I run competitive intelligence for SaaS founders. Every week I produce detailed reports on competitor pricing, positioning, customer sentiment, and market moves.
For the first year I did it manually. Hours on G2, hours on LinkedIn, hours reading job listings to reverse-engineer strategy. It was brutal.
Then I rebuilt the entire workflow using Claude and ChatGPT. What used to take 6 hours now takes 20 minutes. The output is better — more structured, more actionable, covers angles I used to miss.
I'm sharing the exact prompts I use. No fluff. Just the prompts, what they produce, and when to use each one.
Why Most People Fail at Competitive Intelligence
They approach it wrong. They ask "what does Competitor X do?" instead of asking the right questions:
- What do their unhappy customers say? (That's where your positioning lives)
- What are they hiring for? (That reveals their next 6 months of strategy)
- What does their pricing architecture signal? (That tells you who they're actually targeting)
- What content gaps exist? (That's free SEO traffic waiting for you)
Generic research gives you generic insights. Specific questions give you edges.
The 10 Prompts (In Order of Impact)
1. The Master Report Prompt
Use this when you need a comprehensive view of a competitor. Takes 5 minutes, outputs a 15-page analysis.
You are a senior competitive intelligence analyst. Produce a complete report on [COMPETITOR].
Include:
- Company overview (funding, team size, revenue estimates)
- Product strengths and weaknesses (be specific, not generic)
- Full pricing breakdown with hidden costs
- Customer sentiment analysis using actual review language from G2/Reddit
- Marketing and messaging analysis
- Competitive threat assessment (1-10 with reasoning)
- Top 5 specific opportunities to win against them
My company: [YOUR COMPANY]
My target customer: [YOUR ICP]
I ran this on Notion last week. Here's the full output — 15 pages, actual pricing data, real customer quotes, positioning map. Free to read.
2. Review Mining — The Most Underused Technique
Your competitors' reviews are a goldmine. Their unhappy customers describe exactly what you should build and exactly what messaging you should use.
Analyze [COMPETITOR] reviews from G2, Reddit, and Trustpilot.
Produce:
1. Top 5 complaints — with exact language patterns customers use
2. Top 5 praise points — what keeps customers loyal
3. Churn triggers — specific events that cause customers to leave
4. Unmet needs — what customers wish the product did
5. LANGUAGE GOLD — exact phrases customers use to describe their pain (use these as your ad copy and email subject lines)
6. Who is actually buying — job title, company size, use case
The "language gold" section alone is worth running this prompt for. When you use the exact words your prospects use to describe their problem, conversion rates spike.
3. Pricing Strategy Decoder
Pricing pages are deliberately confusing. This prompt cuts through it.
Analyze [COMPETITOR]'s pricing strategy.
Tell me:
1. What's the upgrade trigger at each tier? (What forces someone to pay more?)
2. What's the "hero" plan they want everyone to buy?
3. What plan are they hoping you DON'T buy?
4. What's the real annual cost for a 20-person company?
5. Where do reviews mention "too expensive" or "hidden costs"?
6. How should I price against them — cheaper, more expensive, or differently structured?
After running this on 5 competitors, I found that every single one had at least one tier designed to look attractive but actually deliver poor value. That's where you position.
4. Job Listing Intelligence
This one surprises people. Job listings are one of the best signals of where a company is heading.
Analyze [COMPETITOR]'s recent job postings.
Tell me:
1. Strategic priorities — based on what roles they're hiring, what are their top 3 bets right now?
2. Product direction — what are the technical/product hires signaling?
3. Go-to-market shifts — what do sales/marketing hires reveal?
4. What are they NOT hiring for? (What are they keeping small?)
5. Hiring acceleration or slowdown — growth or trouble?
6. What will they likely launch or change in the next 6 months?
Their jobs page: [URL]
I ran this on a Series B SaaS last month. They were hiring 3 enterprise AEs and a Head of Compliance. Six weeks later they announced an enterprise tier with SOC2. Knowing that in advance would have been worth thousands.
5. Rapid Sales Brief (15 Minutes Before a Call)
Give me a rapid competitive brief on [COMPETITOR] for a sales call in 30 minutes.
- What they do (1 sentence)
- Their best customer (1 sentence)
- Their 3 biggest strengths
- Their 3 biggest weaknesses
- Price range
- 3 objections a prospect might raise comparing us
- 3 responses to those objections
- The ONE thing I should never say when they bring up [COMPETITOR]
Be direct. No padding.
This one I run before every sales call. Takes 3 minutes to run, saves 20 minutes of scrambling.
The Full Pack
I packaged all 10 prompts (including Feature Gap Analysis, Content Gap Analysis, Win/Loss Framework, Market Trend Briefing, and more) into a downloadable pack.
It also includes the complete Notion competitive analysis I mentioned above — 15 pages showing exactly what these prompts produce when you run them properly.
AI Competitive Intelligence Starter Pack — $29
If you want us to run this for your business every week instead: Claw Intelligence — from $399/month.
The Meta-Lesson
The prompts are just tools. The real skill is knowing which questions to ask and what to do with the answers.
Most competitive intelligence fails because people collect information without asking "what decision does this help me make?"
Every prompt above is designed around a specific decision:
- Pricing prompt → how should I price?
- Review mining → what messaging should I use?
- Job listing → what should I build next?
- Sales brief → how do I win this deal?
Run them with that framing and you'll get outputs you can actually act on.
Questions? Drop them below. I read every comment.
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