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
Why do you need to know about the pricing of your competition in the first place? If you're offering great value, people will buy from you even if you're charging 5 times more. If you want to offer the lowest price possible to get more clients, then ask yourself how little can you actually charge. And put that price.
Spending the time to identify the price of your competitors is a waste of time. In 99% of the cases.
1. Buy a Google Voice number
2. Call using a nickname
3. Do not ask about the price when you get on the call with the sales team or whoever let them ask questions and do their pitch on the phone. Depending on what it is they may want to do demo with you via Join.Me or Skype. Just go with the motions.
4. Ask about how they separate themselves from the competition. What makes them better?
Companies love talking about themselves. e
5. Finally at the end ask about pricing.
I have done it many times.
Do you know any of their customers? Try approaching one.
Alternative, if its a more commodity type service or product, see if you can find it on line and figure out what its selling fore.
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!
