Competitive intelligence questions are the specific things you ask about a rival’s pricing, positioning, marketing, and customer sentiment before drawing any conclusions about how to compete.
Without a clear set of questions, competitor research tends to turn into scrolling through a rival’s homepage and hoping something useful sticks. Most teams either skip this step entirely or ask questions that are too broad to act on.
This article breaks down 36 competitive intelligence questions organized by category, along with how to evaluate a competitor’s digital presence, avoid common research mistakes, and turn the answers into a real plan.
What are competitive intelligence questions?
Competitive intelligence questions are structured prompts used to gather and evaluate information about a competitor’s strategy, product, pricing, and customer perception. Each question points to a specific decision, such as whether to adjust pricing or rewrite a landing page.
Competitive intelligence questions get confused with a few related terms:
- Competitor analysis questions usually focus on a single rival at a time and feed into a side-by-side comparison document.
- A competitive intelligence questionnaire is the same set of questions turned into a repeatable template that a team fills out for every new competitor.
- Market research is broader. It studies buyer behavior and industry trends, while competitive intelligence narrows in on named rivals.
All three overlap in practice. A solid competitive intelligence strategy usually borrows structure from market research and applies it to a shorter, more specific list of competitors.
Why asking the right questions matters before you research a rival
Skipping straight to a competitor’s website without a plan wastes time. You end up with impressions instead of evidence, and impressions do not hold up when a sales rep needs a specific answer for a prospect who is comparing two vendors.
A clear question list forces a decision before the research starts. Instead of asking what a rival is doing in general, a sharper question asks what their entry-level plan leaves out that yours includes, which points directly to an action.
This matters most for two groups. Product and marketing teams use the answers to sharpen positioning, while sales teams use them to build sales battlecards, short reference documents reps use during live deals to answer competitor objections. Neither works well without specific, pre-planned questions.
36 Competitive intelligence questions grouped by category
Competitor research covers more ground than pricing and features alone. The categories below group 36 competitive intelligence questions by the part of the business they inform, so you can pull just the section relevant to your current decision.
Positioning and value proposition questions
- How does the competitor describe its value proposition on its homepage?
- What primary customer pain point does their messaging target?
- Which industries or company sizes do they claim to serve best?
- What claims do they make that your product cannot yet back up?
- How has their positioning shifted in the last 12 months?
- What do they avoid saying about their own product?
Pricing and packaging questions
- How is their pricing structured: per seat, per response, tiered, or custom quote?
- What is included in their entry-level plan compared to yours?
- Do they publish pricing publicly, or is it “contact sales” only?
- What discounts or promotions do they run, and when do they run them?
- How do their overage or add-on fees compare to yours?
- What do buyers say about the value they get for the price they pay?
Website and digital experience questions
- Is the site written in second person, speaking to customer pain points, or in first person, describing the company?
- Can a visitor explain what the product does within five seconds of landing on the homepage?
- How many clicks does it take to request a demo or start a trial?
- Is the site fast and usable on a mobile device?
- Where do calls to action appear, and how prominent are they?
- Are they building an email list, and what do they offer in exchange for an address?
Content and marketing questions
- What topics dominate their blog, and how often do they publish?
- Which keywords are they ranking for that you are not?
- What gated content, such as ebooks or webinars, do they use to generate leads?
- How active are they on each social platform, and how do they respond to comments?
- What paid channels are they investing in, such as search ads or sponsorships?
- What case studies do they feature, and from which industries?
Customer sentiment and review questions
- What do verified reviews on sites like G2, Capterra, or Trustpilot say about the product?
- What is their average star rating, and how has it trended over the past year?
- What specific features do reviewers praise most often?
- What complaints or recurring issues show up in negative reviews?
- How quickly and publicly do they respond to negative feedback?
- What do former customers say about why they switched away?
- What client logos or names do they feature most prominently?
- What certifications, security badges, or compliance claims do they display?
- How does their sales team respond to objections about your product specifically?
- What onboarding or support experience do new customers describe in reviews?
- What partnerships or integrations do they promote?
- How long does their sales cycle appear to run, based on public case studies?
How do you evaluate a competitor’s digital experience?
A competitor’s website reveals more about their strategy than most other public sources. The table below turns that first look into a quick, repeatable scorecard.
| Signal | What to check | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Homepage messaging | Second-person, customer-focused language versus first-person, company-focused language | Shows whether they lead with the customer’s problem or their own story |
| Above-the-fold clarity | Whether a stranger can explain the product after five seconds | A confusing homepage usually means a confused buyer |
| Primary call to action | Number of clicks to reach a demo, trial, or quote | Reveals how hard they work to convert visitors |
| Page speed and mobile experience | Load time and usability on a phone | Slow, clunky sites lose visitors before the pitch lands |
| Trust signals | Client logos, review badges, and security seals | Builds credibility, especially with enterprise buyers |
Run this scorecard against two or three direct competitors, and patterns start to appear. If every rival leads with a specific customer segment or pain point that your own site ignores, that is a positioning gap worth addressing.
How to research a competitor’s online reputation
Reviews are one of the most overlooked sources of competitive intelligence. Research from G2 found that 80% of B2B buyers use customer testimonials early in their buying process, which means a rival’s review profile shapes deals long before your sales team gets involved.
Start with the review platforms buyers actually use. Search for the competitor’s name alongside the word “review” on Google, then check dedicated sites like G2, Capterra, or Trustpilot for a fuller picture. Filter for reviews from the last six months, since older feedback may no longer reflect the current product.
A few things are worth tracking closely:
- Recurring complaints that show up across multiple reviewers
- Features that reviewers consistently call out as strong
- How the competitor’s team responds publicly to criticism
Set up a Google Alert for each major competitor’s name so new mentions surface automatically instead of requiring a manual search every week.
A real-world example of competitive intelligence questions in action
A mid-market HR software team noticed deals stalling against one specific competitor. Instead of guessing why, they pulled reviews, pricing pages, and win-loss interview notes, records of why specific deals were won or lost, and ran them through the pricing and sentiment questions above.
The answers showed the competitor’s entry plan looked cheaper on paper but capped a feature the HR team’s own customers relied on heavily. Reviewers also flagged slow onboarding as a recurring complaint.
The team rewrote their pricing page to call out that feature explicitly and added onboarding speed as a talking point in their sales battlecard. Reps reported fewer stalled deals tied to that specific rival within the following quarter, based on internal win-loss tracking.
Common mistakes to avoid when gathering competitive intelligence
Even a solid question list can produce weak results if the process around it breaks down. Watch for these patterns.
- Copying a competitor’s feature without understanding why customers actually want it
- Treating research as a one-time project instead of a recurring habit
- Tracking only direct competitors and missing indirect ones solving the same problem differently
- Asking broad questions with no clear owner or next action attached
- Letting research sit in a shared document that nobody actually reads
- Focusing only on losses without benchmarking the deals you win
Most of these come down to ownership. One person or team should be responsible for collecting answers and pushing them to the people who can act on them.
How do you measure the impact of your competitive intelligence process?
Competitive intelligence only earns its place on the calendar if it changes outcomes. A few metrics show whether the process is working.
| Metric | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Win rate against named competitors | Whether new intelligence is translating into closed deals |
| Time to update sales battlecards after a competitor change | How responsive the process is to real market shifts |
| Sales team usage of competitive intelligence resources | Whether the answers actually reach the people who need them |
| Customer perception score compared to rivals | How your brand’s experience compares in the market, not just in claims |
A running Net Promoter Score benchmark, a loyalty metric based on how likely customers are to recommend you, tracked against named rivals turns that last row from a one-time impression into a trend line you can defend in a planning meeting.
Gartner’s 2023 Tech Marketer Role Survey found that most respondents needed to address competitive and market intelligence challenges within the following year, which suggests plenty of companies still have room to formalize how they track this work. You can review the summary on Gartner’s research site.
How QuestionPro supports a competitive intelligence practice
Website copy and public reviews only tell part of the story. The other part comes from your own customers and prospects, who can describe how you actually compare to a rival in their own words.
- Survey your target market with QuestionPro Audience to hear how real buyers weigh you against competitors, not just what a competitor’s website claims.
- Centralize pricing notes, review findings, and perception data in QuestionPro Market Research Software instead of leaving them scattered across documents.
- Track sentiment shifts over time instead of relying on a single snapshot taken right before a big decision.
None of this replaces the manual research above. It adds a source competitors cannot see or influence: what your own market actually thinks.
Checking the competition is part of the job, not the whole job
Competitive intelligence works a lot like checking the forecast before leaving the house. It will not change your destination, but it helps you prepare for what is coming.
Ask these questions on a regular cadence, assign someone to act on the answers, and keep the process proportionate to the decision in front of you. A quarterly check-in on your top three rivals will do more for your strategy than an occasional scroll through their social media.
For a broader framework beyond questions alone, QuestionPro’s step-by-step guide to competitive analysis and list of competitive information sources cover the research methods that pair well with this question list.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Most teams review pricing and positioning questions quarterly and revisit the full list after a major product launch or funding announcement from a competitor. Fast-moving markets, such as SaaS, often warrant a monthly pricing check instead.
In a small business, this usually falls to whoever owns marketing or sales, since they use the findings most directly. The key is naming one owner so answers get collected consistently instead of living in different people’s notes.
Yes. A shared document, a Google Alert for each competitor’s name, and manual review checks on sites like G2 or Trustpilot cover most of the questions above. Paid tools mainly add automation and alerting once the number of tracked competitors grows.
Two to four direct competitors is manageable for most teams to track in depth. Beyond that, a lighter quarterly scan works better than running the full question list against every possible rival.
Signing up with a real email address to explore public trial features is standard practice and widely considered fair. Misrepresenting your identity to access sales calls or gated pricing meant for genuine prospects crosses into deceptive territory and should be avoided.
