Which route does your competitor take to reach the customer?
As much as what a product is, where and how it reaches the customer is a determinant of competition. The difference between two products of the same quality and the same price is often created by the channel: the density of the competitor’s dealer network,
its store locations, its e-commerce presence, its visibility on marketplaces, the coverage of its corporate sales team, its distributor and wholesaler relationships, and the terms it grants to these channels. Knowing your competitor’s sales channels
means seeing where your own channel strategy is strong and where it is exposed.
In most companies, channel information is known in pieces but never sits anywhere as a whole. A regional manager knows which dealers the competitor works with in that province; the e-commerce team tracks on which marketplaces and at what price the competitor is listed;
purchasing hears about the competitor’s distribution agreements from shared suppliers. When these pieces do not come together, the decision to open a new dealership, enter a region, or invest in a channel is made without knowing the competitor’s real position.
The difference between entering a channel the competitor already dominates and capturing a channel the competitor has left empty is, more often than not, whether this information exists.
In Minerva, competitors’ sales channels are defined in connection with the competitor company record and use the same classification as your own channel structure: geographic region, channel type, dealer and distributor, store, e-commerce, and marketplace.
In which region, through which channel, with which dealer or distributor, and under which commercial terms the competitor operates is recorded; observations from the field update these records. In this way, your own dealer network and the competitor’s network can be compared
by region, market share and lost sales analysis can be carried out by channel, and channel investment decisions can be planned according to the competitor’s gaps and concentrations.
Lay the competitor’s channel map over your own; see where you are competing and where you are alone.