives: this describes the specific, prioritized business objectives for each product team.
If you know your intention it becomes easier to judge whether a feature launched by your competitor is worth considering. If don’t have those ingredients, I would say that copying the competition will do no good - you’d better know where you want to get.
Be careful about big threats
Although rare, sometimes a new launch from a competitor poses a big threat to the business. It might even change your priorities upside-down. A product team must be aware of changes in the market.
For example: suppose you sell a software for scanning documents in a computer, integrated with (expensive) scanning machines from several brands. One of your competitors launch an app to scan documents using the phone camera. The quality is not as good as yours, so you don’t mind and keep betting on having the best computer software ever made. You might guess the result: everyone has a phone; in time the quality of scanning docs with the app gets better and you are out (or restrained to a small market).
Therefore, you need to be aware of those structural changes and be humble to recognize they might have something that can threat your position. If that is the case, reconsider your priorities or you might stay with a great but obsolete product.
The executive team usually knows something you don’t
The last layer I want to add when considering your position to answer the question “Should feature X become a priority?” is recognizing the C-level (or any high level executive) may know something you don’t.
You are probably the person that knows most about the customer needs and about the product evolution. But it is often true that the executive team have information you don’t, especially about the competition and the market.
Therefore, use the idea to build feature X to extract as much information as possible to support your decision. Ask for data. Show why, in your point of view, doing feature X is not a great idea and be open for arguments against your position.
This healthy relationship with the executive team (or any sort of leadership) is probably the key ingredient here. Hard questions are better answered with multiple people thinking about them. Include as many point of views as possible, but don’t let it stuck you. You’ll never have full information or the buy-in of everyone. At some point make the best decision you can, align expectations and go with it. Be honest that it’s way easier to go with it when you have the buy-in of the leadership. But don’t do it simply to please them. Remember that you will be hold accountable for what you’ve built.