When Customer-First Fails, Use A Competitor Research Power-Up

Product Managers: Customer Or User Insights Are Not Everything

Product management best practices—like those from Marty Cagan or Amazon’s leadership principles—often say you shouldn’t follow your competitors. Instead, you should obsess over your customer’s needs.

But I’ve realized this advice isn’t entirely true.

I spent 10 minutes writing this. You need 1 minute to read this

Stealth competitive analysis, represented by Skunks manning an Intelligence command center.

Related:

• Competitive Research Using AI (Without The Hallucinations) For PMs 

Customer-centricity

Customer Obsession. - Amazon

Wearing the customer’s shoes. - Twilio 

What they really mean is: prioritize your customers more than your competitors. But that doesn’t mean ignore competitors completely.

My Missteps

I once shared 2 user challenges with my colleagues, supported by stories directly from customers. But I failed to persuade them. I had inputs from very few users. Although I could show a clear benefit to them, I could not back my claims with broader relevance.

Another time, I launched a product whose user experience (UX) confused customers. Why? Competitors had trained them to expect a different workflow.

I thought I was being customer-centric by ignoring competitors. Instead, I weakened both my arguments and the features we delivered.

Why You Should Look at Competitors

Studying competitors helps you understand how other products already meet your customers’ needs. It’s another lens for understanding your users.

When To Look At Competitors

If you have only a few customers, that’s the best time to study competitors. It helps you benchmark your product and anticipate customer expectations.

There’s also a selfish reason to do competitive analysis as a product manager: it helps you earn more respect inside the company. Engineers, sales, and others take you more seriously when you say, “Our competitor already built this,” not just, “One customer asked for it.”

The competitor is a reputable business with real money invested in the same idea. Their marketing content will often explain the user needs and solution better than your internal product requirements documents (PRDs).

Rethinking My Philosophy And Making It Actionable

I used to think teams worrying about competitors is corporate hubris, but I stand corrected.

I’ve seen many successful startups and enterprises spend time in competitive benchmarking. They stay up to date with what others are doing.

So, through my trails, I built a 6-step framework to use AI while sidestepping hallucination for fast, accurate competitive research.