How Competitive Intelligence Transforms SaaS Product Strategy
https://www.octopusintelligence.com/how-competitive-intelligence-transforms-saas-product-strategy/
Competitive intelligence provides the missing market perspective product teams need to make investment decisions confidently. Product planning meetings often stall when debating which features to prioritise, like advanced reporting or mobile apps. Decisions are often based on stories from customers, sales, or competitors.
The CPO remarked, “We’re spending $2M on engineering next year, but our decisions rely on whoever argues best. Does anyone know what really wins deals now?”
Silence.
They collected customer feedback and tracked competitors, but lacked systematic insight into buying drivers, competitor strengths, and real market gaps.
Many SaaS companies make costly product choices based on opinions and isolated requests. Competitive intelligence provides a holistic market view, enabling data-driven decision-making and increasing the odds that new investments drive revenue.
“We Don’t Know What the Market Wants; Product Decisions Feel Like Guesses”
Why Product Decisions Feel Like Guesswork
SaaS product teams have access to more information than ever, including customer feedback tools, usage analytics, competitor monitoring, and sales insights. Yet, product decisions frequently remain uncertain.
The Loudest Voices Don’t Represent the Market
Large customers request features customised to their needs. Sales teams advocate for capabilities that might have prevented lost deals. Executives often push for popular solutions such as AI or mobile-first design.
None of these voices necessarily represent what the wider market values or what wins competitive deals.
We worked with a SaaS client whose roadmap was heavily influenced by requests from their three largest enterprise customers, who accounted for 40% of revenue. As a result, the product team focused on increasingly specialised enterprise features.
Competitive intelligence showed they were losing 70% of mid-market deals to competitors offering simpler, more intuitive products. The mid-market was five times larger than their enterprise segment, yet their product was optimised for a small group of vocal customers rather than the wider market. Took 18 months. They’d built two years of features the wider market didn’t care about because they confused “customer requests” with “market demand.”
Competitor Monitoring Doesn’t Reveal Strategy
Most SaaS companies track competitor releases, pricing, and partnerships. This reveals what competitors have done, but not why or how effective it was. Some rely only on competitive signals and intelligence tools, assuming that’s enough.
When a competitor launches an AI-powered offering, don’t just note the launch. Focus on why it was prioritised and whether it drives deals. They built AI to address customisation limits, but it was a workaround, not a core strength. Customer interviews showed prospects were underwhelmed by generic AI that didn’t save time. Instead of matching features, double down on your strengths and frame their AI as a workaround that misses the real issue.
Customer Feedback Is Biased and Incomplete
Customers say what they think they want, which often differs from what drives their purchases. For instance, they may request better reporting when the real issue is distrust in your data, or ask for API improvements when they actually want easier integrations.
Revenue operations teams see this often. Customers cite price as a driver of churn, but deeper interviews reveal that poor onboarding impedes the demonstration of ROI. Customers sometimes request attractive features that won’t improve satisfaction or growth.
Customer feedback suggests areas to explore, but only competitive intelligence cuts through the noise to find real market needs and buying factors. This is CI’s unique value: turning data into implementable market understanding.
Sales Feedback Is Filtered By Loss Aversion
Sales teams offer useful insights, but their feedback frequently stems from recent losses. For example, after losing several deals over ‘better integrations,’ integrations may top the priority list, even if the root cause was a lack of understanding of customer needs. Competitive intelligence realigns resources toward more effective efforts, such as deployment automation.
Understanding What Competitive Intelligence Actually Reveals
Systematic competitive intelligence replaces guesses with evidence about:
What the market values,
What competitors are winning on
Where your product strengths and gaps create opportunities or risks.
Allow us to demonstrate how this works in practice. The following examples show this process in action.
Product intelligence goes beyond feature checklists to identify which capabilities drive buying decisions and the reasons behind them.
What competitors actually deliver versus what they claim
Competitors’ marketing materials promise features they may not deliver. For example, one vendor claimed ‘enterprise-grade scalability,’ but mystery shopping found their product slowed to a crawl beyond 500,000 records—the level many prospects need.
The company built messaging around ‘proven performance at scale,’ supported by real deployment data. Sales materials asked, “Have you checked their platform’s performance above 500,000 records?” This lets them confidently offer relevant proof to prospects.
This intelligence highlighted a perceived weakness in competitor solutions, allowing the company to turn it into a strong advantage in enterprise deals. Features are table stakes versus differentiators.
Not all features are equally important. Some are must-haves, others win deals. Product teams often waste resources on ‘nice to haves’ instead of real differentiators, usually asking competitive intelligence about the former, not the latter.
Win/loss interviews identify which features are mentioned in successful versus lost deals, which capabilities your customers value most, and which gaps are consistently cited by prospects who choose competitors. This analysis shows feature priorities based on actual buying behaviour rather than guesses.
Product positioning gaps in the market
Sometimes the big opportunity isn’t copying competitors’ features, but targeting a market segment they ignore. Competitors offered ‘enterprise platforms’ or ‘self-service tools,’ but nobody owned the middle: analyst-friendly tools needing no IT support.
Customer interviews confirmed high demand in this neglected segment. Analysts wanted advanced tools without the complexity of enterprise products or the limitations of self-serve options. The client repositioned around ‘power without complexity’ and shifted their roadmap to address this need. What to Build Next and Why
Roadmap intelligence enables product teams to focus on investments by considering market forces, competitive gaps, and opportunities for strategic differentiation.
Competitors’ hiring, partnerships, exec statements, and tech investment hint at their next moves. Reading these signals lets you anticipate competitor moves and adjust your position to take advantage of gaps.
Some competitor weaknesses are quickly fixed; others demand big changes. Knowing the difference helps you gauge how long your differentiation will last.
Intelligence enables investment in real-time capabilities with the confidence that differentiation will be sustainable over several years.
Competitive intelligence also supports build-versus-partner-versus-acquire decisions.
Should you build a capability in-house?
Partner with someone who has it?
Or acquire a company?
Competitive intelligence reveals which approach works in your market.
Innovation areas where competitors are absent
In some cases, the best roadmap decisions involve developing capabilities that no competitor currently offers. Early-mover advantage in valuable features can greatly alter competitive dynamics.
However, this is effective only if customers value these features. Many “innovative” capabilities address issues that buyers do not focus on.
Customer interviews identified a consistent pain point: difficulty onboarding new team members. Since no competitor optimised for rapid onboarding, we addressed this gap.
Pricing Intelligence: What the Market Will Actually Pay
Pricing intelligence uncovers what competitors actually charge in real transactions, how they structure offers, existing discount patterns, and areas of pricing flexibility.
Published pricing rarely reflects reality in B2B SaaS. List prices, “starting at” figures, and published pricing rarely reflect actual B2B SaaS transaction values. List prices, “starting at” figures, and online calculators do not reveal what competitors charge during negotiations. Inside mystery shopping, as:
(1) a startup with 10 users, (
- a mid-market company with 100 users,
(3) an enterprise with 1,000 users.
Same competitor quoted $29/user/month for the startup, $19/user/month for mid-market, and $12/user/month for enterprise.
The pricing flexibility was 2.4 times between the highest and lowest quotes. The client had used the competitor’s published $29 pricing as a benchmark and believed aggressive discounting was necessary. In reality, the competitor was discounting by 60% for enterprise customers. This insight enabled the client to modify their pricing strategy: maintain pricing for small customers, offer progressive discounts for larger accounts, and remain confident that their enterprise pricing was competitive without matching published rates. ished rates.
Pricing model trends and effectiveness
Are competitors moving from per-user to usage-based pricing? From monthly to annual contracts? From flat-rate to tiered pricing? Which models are winning deals and which are creating friction?
A client considered switching from per-user to usage-based pricing in response to competitor announcements. However, win/loss interviews revealed that customers were frustrated by the instability of usage-based pricing.
Customers stated that usage-based pricing “made sense theoretically,” but it introduced budget uncertainty, required CFO approval, and slowed deal cycles. Per-user pricing was easier to forecast and could be approved at the department level without executive involvement.
The client retained per-user pricing and described it as “predictable costs you can budget confidently.” They won deals against usage-based competitors because finance teams preferred predictability. The “innovative” pricing model adopted by competitors was actually creating sales friction.
Discount patterns and negotiation leverage
How much do competitors discount in different situations? What triggers larger discounts? What terms do they offer to close deals?
Understanding discount patterns helps avoid both under-discounting, which can result in lost deals, and over-discounting, which erodes margins on deals that would have closed regardless.
Mystery shopping revealed a competitor would discount 20% for annual prepayment versus monthly billing, an additional 10% for multi-year contracts, and another 15% for deals closing before quarter-end.
The competitor’s maximum discount was 40% for a three-year annual prepaid plan signed before quarter-end. This insight clarified where pricing flexibility existed and where matching competitor discounts was unnecessary to remain competitive.
Value metric optimisation
It is important to ensure that pricing corresponds with how customers perceive value. Misaligned value metrics can create pricing resistance, even if the total price is reasonable.
A marketing automation platform charges per “contacts in database.” Customer interviews revealed annoyance among those with large databases but low email volume, who felt overcharged, while customers with small databases and high engagement considered the pricing fair.
The competitor’s value metric (per email sent) aligned better with perceived value—customers paid for what they used, not what they stored.
The client restructured pricing from “per contact” to “per active contact” (contacted in the last 90 days). This change aligned pricing with customer value perception, reduced deal friction, and allowed for larger customer database limits as a competitive advantage. The key insight was not about price levels, but regarding aligning the pricing structure with customer value perception.tion.
Packaging and bundling strategies
It is important to understand how competitors package features into tiers, what is included in base plans versus add-ons, and whether they bundle or unbundle offerings.
A client initially offered three standard tiers. Competitor analysis showed that competitors were succeeding by delivering customizable packages that let customers select only the features they needed, without paying for unused capabilities.
Customer interviews confirmed the importance of this approach: buyers resented paying for “Professional tier” features they did not use simply to access a single “Enterprise tier” capability.
The client adopted modular pricing, allowing customers to build custom packages. Win rates improved as buyers felt they were paying for value they would use, rather than subsidising features for other customer segments.
How We Help SaaS Product Teams Make Evidence-Based Decisions
Most SaaS companies lack the methodical processes, specialised skills, and dedicated resources required to gather product-focused competitive intelligence that informs roadmap decisions. Most importantly, they do not have the time. Octopus was built specifically to address this need.
Win/Loss Analysis That Reveals Product Truth
We conduct structured win/loss interviews using sophisticated methods such as Five Whys and Laddering to uncover why customers really chose you or chose competitors—not the tactful explanations they give, but the actual decision drivers.
We interview customers across your wins, losses, and in-process evaluations.
We ask about features, but we dig deeper:
What business problem were they solving?
What capabilities mattered most?
How did they evaluate trade-offs?
What made them confident or nervous about each option?
This usually reveals which product capabilities drive revenue, versus which customers request but don’t actually value in their buying decisions. You stop building what sounds important and start building what wins deals.
Mystery Shopping Competitor Products and Sales Experiences
We don’t just read competitor marketing materials. We become their prospects. And we approach competitors with realistic buyer scenarios and experience their products, sales process, and positioning firsthand.
For SaaS specifically, we:
Request demos and thoroughly evaluate competitor products with your target use cases.
Get actual pricing quotes among different buyer personas and deal sizes.
Document what features they emphasise versus downplay
Identify gaps between marketing claims and product reality.
Experience their onboarding, implementation promises, and support interactions.
Note specific positioning statements they use about your company.
You learn what competitors actually deliver, not what they claim. You discover where they’re legitimately strong versus where they’re covering weaknesses with marketing. And exactly how they position against you.
Deep Customer Interviews About Product Priorities
We interview your customers, your competitors’ customers, and prospects who are actively evaluating options. People tell us things they won’t tell vendors directly.
We use Laddering techniques to move from feature-level feedback (“we need better reporting”) to benefit-level understanding (“what would better reporting let you do?”) to emotional drivers (“how would that change how you feel about this investment?”).
This reveals the real product gaps, the features that seem important but don’t drive decisions, and the capabilities customers can’t articulate but desperately need.
A client’s buyers consistently requested “API enhancements.” Laddering revealed they didn’t actually need better APIs—they needed simpler out-of-the-box integrations so they wouldn’t have to use APIs at all. The stated request was the opposite of the actual need.
Systematic Feature Impact Analysis
We analyse which features are mentioned more often in wins than in losses, which capabilities customers who expanded with you valued most, and which gaps customers who churned or chose competitors cited most frequently.
This shows you:
Table-stakes features every competitor must have
Differentiating features that actually win deals
Requested features that don’t impact buying decisions
Hidden requirements customers don’t explicitly request but silently evaluate
You get data-driven feature prioritisation instead of opinion-based roadmap debates.
Competitor Roadmap Intelligence and Early Warning
We track competitor hiring patterns, partnership announcements, technology investments, and executive statements to predict their roadmap direction 6-12 months before they launch.
We monitor:
LinkedIn hiring by role (ML engineers, mobile developers, specific technology skills)
Technology partnerships and integration announcements
Acquisition targets and strategic ventures
Patent filings and technical publications
Conference presentations and thought leadership themes
You get advance warning of competitor moves so you can prepare positioning, build differentiating responses, or avoid chasing features that won’t matter.
Pricing Intelligence Across Real Scenarios
We conduct mystery shopping specifically focused on pricing. approaching competitors with different buyer personas, company sizes, and use cases to get actual quotes.
We document:
Real pricing among different customer profiles
Discount patterns and negotiation dynamics
Payment terms, contract structures, and flexibility
Bundling and packaging approaches
Hidden costs (implementation, training, support upgrades)
You understand true competitive pricing patterns instead of guessing based on published rates that don’t reflect reality.
Brand Positioning Gap Analysis
Sometimes the best product strategy isn’t matching competitors. It’s the owning positioning they ignore. We analyse the entire competitive landscape to identify gaps where customer demand exists, but no competitor dominates.
We map:
How each competitor positions (enterprise vs SMB, simple vs powerful, industry-specific vs horizontal)
Which customer segments feel underserved
What territories remain unclaimed
Where your product strengths correspond to market gaps
You find white space opportunities where you can win without fighting established competitors head-on.
Our Track Record with SaaS Product Teams
We’ve helped SaaS companies:
Reprioritise roadmaps based on actual buying patterns.
A client redirected $3M in engineering resources from requested features to capabilities that actually won deals. Win rates improved 24% in two quarters.
Identify positioning gaps worth owning.
A client found an unclaimed positioning between enterprise complexity and SMB limitations and captured 18% market share in 18 months.
Optimise pricing models for revenue.
A client restructured value metrics based on customer perception, reduced deal friction, and expanded average contract values 31%.
Avoid expensive feature mistakes.
A client discovered that a planned $1.5M mobile investment wouldn’t improve win rates and redirected resources to implementation automation, which became their key differentiator.
Predict competitor moves early.
A client received a 6-month advance warning of a competitor’s AI feature launch, prepared counter-positioning, and neutralised the risk before it materialised.
We are Octopus. The Global Competitive Intelligence Consultancy.
Outsmart your competition. Make the unknown known. Octopus helps you gain clarity in complex markets. With clients and tentacles around the world, we deliver sharp, actionable competitive intelligence through a blend of deep primary (HUMINT) and secondary research. If you’re looking to make smarter decisions, beat the competition, and reduce uncertainty, we’re the partner you want on your side.