Fundamentals
The core vocabulary: what competitive intelligence is, who counts as a competitor, and how position and advantage are defined.
- Competitive IntelligenceEssentialCompetitive intelligence is the ongoing collection and interpretation of public information about the companies you compete with, turned into something a team can act on.
- Competitive AnalysisEssentialCompetitive analysis is a structured comparison of your company against named rivals across the dimensions that decide deals — product, pricing, positioning, audience and go-to-market.
- Competitor AnalysisEssentialCompetitor analysis is a close study of one rival company — its products, pricing, messaging, hiring and customers — built from what that company can be observed doing.
- Market IntelligenceEssentialMarket intelligence is the wider view around competitive intelligence: demand, buyers, channels, pricing norms and category shifts, not just the behaviour of named rivals.
- Competitive LandscapeEssentialA competitive landscape is the map of every company a buyer could choose instead of you — direct rivals, adjacent products, incumbents and the option of doing nothing.
- Direct vs Indirect CompetitorsDirect competitors sell a similar product to a similar buyer for a similar job. Indirect competitors solve the same job a different way — and often win the deal without ever appearing on your list.
- Competitive AdvantageA competitive advantage is a structural reason your company wins that a rival cannot copy quickly — not a feature list, and not a claim on a homepage.
- Competitive PositioningEssentialCompetitive positioning is the place your product occupies in a buyer's head relative to the alternatives: who it is for, what it replaces, and why it is the obvious choice for that person.
- Market ShareMarket share is the proportion of total category revenue, customers or units held by one company — the headline number for relative size, and one of the hardest to establish honestly.
Signals & Sources
Where competitive intelligence actually comes from: pages, prices, ads, reviews, jobs, news and social.
- Competitor MonitoringEssentialCompetitor monitoring is the standing practice of watching a defined set of rivals for change — and, critically, of deciding which changes are worth anyone's attention.
- Website Change DetectionWebsite change detection is the automated comparison of a competitor's web pages over time, so that an edit to pricing, positioning or product copy is captured as a dated event.
- Competitor Pricing IntelligenceCompetitor pricing intelligence is the practice of knowing what rivals charge, how they package it, and how both of those have changed over time.
- Price MonitoringPrice monitoring is the continuous tracking of competitor prices and packaging so that a change is caught when it happens rather than discovered in a deal.
- Ad IntelligenceAd intelligence is the analysis of competitors' paid advertising — the creative, the claims, the audiences and how long each campaign survives.
- Social ListeningSocial listening is the monitoring of public conversation on social platforms and forums for mentions of your company, your competitors and the problem you all solve.
- Review MiningReview mining is the systematic reading of competitors' public customer reviews to find the recurring complaints, the reasons people switch, and the gaps between marketing and delivery.
- Hiring SignalsHiring signals are the strategic conclusions you can draw from a competitor's open job adverts: what they are building, which markets they are entering, and where they are investing.
- News MonitoringNews monitoring is the automated tracking of press coverage about your competitors and category — funding, launches, leadership changes, partnerships and incidents.
- Share of VoiceShare of voice is your slice of the total attention in a category — mentions, coverage, search presence or advertising — measured against your competitors rather than in absolute terms.
Methods & Frameworks
The structured ways teams turn raw signal into a decision.
- SWOT AnalysisA SWOT analysis sorts what you know about a company into four boxes — strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats — to make a strategic position legible at a glance.
- Porter's Five ForcesPorter's Five Forces assesses the structural attractiveness of an industry through five pressures: rivalry, new entrants, substitutes, supplier power and buyer power.
- PESTEL AnalysisPESTEL scans the macro environment a business operates in across six dimensions: political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal.
- Win-Loss AnalysisEssentialWin-loss analysis is the structured study of why deals were won and lost, built from buyer evidence rather than from the closing rep's account of it.
- Competitive MatrixA competitive matrix is a grid comparing your company and named rivals across a fixed set of criteria, so differences can be read down a column rather than argued from memory.
- BenchmarkingBenchmarking measures your performance against a comparable external reference — a named competitor, a peer group or a category norm — to establish whether a number is good or merely familiar.
- BattlecardEssentialA battlecard is a short, sales-ready brief on one competitor: how they position, where they are strong, where they are weak, and what to say when a prospect raises them.
- Competitive AuditA competitive audit is a deliberate, bounded review of your competitive position and of the programme that maintains it — what you are tracking, what you are missing, and whether any of it is being used.
Metrics
The numbers competitive programmes are measured on, and what each one can and cannot tell you.
- Win RateWin rate is the proportion of qualified opportunities that close as wins. Its competitive value comes from slicing it — by rival, by segment, by deal size — rather than from the headline figure.
- Churn RateChurn rate is the proportion of customers or revenue lost over a period. It is the clearest measure of whether a product keeps its promises after the sale.
- Customer Acquisition CostCustomer acquisition cost is the total sales and marketing spend required to win one new customer — the metric that decides whether a go-to-market motion can be scaled.
- Net Promoter ScoreNet Promoter Score measures customer advocacy from a single question — how likely you are to recommend — scored by subtracting the share of detractors from the share of promoters.
- Total Addressable MarketTotal addressable market is the entire revenue available for a product if it achieved complete adoption — the ceiling figure, and the one most often calculated to reach a conclusion already chosen.
- AI Search VisibilityAI search visibility is whether — and how — your company appears in answers generated by AI assistants and AI-powered search, as opposed to in a ranked list of links.
GTM & Enablement
How intelligence reaches the people who close deals.
- Sales EnablementSales enablement is the work of giving sellers the content, training and information they need to have a better conversation — and of making sure they can find it when the conversation happens.
- Competitive DisplacementCompetitive displacement is winning a customer away from a competitor they are already paying — a rip-and-replace sale rather than a new-category one.
- Objection HandlingObjection handling is responding to a prospect's stated reason for hesitating — on price, on fit, on risk, or on a competitor — in a way that addresses the concern rather than deflecting it.
- Go-To-Market StrategyA go-to-market strategy is the plan for how a product reaches its buyers: which segment, through which channels, with what message, at what price, sold by whom.
- Product MarketingProduct marketing is the function that decides what a product means to a buyer — its positioning, messaging, launches and competitive story — and equips the rest of the company to say it consistently.
- Value PropositionA value proposition is the specific benefit a defined buyer gets from your product, stated in terms they would recognise and in comparison with what they would otherwise do.
- Differentiation StrategyA differentiation strategy is a deliberate choice to be meaningfully different from competitors on a dimension buyers care about, rather than better on the dimensions everyone already competes on.
- Positioning StatementA positioning statement is a short internal formulation of who a product is for, what category it belongs to, what it replaces and why it should be believed — the reference every external message is checked against.
About this glossary
What is a competitive intelligence glossary?
A competitive intelligence glossary defines the vocabulary of competitive work plainly: what each term means, what it is good for, and where it misleads people. This one covers 41 terms used in B2B SaaS, grouped into 5 categories: Fundamentals, Signals & Sources, Methods & Frameworks, Metrics, GTM & Enablement.
Which categories does the glossary cover?
Fundamentals is the core vocabulary — what competitive intelligence is, who counts as a competitor, and how position and advantage are defined. Signals & Sources covers where competitive intelligence actually comes from: pages, prices, ads, reviews, jobs, news and social. Methods & Frameworks covers the structured ways teams turn raw signal into a decision, Metrics the numbers competitive programmes are measured on, and GTM & Enablement how intelligence reaches the people who close deals.
What does each glossary entry contain?
Each entry opens with a short definition you can read from the index before clicking through, then goes further than a definition: what the term is good for, and where it misleads people. Entries also carry their category, an estimated reading time, a note on how IndustryLens handles the idea in practice, and links to related terms.
Why does competitive work need a shared vocabulary?
Because competitive terms are routinely used loosely, and the categories they belong to are genuinely different jobs — collecting signal, structuring it into a decision, measuring a programme, and getting the result to a seller. Naming which one you mean is what stops a conversation about "competitive intelligence" from being four conversations at once. Each entry here also states what the term cannot tell you, which is usually the part that gets skipped.