Turn three rivals into a weekly action plan

This prompt turns a language model into a stand-in analyst who studies three named rivals and hands back a ranked plan of action. You get a profile of each competitor, an honest note on where they beat you, and a short list of moves you can start within seven days. It suits founders, product marketers and sales leads who need a working picture of the field before a pricing change, a launch or a pitch.

Use it when you are entering a crowded category, preparing to reposition, or losing deals without knowing why. Skip it for early idea screening, where you have no real competitors to name yet.

How to run it

1. Write a short role line. Something like: act as an analyst who has spent years briefing leadership teams on crowded markets. This sets the register and keeps the reply sharp.
2. State your own position in one sentence. Example: we sell scheduling software to independent dental clinics in the UK, priced per chair per month.
3. Name exactly three competitors and, where you can, link their pricing page or a review thread. Three is the useful number. More turns the answer into a list.
4. Ask for fixed fields per competitor: how they describe their offer, what they charge and where that leaves room, the complaint that shows up most in reviews, something they do better than you, and one tactic worth copying now.
5. Close with a request for a prioritised plan for the next seven days, ranked by effort against likely impact.
6. Add a line forbidding vague advice. Ask for names, numbers, channels and a first step for each item.

What to check in the reply

Test every claim you did not supply. A model will fill gaps with plausible guesses about pricing tiers and customer gripes. If it says a rival charges a flat fee with no setup cost, go and confirm that on their site before you build a plan on it. The honest-comparison field is the one most people soften, so read it twice. A good answer names one real advantage your rival holds and tells you plainly why buyers pick them.

The action plan is where the value sits. Strong output reads like a to-do list: rewrite the pricing page comparison table by Thursday, email the ten lost deals from last quarter with a switching offer, record a two-minute demo of the feature they charge extra for. Weak output says things like improve your marketing or focus on customer service. If you get the second kind, reply with the weaker items quoted and ask for a concrete first step and an owner for each.

Run it again each quarter with the same three names. Comparing the profiles over time shows you which rival is drifting and where the next opening sits.