How leadership profiling helped a SaaS company anticipate competitor decisions
Most SaaS companies know a lot about their competitors’ products. They know the features, watch pricing, and follow product launches, funding news, customer wins, and hiring updates. But companies themselves don’t make choices.
People do.
Behind every pricing change, acquisition, product launch, discount, or move into a new market, there’s a group of executives making tough decisions.
One B2B SaaS company wanted to understand those decision-makers. It wasn’t enough to know what Competitor A, B, and C were doing. The leadership team wanted to know why, who was behind those choices, and what those executives might do next. This changed the whole approach to gathering intelligence.
Background
Our client was an established B2B SaaS company supplying an important platform to enterprise customers. Competition was growing. Competitor A was much more aggressive with big accounts. And competitor B changed how it packaged its platform. Competitor C hired several senior executives, signalling it was preparing for its next growth phase.
Observing the market from the outside yielded a great deal of information. But it didn’t provide enough real understanding. The client could see what competitors did, but not why they did it.
For example, if a competitor cuts prices by 20%, it could mean several things. Maybe the leadership decided gaining market share mattered more than margins. A new chief revenue officer might have a rapid growth target. The discount could be for key accounts only. Or the competitor might be struggling and trying to keep its current customers.
Each explanation would call for a different response. The client wanted to stop seeing competitors as faceless companies and start understanding the people making the decisions.
What Was Happening
The SaaS market was getting harder to predict.
Competitor A started offering aggressive multi-year deals.
Competitor B began bundling features it used to sell separately.
And competitor C talked about moving further into the enterprise market and hired senior sales and product executives.
The client’s commercial team asked the obvious question:
What will they do next?
But there was a better question to ask:
Who will decide what to do next?
We found that the answer was rarely just “the CEO”. Enterprise pricing decisions could involve the CRO, CFO, and regional sales leaders. The Chief Product Officer might control how the company responds to a product.
The CEO might get involved in decisions about major enterprise accounts if the customer is strategically important. Knowing the organisation chart was helpful. Understanding who made which decisions helped a lot.
Key Questions
The work focused on the decisions the client had to make.
The questions included:
- Who are the ones who actually influence the major pricing, product, and market-entry decisions at Competitor A, Competitor B, and Competitor C?
- Who among the leaders has the final word, and who among the executives influences them?
- What did those executives do in their earlier positions?
- What do their career records indicate regarding the strategies they prefer?
- Is their main focus on growth, margins, products, or sales?
- How have they reacted in the past when faced with a competitor?
- What have they said in public regarding growth, pricing, AI, partnerships and enterprise customers?
- What decisions are highly centralised and which are delegated?
- What seems to cause individual leaders to change their minds?
- What pressures from the commercial side are likely to affect their decisions?
- What effect would the recent appointments of executives have on the way the competitor acts?
- What is likely to be the course of action of each leadership team under various market scenarios?
The aim was not to carry out a psychological diagnosis. It was a much more practical approach. Our goal was to understand how decisions are made.
What We Did
First, we mapped out the leadership teams. Instead of just collecting LinkedIn bios, we built each profile around a key business question:
What influence might this person’s past experiences, the duties they have to carry out, and their previous behaviour have on the actions of the competitor?
About the CEO, the CRO, the CFO, the CPO and some of the regional leaders, we looked at their career history, previous companies, duties, reporting relationships, statements made in public, their appearances at conferences, comments made to investors, the podcasts they have taken part in, the articles and all other published material.
Looked for patterns
Next, we looked for patterns. A leader who had, in previous companies, always prioritised rapid customer acquisition merited attention.
A chief financial officer did the same, having been brought in by the organisation just before a major emphasis on profitability.
A CRO who earned their reputation by securing large enterprise accounts might take a different approach than a sales leader whose experience was mainly in product-led growth.
Public information was just one part of the picture.
By adopting the people-powered method described in the proposal, it is possible to improve leadership profiles through discussions with individuals who understand how decisions are actually made—such as former employees, customers, partners, industry specialists, and others who have worked with or alongside those executives. The first proposal suggests establishing the backgrounds, responsibilities, reporting lines, and public positions of the decision makers, as well as the decision criteria reported by those who have interacted with them.
Connecting people
We then connected the leadership profiles to what we could see competitors doing.
- Pricing changes.
- Enterprise wins.
- Discounting.
- Hiring.
- Partner announcements.
- Product launches.
- Acquisitions.
- Executive appointments.
- Market entries.
We put these events and management changes on a timeline and created simple decision scenarios.
Instead of saying:
“Competitor A is aggressive.”
We could say:
There is strong evidence that if a key business account becomes available, Competitor A’s current leadership will agree to lower first-year economics in exchange for a longer contract and a customer they can cite as a reference.
That’s much more useful competitive intelligence.
The Results
The profiles changed how the client saw all three competitors.
Competitor A
At first, the sales team saw Competitor A as just a heavy discounter. But the leadership analysis showed something more subtle. The company’s level of aggression wasn’t the same everywhere.
The leadership seemed willing to lower prices when an account offered strategic value, such as entering a new sector, landing a well-known customer, or replacing a competitor.
This insight was important.
Matching Competitor A’s prices in every deal would have been costly and unnecessary. The real warning sign wasn’t the discount. It was the account’s strategic importance.
Competitor B
Competitor B, on the other hand, seemed pretty quiet. Some people in the client’s company saw this as a weakness. But the leadership profile suggested otherwise.
Executives with strong backgrounds in operational discipline and profitable growth increasingly drove decision-making.
Instead of chasing every opportunity, Competitor B focused on growing revenue from current customers and protecting its margins. So, its response to competition might not be another price cut.
Bundling, packaging, and extra features were more likely to be used as tools. This meant the client needed to look beyond headline subscription prices when comparing offers.
Competitor C
Competitor C was the hardest to read. Its product strategy looked ambitious, but execution was inconsistent. Leadership analysis explained why this mattered.
A small group made several big decisions. This gave Competitor C both strengths and weaknesses. Once the leadership team saw an opportunity, they could move quickly.
However, getting approval for an unusual enterprise agreement could take a long time. For the client’s sales team, this became actionable intelligence.
In competitive situations, speed suddenly became crucial.
How they made decisions
The most valuable result wasn’t just three executive biographies.
Instead, there were three different ways competitors made decisions. The client could begin asking:
- What has to be the case if Competitor A is to reduce its price?
- What could cause Competitor B to leave?
- What would cause the management of Competitor C to speed up their product decision?
These questions helped the company predict behaviour instead of just watching it.
Our recommendations
We advised making leadership intelligence a continuous process, not only a one-time research project.
Executive teams change. The mandates shift. CEOs modify their priorities. When new CROs are appointed, they alter the compensation schemes. CFOs implement new financial disciplines. And the product leaders who arrive have different ideas about what the platform should become.
A competitor leadership database should include more than simply names and job titles.
For each key leader, we suggested keeping a short decision profile that covers their responsibilities, influence, past roles, major decisions, public opinions, business goals, and how they’ve acted in tough situations.
We also recommended creating competitor-specific trigger indicators.
A sudden increase in hiring enterprise sales staff could matter more if a CRO known for building large-account teams is hired.
Hiring a new CFO might change how aggressive discounting is viewed.
It’s easier to understand an acquisition if you consider how the CEO has entered new markets before.
In the end, these profiles should feed directly into scenario planning. Before a big product launch, pricing change, or enterprise negotiation, the client should ask:
What impression will this make on the people leading our competitors, and how are they likely to respond?
Conclusions
Competitor intelligence usually focuses on organisations. But organisations don’t attend meetings.
They never discuss margins. They aren’t concerned if they miss a growth target. And they never decide whether to spend another £20 million on developing a product.
People do.
Understanding the people behind your competitors can reveal things that product comparisons and pricing trackers rarely show:
Intent.
You can’t predict every move your competitors will make.
That’s not the goal.
The goal is to reduce the number of surprises.
When you know who makes the decisions, what influences them, and how they’ve acted before, your competitor’s next move is usually much less of a mystery.
How Octopus Competitive Intelligence can help you too
Octopus Competitive Intelligence helps SaaS companies look beyond product comparisons, pricing pages, and automated competitor alerts. We find the people who influence key decisions, learn about their backgrounds, roles, public positions, and past behaviour, and talk to market experts to understand how decisions are really made. We connect these insights with competitor pricing, hiring, product strategy, sales behaviour, and market activity to give you a practical view of what your competitors might do next.
Our goal isn’t to create dossiers on individuals, but to give your leadership, product, and commercial teams something more valuable: a better sense of how your competitors think, how they’re likely to react, and what you can do before they do.
We are Octopus. The Global People-Powered Competitive Intelligence Agency.
Outsmart your competition. Make the unknown known. Octopus helps you gain clarity in complex markets. With clients and tentacles around the world, we deliver sharp, actionable competitive intelligence through a blend of deep primary (HUMINT) and secondary research. If you’re looking to make smarter decisions, beat the competition, and reduce uncertainty, we’re the partner you want on your side.
