Question
Hi,
I have a startup and I need to figure out the price of our competition. Most competing companies have a revenue based model and to figure out the pricing one has to call and provide all details of sales, revenue model... A couple of things that I am thinking to do are: (1) have a fake identity and business and call to figure out pricing, (2) hire someone in freelance.com to do it for me. Two questions follows:
1) is it ilegal to fake an identity for this purpose?
2) Is it illegal to hire someone to figure out the pricing of competition? I do not want to know the method he/she uses.
3) Any other idea on how to do it?
Thanks
Answer
One simple way you could do this is to offer a price-match guarantee: tell you prospective customers you will be match or beat (even by 5% or 10%) your competitors price, on production of a quote from your competitor. That way, you outsource competitive pricing intelligence to your customers. Nothing wrong with that!
