A score only gains value when there is a source behind it: a job posting, a pricing page, a customer review, a contract term. Without that source, a score is simply an opinion in a table, and you cannot steer an organization based on that.
In practice, a competitive score often originates in a management meeting. Someone says "they are stronger on service," another nods, and it ends up in the strategic plan. At a company of 150 employees in installation engineering, this happened exactly: the competitor was labeled a "price fighter" for years, until a new sales director looked into lost deals and noticed that the competitor was in fact more expensive, but delivered faster. The assumption about price turned out to be masking an assumption about delivery time. That is the problem with scores without a source: they survive because nobody tests them, not because they are correct.
An evidence matrix links every score to a concrete source. Not "competitor X scores a 7 on customer service," but "competitor X mentions 24/7 support on the website, confirmed by three reviews that cite response times under an hour." That difference may seem administrative, but it is substantive: a score with a source is contestable, verifiable, and therefore usable. A score without a source is a statement you can only believe or ignore. Which dimensions you include in that matrix depends on what actually decides a deal in your market, and you can read about that in the overview of which dimensions determine whether you win in a market.
The evidence usually is not found in a competitive analysis report, but in the everyday traces a company leaves behind. Job postings show where a competitor is currently investing or where a shortage exists; a vacancy for three implementation consultants says something different from a vacancy for a marketer. How to read that is explained in what can you deduce from a competitor's job postings. Pricing pages, terms and conditions, case studies on the website, employees' job titles on LinkedIn: these are all public sources that, if collected systematically, substantiate a score without requiring an assumption.
A common mistake is that a company rates its own score as high as the competitor's on dimensions the company itself is proud of, without checking whether that dimension actually makes a difference in the market. A software company of 80 employees named "customization" as its core distinguishing factor, until it turned out that four out of five competitors used the exact same term in their own marketing. Distinctiveness that is not unique is not distinctiveness; how to determine that is described in how do you test whether your distinctiveness actually exists. Without that test, you rate yourself highly on something the market does not perceive as a difference.
An evidence matrix is a photograph, not a film. Job postings disappear, prices change, new players enter the market. At a wholesaler of 200 employees, a two-year-old competitive analysis still formed the basis for commercial argumentation on the floor, while the competitor had by then adopted an entirely different revenue model. How often recalibration is needed depends on the speed at which your market changes, and that is explained in how often should you repeat a competitive analysis.
If you want to know on which dimension you are currently losing the most ground against the competition, the free loss-on-price check offers an initial direction: eight questions that indicate which dimension is leaking, without requiring extensive research. That is a starting point, not an end point.
A score with a source shows where the gap is; closing that gap is execution work involving processes, people, and systems, and that takes time and capacity that is not filled in the same way everywhere. What it actually costs to close that gap, and which part of it can be absorbed by AI, is mapped out by the work scan at ftetoai.com.
Vraag maar waarop er in uw markt gewonnen wordt. Ik vergelijk liever dan dat ik uitleg.
Answers come from this site’s knowledge base. Not tailored advice, and not a scan of your company.