Gap Analysis. Re-imagined.

It is not uncommon that companies compare themselves with their competitors. We know we have to be obsessed with our customers, however, at some point, we have to know what’s the thing that has been attracting our customers over to their “shops”.

Hence, we are back at understanding our current objections from our customers — why are they objecting our offerings and keep going to our competitors?

In any businesses, I’m sure there are many encounters that their customers have objected to tons of proposals and even rejected them before going to the competition. It is, then, critical for companies to do a gap analysis from a feedback (I take objection as a feedback) viewpoint.

We start by working with the sales department to generate a list of objections from our customers and categorize them in a logical terminology that is easily interpreted as a Key Competing Factor (e.g. Customer Service, Integrated Solutions, Carbon Footprint, Product Up-time, Response Time, etc.). The Key Competing Factor can also be a key product feature(s) that your competitor(s) has and not your company.

The 5 WHYs Toolkit

Once we have finalized this list of objections, we would like to call them “Gaps”. Knowing the gaps is just the first step to identifying the WHAT, we need to know the WHY these gaps existed in…