Competitor Mentions in Sales Conversations: Who Customers Compare You With and Why

What counts as a competitor mention

Before you start a report, decide what counts as a competitor mention. Chats usually contain four types of statement, and mixing them muddies the result.

1. A specific brand or companyThe customer names a shop, studio, agency or online marketplace. This is the most precise kind of mention and goes straight on the competitor list.
2. A specific productThe customer names another company’s product or model rather than the seller. This is a product comparison and is useful for range decisions.
3. A vague alternative“It’s cheaper elsewhere”, “I saw it online”, “a friend found a better deal”. No name, but a comparison. Log these separately as unnamed comparisons and keep them off the competitor list.
4. Not buying at all“I’ll do it myself”, “we’ll repair the old one”, “we’ll wait for now”. Not a competitor, but it is the option the customer weighs against you, and it is useful as its own category.

Grouping comparison reasons

A competitor’s name on its own tells you little. What the customer is comparing is far more useful. Most comparisons fall into three groups:

1. Price“It’s 200 cheaper there.” Careful: do not treat the price the customer quotes as a verified fact. The offers may differ in what they include, such as delivery, installation or warranty.
2. Features and service“They deliver for free”, “they come and measure at home”, “their model has remote control”. These may point to a real advantage the competitor has, or to something you are not explaining well.
3. Terms and trust“They give a three-year warranty”, “I’ve known them for years”, “my friend bought there and was happy”. Trust is not won by competing on price. It needs reviews, guarantees and transparency.

Keep the customer’s original words in every entry. The summary “competitor is cheaper” and the sentence “X sells the same sofa for 150 less, but delivery is extra” lead to completely different decisions.

Merging name variants

On WhatsApp, customers write names in all sorts of ways: in different alphabets, abbreviated, misspelt, or simply as “that big store”. When you count a month of mentions, the same competitor can appear on five different lines.

• Pick one canonical name for each competitor and map every variant to it.
• Do not delete the original spelling: keep “canonical name” and “as written by the customer” in separate columns.
• If it is unclear who is meant, do not merge. Keep it as “unidentified”.
• Review the list monthly: new names and new variants keep appearing.

Skip this step and your “most mentioned competitor” may be wrong, simply because its mentions are split across several spellings.

Turning the report into sales decisions

The table below is an illustrative example: four entries pulled from a furniture store’s chats over one month. Each row shows the competitor, the comparison topic, the evidence and the outcome. The outcome is recorded only if the chat shows it. Otherwise it is “unknown”.

1. Competitor A — priceEvidence: “The same corner sofa is 150 cheaper at A.” Outcome: the customer bought from you because delivery and assembly were included. Decision: always list what is included in quotes.
2. Competitor A — deliveryEvidence: “A delivers the next day, you say five days.” Outcome: unknown, the customer went quiet. Decision: review your own delivery times internally rather than making claims about A.
3. Competitor B — warrantyEvidence: “B gives a three-year warranty.” Outcome: unknown. Decision: do not argue with B’s terms without verifying them; explain your own warranty clearly.
4. Unnamed comparison — priceEvidence: “I saw it cheaper online.” Outcome: the customer declined. Decision: log separately, not on the competitor list. If these grow, look into online price comparisons as a separate question.

Notice that the table contains no unverified facts about competitors. “A delivers the next day” is what the customer said, not something you confirmed. Keep the same rule when you prepare response material for the sales team: do not run competitors down, show your own terms clearly.

Build the response material as short cards. Each card covers one comparison topic and has three parts:

• The customer’s typical phrase: a real example from your chats, such as “delivery is free there”.
• A clarifying question: “Apart from delivery, what matters most to you: timing, assembly, warranty?”
• Your actual terms: with verified numbers, without naming the competitor and without claims about them.

Update the cards every quarter. Competitors change their terms, and so do you. An answer based on an outdated card can give the customer wrong information, which does more harm than no answer at all. Include the cards in new hires’ first week, too: that is where they will learn how your customers actually talk.

Competitor comparisons often come with a price objection, so separate them by the type of “too expensive” objection. To see what customers ask for that you do not offer, build a needs map from your chats. And to avoid confusing a mention with a loss, check lost deal reasons against evidence.

How to check your own chats with Chatdue

Chatdue reads your company’s WhatsApp conversations and, for each chat, shows the competitors the customer named, their objections and any amounts mentioned in separate fields. This is not web monitoring of competitors: it only analyses what your own customers wrote to you.

If you want to tag the comparison topic using the groups above, you can create your own analytics field. Export the results to Excel to merge name variants and build a monthly report. Competitor names mentioned in voice messages are transcribed and included too.

Frequently asked questions

1. Does a competitor mention mean the sale is lost?No. Some customers name a competitor and then buy from you, because after comparing they found your offer a better fit. A loss is confirmed only when the customer declines or says they bought elsewhere. Keep those two facts in separate columns.
2. What if the same competitor is written in different ways?Choose one canonical name and map every spelling to it, while keeping the customer’s original spelling in its own column. If it is unclear who is meant, do not merge. A wrong merge is worse than a gap, because it is hard to spot later.