Competitive Landscape Deck

About this template

A map of the board, not a file on each company

A head-to-head competitor teardown builds feature and price tables and sets you against one rival. These fourteen slides go the other way: they draw the whole market on two axes and look for the cell nobody occupies. That suits an annual strategy workshop, a review before entering a new product category, or a repositioning debate — situations where the problem is your position rather than any one competitor. The agenda reads “How we segment the market”, “Strategic group map”, “Share movement”, “Open space and our space”, “The map two years ago and now”, “Key metrics” and “Trend analysis”. Competitors appear as groups and as generic labels throughout; keep it that way in an external version rather than naming and grading individual firms.

Choose the two axes first

Slide 4 states the premise: “X axis price band · Y axis deployment size”, “Only those competing for the same budget” and “2 substitutes shown as dotted lines”. The axes decide where the empty cell appears, so it is normal to draw two or three versions and keep only the one that explains the most. Write the inclusion rule down, or the question of why a given company was left out follows you through the whole presentation. The map shape itself is not in the file — add a blank slide and draw it, or paste an image.

Picking who goes on the map

1. Include only what is paid for out of the same budget line. A different department with a different budget is not a competitor.
2. Prefer companies you have actually met in a deal in the last two years.
3. Flag small-share, fast-growing entrants separately rather than dropping them.
4. Keep substitutes on the same picture with a different mark instead of excluding them.

The most accurate list comes from the sales organization. The competition people meet in deals and the competition visible in reports are not the same set.

Group them, then watch the movement

Slide 6 reads “Premium · enterprise: 3 companies”, “Mid · departmental: 5 companies” and “Low · individual: 9 companies”. Seventeen firms named one by one are impossible to remember, so they are bundled by price band and deployment unit and compared group against group. Slide 8 records where the share went: “Top 3 combined from 68% to 61%”, “Mid tier absorbed 9%p in 2 years” and “Low tier: 5 entries · 3 exits”. Put a source and a base year in brackets at the end of every share line. Slide 10 carries the conclusion — “No supplier in the mid · frontline cell” — and then sizes the gap with “24,000 businesses in that segment”.

The comparison slide overlays two dates

Slide 11 sets 2024 against 2026 and repeats the same three items on both sides: top-group share, the mid tier, and the frontline segment. “Premium · enterprise held 68%” faces “Premium · enterprise down to 61%”, and “No product aimed at frontline staff” faces “The frontline segment is still empty”. Let the items fall out of order and you have two snapshots instead of a change.

Cards and the group bars

The cards are 61% / “Top 3 share”, 17 / “Companies analyzed”, 3 / “Strategic groups” and 9%p / “Mid tier, 2-yr gain” — concentration, base, number of groups, and the size of the shift. Slide 13 charts Premium · enterprise 61, Mid · departmental 24, Low · individual 11 and Substitutes 4; the four values are set to sum to 100, so check the total whenever you change one.

The conclusion of this deck should be which group you intend to move toward. If you find the empty cell and then decide to stay exactly where you are, there was no reason to draw the map.

Before you present

• Is the source and base date of the share figures written down at least once?
• Did you find an empty cell without sizing it? A cell can be empty because there is no market in it.
• Did substitutes get left out of the competitive set? Anything fighting for the same budget competes, whatever shape it takes.
• Does a line about where you are moving appear before the closing, “Map the board, then pick a square”?