Competition
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
Sun Tzu probably wasn’t thinking about law firms, accountants or consultants when he wrote that. But he may as well have been.
Most professionals fall into one of two camps when it comes to competitors:
- They ignore them completely.
- They become mildly obsessed and spend half their life stalking LinkedIn announcements.
Neither approach is particularly helpful.
The reality is that your competitors can be one of your best sources of market intelligence. They can show you where the market is heading, what clients are responding to and, occasionally, provide a useful reminder of what not to do.
The good news? AI has made competitive analysis dramatically easier than it used to be. The bad news? AI can’t sit in a client meeting and hear what people are actually saying.
This week, Three Things looks at how to keep tabs on the competition without disappearing down a rabbit hole. Enjoy.
#1. Let AI do the heavy lifting
Keeping track of competitors used to involve endless website visits, Google alerts and far too much time on LinkedIn.
Today, AI can do much of the hard work for you.
It can monitor websites, analyse thought leadership, summarise social media activity, identify emerging themes and even compare positioning across multiple competitors in minutes rather than hours.
Brilliant. However, the most valuable intelligence rarely comes from a website.
It comes from clients.
Pay close attention when clients mention another adviser. Listen for comments such as:
- “We’ve seen another firm talking about…”
- “One of your competitors suggested…”
- “We’ve just had a presentation from…”
Those throwaway remarks are often worth more than any AI-generated report.
There’s another often-overlooked source of competitor intelligence: your secondees. If you’ve got people embedded with clients, they’re sitting in the engine room. They see who else is being instructed, how competitors structure their teams, the quality of their work product, how responsive they are, how matters are staffed and even how much investment firms are making in training and development. That’s intelligence you won’t find in any AI report.
AI can tell you what competitors are saying. Clients and secondees will tell you how the market is responding.
Try this today: Ask one client and one current or former secondee the same question: “Have you seen anything recently from another adviser that impressed you?” Then keep quiet and listen.
#2. Find the gap and own it
Competitive analysis isn’t about copying. It’s about spotting opportunities.
The temptation is to see a competitor launch something new and immediately think, “We need one of those.” Usually, you don’t.
Instead, ask:
- What are they talking about that we’re not?
- What are they all talking about?
- More importantly, what isn’t anybody talking about?
The biggest opportunities often sit in the gaps.
If every competitor is publishing generic AI commentary, perhaps clients need practical implementation advice.
If everyone is producing lengthy reports, perhaps clients want concise checklists.
If everyone is shouting about technology, perhaps nobody is talking about the human impact.
In a world increasingly flooded with AI-generated content, originality and clarity are becoming competitive advantages again.
Try this today: Review three competitors’ websites or LinkedIn pages. Identify one topic everyone is covering and one topic nobody is addressing. Start with the latter.
#3. Know who your competitors actually are
When asked about competitors, most people immediately think about organisations that look exactly like them.
Other law firms. Other accountancy firms. Other consultancies.
That’s only part of the picture.
You absolutely should understand where you sit in the market today and where you aspire to be.
Who occupies the tier above you? What are they doing differently? What would it take to compete more effectively in that space?
But don’t stop there.
We’re entering a period of significant disruption. Increasingly, competition is coming from places that didn’t exist a few years ago.
AI-native businesses. Alternative providers. Technology platforms. Automated solutions. New market entrants solving problems in completely different ways.
And here’s the important bit: different parts of your business may face different competitors.
The work generating your highest margins today may be precisely the work someone is trying to automate tomorrow.
The threat isn’t always the firm across the road. Sometimes it’s the startup you’ve never heard of.
And here’s a slightly uncomfortable thought. Not every competitor has to remain a competitor. Sometimes the best response to a market threat is collaboration. If another firm, platform or specialist provider can help you deliver a better outcome for the client, don’t let ego get in the way. Clients rarely care whose logo is on the slide deck. They care about getting the best solution to their problem.
Try this today: List your three traditional competitors. Then list three organisations that could potentially disrupt part of your business over the next five years. Finally, ask yourself whether any of them could become a partner rather than a rival. The answers may surprise you.
Chat to Tina by voice, when you’re between meetings, on the commute to/from work, or heading into something you’d rather avoid.
Final thought
Competitive analysis isn’t about paranoia.
It’s about curiosity.
Use AI to help gather intelligence. Listen carefully to what clients and secondees are telling you. Look for gaps rather than copycats. Keep an eye on both traditional rivals and emerging disruptors. And don’t automatically assume every competitor needs to be defeated.
Sometimes the smartest move isn’t to beat the competition. It’s to work with them and leave everybody else wondering how on earth you pulled it off.
We’re building a team of voice enabled AI assistants to support you with BD activities and allow you to spend more time being human. Interested? We’d love to chat.
