Does your product have the “Right to Win”?

“Right to Win” analysis is a form of competitive analysis that uses a quantiative approach. The goal is to determine whether your product has the right to win within a defined market segment. Products with a right to win are most likely to be selected by buyers and should generate accelerated growth when compared to the competition.

Guidance on how to construct an accurate Right To Win analysis is provided in the steps below:

1. Define your market segment. What types of customers are you targeting? Which industries are they in? Which countries and how large are they likely to be? You only need to prove you have the right to win for the market segments you are targeting.
2. Identify and list your top two to three competitors. If you have more competitors, choose your nearest and most threatening ones. Or you could group competitors with similar characteristics and choose one representative company from each group. Again, only choose competitors that operate within your target market segment.
3. List the buying criteria of your buying personas. Criteria could include price, service, usability, data security and many other features that are specific to your product and company. Group together these criteria into sections if you have a long list of criteria. You may wish to assign a weight to each criteria if buyers particularly value a certain component.
4. Rate your company and product against each criteria. Then repeat for each competitor. Now sum the scores for each category taking into account any weightings you have assigned. Finally, generate a grand total for each company.
5. Analyse the results. Do you have the overall highest score representing the Right to Win? Which categories are you stronger or weaker in and what would make the most difference to your score? Consider these results as part of forming your overall product strategy.

The hardest part of this exercise is to be honest in scoring your own product and company to avoid gaming the results. To overcome your own personal bias, try forming a judging panel with representation from product, marketing, sales and your service teams.