competitive-brief

What this skill does

# Competitive Brief

> If you see unfamiliar placeholders or need to check which tools are connected, see [CONNECTORS.md](../../CONNECTORS.md).

Create a competitive analysis brief for one or more competitors or a feature area.

## Usage

```
/product-management:competitive-brief $ARGUMENTS
```

## Workflow

### 1. Scope the Analysis

Ask the user:
- **Competitor(s)**: Which specific competitor(s) to analyze? Or a feature area to compare across competitors?
- **Focus**: Full product comparison, specific feature area, pricing/packaging, go-to-market, or positioning?
- **Context**: What decision will this inform? (product strategy, sales enablement, investor/board materials, feature prioritization)

### 2. Research

**Via web search**:
- Product pages and feature lists
- Pricing pages and packaging
- Recent product launches, blog posts, and changelogs
- Press coverage and analyst reports
- Customer reviews and ratings (G2, Capterra, TrustRadius)
- Job postings (signal of strategic direction)
- Social media and community discussions

If **~~knowledge base** is connected:
- Search for existing competitive analysis documents
- Find win/loss reports or sales battle cards
- Pull prior competitive research

If **~~chat** is connected:
- Search for competitive mentions in sales or product channels
- Find recent deal feedback involving competitors

### 3. Generate the Brief

#### Competitor Overview
For each competitor:
- Company summary: founding, size, funding/revenue if public, target market
- Product positioning: how they describe themselves, who they target
- Recent momentum: launches, funding, partnerships, customer wins

#### Feature Comparison
Compare capabilities across key areas relevant to the analysis. See the **competitive-analysis** skill for rating frameworks and comparison matrix templates.

#### Positioning Analysis
Analyze how each competitor positions themselves — target customer, category claim, key differentiator, and value proposition. See the **competitive-analysis** skill for positioning analysis frameworks.

#### Strengths and Weaknesses
For each competitor:
- **Strengths**: Where they genuinely excel. What customers praise.
- **Weaknesses**: Where they fall short. What customers complain about.
- Be honest and evidence-based — do not dismiss competitors or inflate their weaknesses.

#### Opportunities
Based on the analysis:
- Where are there gaps in competitor offerings we could exploit?
- What are customers asking for that no one provides well?
- Where are competitors making bets we disagree with?
- What market shifts could advantage our approach?

#### Threats
- Where are competitors investing heavily?
- What competitive moves could disrupt our position?
- Where are we most vulnerable?
- What would a "nightmare scenario" competitive move look like?

#### Strategic Implications
Tie the analysis back to product strategy:
- What should we build, accelerate, or deprioritize based on this analysis?
- Where should we differentiate vs. achieve parity?
- How should we adjust positioning or messaging?
- What should we monitor going forward?

### 4. Follow Up

After generating the brief:
- Ask if the user wants to dive deeper on any section
- Offer to create a one-page summary for executives
- Offer to create sales battle cards for competitive deals
- Offer to draft a "how to win against [competitor]" guide
- Offer to set up a monitoring plan for competitive moves

## Output Format

Use tables for feature comparisons. Use clear headers for each section. Keep the strategic implications section concise and actionable — this is where the value is for the reader.

## Tips

- Be honest about competitor strengths. Dismissing competitors makes the analysis useless.
- Focus on what matters to customers, not what matters to product teams. Customers do not care about architecture elegance.
- Pricing is hard to compare fairly. Note the caveats (different packaging, usage-based vs seat-based, enterprise custom pricing).
- Job postings are underrated competitive intelligence. A competitor hiring ML engineers signals a strategic direction.
- Customer reviews are gold. They reveal what real users love and hate, unfiltered by marketing.
- The most valuable part of competitive analysis is the "so what" — the strategic implications. Do not skip this.
- Competitive analysis has a shelf life. Note the date and flag areas that change quickly.