Competitive Intelligence on Autopilot: Tracking What Your Competitors' Customers Say

🟡 Series Difficulty: MEDIUM (Part 5 of 10) — Builds on research skills from Part 2 and outreach techniques from Part 3.

Every SDR has had this experience: you're on a call with a promising prospect, and they drop the bomb — "We're actually already using [Competitor]. We're pretty happy with them."

And you freeze. Because you don't really know what [Competitor]'s customers love, what they hate, or why they might consider switching. You mumble something about being "different" and the call goes nowhere.

Now imagine a different scenario. The prospect says the same thing, and you respond:

"Makes sense — [Competitor] does some good things, especially with [specific feature]. What I hear from a lot of teams who've been on it for 12+ months is that [specific pain point from G2 reviews] starts to become a real issue as they scale. Have you run into that?"

The prospect pauses. "Actually... yeah. That's been a headache."

That's competitive intelligence in action. And in Part 5 of our Claude Code + MarketBetter series, we'll show you how to build a competitive intel system that runs on autopilot — so you always know exactly what your competitors' customers are saying.

By now, you're comfortable with the basics. In Part 2, you learned to research individual prospects. In Part 3, you turned that research into personalized emails. Here, we're applying those same research skills to a different target: your competitors and their customers. The prompting patterns are similar — you're just asking Claude Code different questions.

Why SDRs Need Competitive Intelligence

Most SDRs think competitive intel is the sales manager's job. Or product marketing's. And sure, those teams should build battlecards and positioning docs. But here's the reality:

1. Those battlecards are usually 6 months out of date — The competitive landscape moves fast. What was true last quarter isn't necessarily true today.

2. Generic battlecards don't help with specific objections — When a prospect mentions a specific competitor feature or complaint, you need specific answers. Not bullet points.

3. The best competitive intel comes from customers, not marketers — Reviews on G2, Reddit comments, LinkedIn posts, and Twitter/X threads from actual users tell you what the sales deck never will.

4. Competitive intel is a prospecting goldmine — If you know that [Competitor]'s customers are complaining about [specific issue], you can proactively target those customers with messaging that addresses that exact pain.

Claude Code turns competitive monitoring from a "nice to have" into an automated part of your daily workflow.

Building Your Competitive Intelligence System

Step 1: Map Your Competitive Landscape

Start by telling Claude Code who you're watching:

"I sell [your product] in the [your category] space. My main competitors are:

1. [Competitor A] — [brief description]
2. [Competitor B] — [brief description]
3. [Competitor C] — [brief description]

For each competitor, give me:

1. A summary of their current positioning and key differentiators
2. Their ideal customer profile (based on their website and case studies)
3. Where their customers are most likely to leave reviews or discuss the product (G2, Capterra, Reddit, etc.)
4. Known weaknesses based on public reviews and discussions
5. Recent product changes or announcements that affect our competitive positioning"

This gives you your baseline. Save this output — you'll reference it regularly.

Step 2: Review Mining

Online reviews are the most honest source of competitive intelligence. Customers don't pull punches on G2 or Capterra.

The G2 Review Analysis Prompt:

"Analyze the most recent G2 reviews for [Competitor]. I need:

1. Top 5 things customers love — What keeps them on the platform?
2. Top 5 complaints or pain points — What frustrates them most?
3. Common switching triggers — What would make them consider alternatives?
4. Feature gaps mentioned — What do customers wish the product did?
5. Customer profiles — What type of company (size, industry) seems happiest vs. unhappiest?

Organize this so I can use it in sales conversations. Give me specific, quotable insights, not generic summaries."

The output becomes your competitive playbook. When a prospect says "we use [Competitor]," you already know:

• What they probably like (so you don't trash-talk those features)
• What frustrates them (so you can empathize)
• When they'd consider switching (so you can test those triggers)

Step 3: Job Posting Intelligence

Competitors' job postings reveal more about their strategy than any press release. Here's how to mine them:

"Research the current job openings at [Competitor]. Based on their hiring patterns, tell me:

1. Are they growing or restructuring? (Lots of new roles = growth. Lots of leadership roles = restructuring.)
2. What teams are they building? (Hiring enterprise sales = moving upmarket. Hiring customer success = retention issues.)
3. What technology are they investing in? (Job requirements reveal their tech stack and priorities.)
4. Any signals about product direction? (Hiring ML engineers = building AI features. Hiring integration engineers = expanding platform.)
5. How does this affect our competitive positioning?"

This intelligence helps you anticipate competitor moves before they announce them.

Step 4: Social Listening

LinkedIn, Twitter/X, and Reddit are where unfiltered opinions live. Claude Code can help you process what people are saying:

"Research what people are saying about [Competitor] on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Reddit in the last 30 days. Look for:

1. Customer complaints or frustrations
2. Praise for specific features
3. Comparisons to other tools (including ours)
4. Posts from [Competitor]'s employees that reveal company direction
5. Discussions about switching from or to [Competitor]

Summarize the sentiment and give me 3 actionable takeaways I can use in prospecting."

Turning Intel Into Outreach

Here's where it gets tactical. Competitive intelligence isn't just for handling objections — it's for creating opportunities.

Play 1: The "Pain Point Poach"

When you know a competitor's customers are frustrated about something specific, you can proactively target those customers:

"Based on the G2 review analysis of [Competitor], their customers' biggest pain point is [specific pain]. Write me 3 different cold email angles targeting [Competitor]'s customers that:

1. Don't mention [Competitor] by name
2. Address the pain point as a general industry challenge
3. Position our solution as solving it specifically
4. Are under 100 words each"

Claude Code might produce something like:

Subject: scaling outbound without the deliverability hit

Hi [Name], I've been talking to a lot of sales teams in the [industry] space this month, and there's a pattern: once you hit 10+ SDRs, email deliverability tanks. Warmup tools help, but they don't solve the root cause — which is usually template volume overwhelming domain reputation.

We take a different approach: AI-personalized emails that look handwritten, sent at volumes that keep your domain healthy. Worth 15 minutes to see how?

Notice: no competitor name mentioned. Just addressing a known pain point. The prospect self-selects because the pain is relevant to them.

Play 2: The "Review Response" Outreach

When someone posts a negative review of a competitor on G2, it's an invitation:

"Write me a LinkedIn message to reach out to someone who posted a 3-star review of [Competitor] on G2. They mentioned [specific complaint]. Don't reference their review directly (that's creepy). Instead, engage them around the topic of [pain point] and offer a relevant insight or resource. Keep it helpful, not salesy."

Play 3: The "Job Change" Competitor Intel

When a competitor's employee leaves (especially in customer-facing roles), their customers may be affected:

"A senior Customer Success Manager at [Competitor] just left the company (per LinkedIn). Research:

1. How many accounts they likely managed
2. How this might impact those customers
3. Draft an outreach message to [Competitor]'s customers that addresses potential service gaps without being opportunistic"

Play 4: The "Feature Gap" Positioning

When reviews consistently mention a missing feature that you offer, use it:

"G2 reviews of [Competitor] frequently mention that they lack [specific feature/capability]. We have this. Write me a cold email to [Competitor]'s customers that naturally highlights this capability as part of how modern teams solve [related challenge]. Don't position it as 'we have what they don't' — position it as 'here's how leading teams are approaching this.'"

Building Your Competitive Dashboard

Create a running document that Claude Code helps you maintain. Here's the structure:

Competitor: [Name]

Category	What We Know	Last Updated	Source
Key strengths	[list]	[date]	G2, website
Key weaknesses	[list]	[date]	G2, Reddit
Recent product changes	[list]	[date]	Blog, LinkedIn
Hiring signals	[list]	[date]	LinkedIn Jobs
Customer sentiment trend	[up/down/stable]	[date]	Social listening
Best outreach angle	[angle]	[date]	Review analysis

Update this monthly. It takes 15 minutes with Claude Code — a task that would take a full day without it.

Feeding Intel Into MarketBetter

Your competitive intelligence should directly inform your MarketBetter targeting:

1. Build competitor-specific lead lists — Export [Competitor]'s customers from your CRM or Sales Nav and import them into MarketBetter via the Chrome Extension (see Part 4)

2. Create competitor-specific sequences — Use Claude Code to write email sequences tailored to each competitor's known pain points. Load these into MarketBetter.

3. Set up website monitoring — MarketBetter's visitor identification tells you when a competitor's customer visits your site. That's a hot signal — if they're browsing your pricing page, they're actively evaluating alternatives.

4. Track engagement patterns — When a competitive prospect opens your emails multiple times or visits your site repeatedly, MarketBetter flags them for immediate follow-up.

The Ethics of Competitive Intelligence

A quick but important note: competitive intelligence should be ethical and professional.

Do:

• Use publicly available information (reviews, social posts, job listings, press releases)
• Focus on understanding market dynamics, not personal attacks
• Be respectful of competitors in conversations with prospects
• Let your product's strengths speak for themselves

Don't:

• Misrepresent competitor capabilities
• Use deceptive tactics to gather information
• Trash-talk competitors in outreach
• Pose as a customer to get competitor pricing or demos

The best competitive sellers win by being better informed, not by tearing down the competition.

A Weekly Competitive Intel Routine

Here's how to make competitive monitoring a sustainable habit:

Every Monday (15 minutes):

1. Ask Claude Code to check for new developments at each competitor (news, announcements, product changes)
2. Review the summary and update your competitive dashboard
3. Flag anything that changes your outreach messaging

Every Month (30 minutes):

1. Do a full review mining refresh — G2, Capterra, Reddit
2. Update your competitor battlecard with new insights
3. Ask Claude Code to suggest updated email angles based on new competitive intel
4. Share key findings with your sales team

Quarterly (1 hour):

1. Full competitive landscape review
2. Update positioning and messaging
3. Create or refresh competitor-specific outreach sequences in MarketBetter

Free Tool

Try our Tech Stack Detector — instantly detect any company's tech stack from their website. No signup required.

Try This Today

Here's your action item:

1. Pick your #1 competitor — the one you lose deals to most often
2. Ask Claude Code to analyze their recent reviews on G2 using the Review Analysis prompt above
3. Identify the top 3 pain points their customers mention
4. Draft one cold email targeting a competitor customer, addressing one of those pain points (without naming the competitor)
5. Save the competitive analysis somewhere you can reference before your next call

You'll walk into your next competitive deal armed with specific, customer-validated insights instead of generic talking points. That's the difference between "we're different" and "I've heard from teams in your situation that X is a real challenge — have you experienced that?"

---

This is Part 5 (🟡 Medium) of our 10-part series. Next up: Part 6: Building a Lead Scoring Model Without a Data Team →

Want to know when your competitors' customers start visiting your website? Book a MarketBetter demo to see real-time visitor identification in action.