How to find out competitor's product price in B2B industry?

It’s not easy because price monitoring services won't work. I have a company in the outplacement services business and our prices are quite transparent, whereas our competitors' are not.

 

Based on my experience, here are some of the useful tips I think you should follow to find your competitors' pricing in a B2B industry:

 

A. Check websites of the small players on the market. I know you probably did a competitive analysis and identified the big companies you're competing with. Usually these ones don't have transparent pricing. However, small players usually have their pricing on their website. And even if they don't, it only takes one call to find out where they are with their pricing. Now this is a doubled edged sword - they might be small but established on the market (and the price will be relevant) or they might be small but new to the market and still trying their pricing strategy. So look at the age of the company as well.

 

B. Perform a Mystery shopping survey. This is the most time consuming, but will bring the most insights for your business. You can use a Request for Quote (RFQ) or Invitation for Bid (IFB) for big competitors and you can evaluate things like price, response time, how the sales request was handled, etc.

Now I found this tricky to do because I had to use someone else’s business e-mail to do the mystery shopping (most sites in B2B will block non corporate emails).

Another way is to use a consultant. If you have an acquaintance that is a consultant, you can contact the competitors by using him. The consultant will say that he's working with a confidential client that wants to evaluate the competition's product. You can get this way much more than pricing, maybe even a demo.

 

C. See if there are any analyst pricing reports on your industry. I managed to get hold of an interesting analysis about the outplacement pricing just by accidentally browsing some website, so you never know how you might find for your industry as well. You might need to pay for them, but it's money well invested.

 

D. Government sales - if your competitor sells to the government, their prices are likely to be on the government's price list (e.g. GSA for US).

 

E. Do it the Agile way and use your first clients to find out the price. I did the following thing - I had some customers asking me about what an outplacement package would cost. I gave a high price and they told me that it's expensive compared to other companies. I asked how much was the price they received and what are the services the competition was offering and matched their offer.

This way I could offer a discount to the customer and then get info about the competition.

 

Let me know if you need more details about this.

 

Kr,

Mirel

Hi Arpit, 

I have only once been involved in finding competitor's product prices and that was, while I was involved in a retail bank transformation. 

What we have done was:

• launched a Voice of the customer survey and
• carried out a Mystery shopping to check the competitor's prices of the retail products and the requirements/documents the other retail banks gathered.

It is more time-consuming, however it is an information from the source and when you get it right it is a good ivestment of time.

 

Marieta