# A competitor list has four buckets and a rule for dropping names

Sort competitors into direct, adjacent, in-house and status-quo buckets from your own lost deals, give each a monitoring priority, and drop the noise.

URL: https://www.hiresteve.ai/blog/identify-competitors
Updated: 2026-10-12

A useful competitor list has four buckets: the direct rivals named in your lost deals, the adjacent products that solve the same need a different way, the in-house build your buyer could commission, and the status quo they keep when they buy nothing. Start from your own loss notes, give every name a monitoring priority, and write down the rule that removes a name later.

## Start from your own lost deals

Direct competitors are the companies your buyers chose instead of you. The evidence is in your CRM loss reasons, deal notes and the last few "we went with" emails, so read those before you search the web. Start with the recent losses you can inspect and count which names appear. If the list is already long, check whether several segments have been mixed together.

Paste the notes into Claude and ask it to list every company or alternative a buyer named, with how often it appears and the phrase the buyer used. Check that each name traces back to a specific note. A company Claude adds from general knowledge, with no note behind it, belongs in the adjacent bucket as a hypothesis until a deal or a source confirms it. Before pasting, apply your company's rules on sharing deal data with an AI tool; the [lesson on protecting sensitive GTM inputs](/blog/safe-gtm-data) covers what to remove first.

If you have no loss notes yet, ask multiple sellers which names come up on calls and treat their answers as hypotheses until deal evidence accumulates.

## Ask what else solves the need

Adjacent competitors solve the same underlying job with a different kind of product. To find them, brainstorm from the buyer's need, not from your product category. A team that buys competitive-intelligence software could also buy a media-monitoring tool, a research subscription or an analyst's time; each takes budget away from your deal without appearing in a "competitive intelligence" search.

Turn on web search in Claude for this step. Anthropic's [web search help article](https://support.claude.com/en/articles/10684626-enable-and-use-web-search), checked 2026-09-14, says the feature is available on free accounts and counts against usage limits there, that Team and Enterprise owners must enable it first, and that Claude cites the sources it pulls from a search. Describe the job your buyer named, ask for substitutes with a source for each, then open the sources yourself. A name with no deal note and no source is still a guess.

The two guides we read for this question stop at two buckets. [Dovetail's direct-competition guide](https://dovetail.com/market-research/direct-competition/) and [Determ's direct-and-indirect-competitors post](https://determ.com/blog/direct-and-indirect-competitors/), both read 2026-09-14, define direct and indirect competition and list ways to find each; neither treats building in-house or doing nothing as a competitor. This lesson adds both.

## Add the in-house build and the status quo

"We will build it ourselves" is a competitor with an engineering estimate attached. "We will keep the spreadsheet" is a competitor with no purchase order. Both take deals from you, and neither shows up in a category search, so name them on the list and write down what each looks like for your product: the internal tool a buyer's team already maintains, the shared document that does the job badly, the decision to wait a year.

The Japanese site hone.jp's [guide to indirect competition](https://hone.jp/post/indirectcompetition), read 2026-09-14, splits indirect competition three ways: non-consumption (無消費), existing habit (既存習慣) such as spreadsheets and paper, and replacement from another category. This lesson's status-quo bucket merges the first two. The in-house build gets its own bucket because a deal lost to "we will build it" needs a different answer from a deal lost to a spreadsheet.

**Where Claude's brainstorm stops**

Claude works from the material available in the chat, including any enabled search or connectors. Without an enabled CRM connector or notes you provide, Claude cannot inspect your loss reasons. Even with connected CRM data, a buyer's private internal tool may be absent, so confirm each name against a deal record or source. The in-house and status-quo entries come from your sellers and your lost deals.

## Give every name a priority and a rule for dropping it

Assign one of three priorities to each name: track closely, watch occasionally or drop. Ask Claude to propose a priority and a one-line reason per company from the loss notes and sources you have gathered, then decide yourself. Claude organizes candidates and surfaces categories you had not considered; you own the list.

For the dropping rule, review each company against recent lost deals, buyer conversations and sourced product changes. If none still justifies monitoring it, the named owner can move it to a short "dropped" section with the review date and reason. That record keeps the same name from being re-added from the same listicle without new evidence.

The table shows the shape of a finished list, without company names.

| Bucket | What belongs here | Evidence that puts a name here | Default priority |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Direct | Companies your buyers chose instead | Named in a lost deal or a seller call | Track closely |
| Adjacent | Different product, same buyer need | Sourced search result plus at least one deal mention | Watch occasionally |
| In-house / build | The buyer's own team builds or extends a tool | A lost deal with "build" as the reason | Watch occasionally; note the estimate they used |
| Status quo / do nothing | Spreadsheet, manual process, waiting | A stalled or "no decision" deal | Track the objection, not a company |

Before a name goes on the tracked list, it should pass every line below.

- The name appears in at least one lost deal, seller call or sourced search result, and the source is written next to it.
- It sits in exactly one bucket, with a one-line reason.
- It has a priority: track closely, watch occasionally or drop.
- Someone owns the next check, with a date.

## Save the list where the next job starts

Save the finished list as one file in the [Claude Project you use for product marketing](/blog/claude-project-setup), next to the per-competitor files that lesson describes, so later work uses the exact roster. When enabled, [chat search and memory](https://support.claude.com/en/articles/11817273-use-claude-s-chat-search-and-memory-to-build-on-previous-context) may also carry context across sessions, but they are not a substitute for the dated file. Anthropic's [Projects article](https://support.claude.com/en/articles/9517075-what-are-projects), checked 2026-09-14, allows free accounts up to five Projects.

From here, the [solo competitive-intelligence lesson](/blog/solo-competitive-intelligence) covers running a monitoring loop on the list, and the [research-plan lesson](/blog/competitive-research-plan) covers scoping the questions to answer about any single company on it.

## When a manual list stops being enough

The manual method ends at a file you maintain by hand. An ordinary, unscheduled chat does not re-check the list between requests, so a person still opens the competitor pages and updates the file. Stay with the manual file while its owner can reopen every relevant source on schedule and keep the roster current. Repeated missed checks or stale entries are the signal to evaluate more automation.

In Steve, you add a competitor by entering its website. Keep the four-bucket source file yourself, and load only the track-closely names into [Steve competitive intelligence](/products/competitive-intel).

## Frequently asked

### How many competitors should be on the list?

As many as you can keep current. If a starting point helps, three to five direct names plus a few adjacent ones is an illustrative working size for a mid-market B2B product, not a measured threshold. If nobody can say when each name was last checked, the list is too long.

### Is doing nothing really a competitor?

Yes. A buyer who keeps a spreadsheet or delays the decision has chosen an alternative to you. Put the status quo on the list as a named entry with the objection that usually accompanies it, so battlecards and messaging can answer it directly.

### Can Claude find my competitors for me?

Partly. With web search on, Claude can propose adjacent candidates with citations and organize the names in your loss notes. Without an enabled CRM connector or notes you provide, Claude cannot inspect your loss reasons. Even with connected CRM data, a buyer's private internal tool may be absent, so confirm each name against a deal record or source.

### When should a competitor come off the list?

When recent lost deals, buyer conversations and sourced product changes no longer justify monitoring it, and the named owner decides to remove it. Record the review date and reason so the name is not re-added later without new evidence.