Many companies find their products part of research studies that compare their products to others in the marketplace.  The results can help you highlight all the top features and benefits of your product.  In some cases, though, the results can be detrimental to your product and your company.  Whether it’s a peer-reviewed, scientific review or one person informally comparing your product or service to your competition, you can support your sales and marketing team by staying on top of them.

Here are some things to consider if your industry is full of comparisons and research studies:

1. Know the landscape – Use tools like Google Alerts to know when your product is in a study
2. Support ongoing research – search out anyone who does reviews and support their work (better the devil you know…)
3. Keep track of the research – keep a database (spreadsheet with links is a great start) of all the studies and comparisons so you can refer to them in the future or track the people doing the study

Once you find research you want to promote or refute, create some support tools for everyone in the company so they are all singing the same tune.  Remember that if the report is very scientific and your audiences (internal or external) don’t have that technical language, you may need to translate the language into something that is consumable.

• Determine your response:
  • Do you want to promote or refute the research?
  • If you’re going to refute the study, what will your tone be – writing all three tones helps you decide what tone you actually want to use:
    • Nice – Don’t slag the researcher or the results but introduce doubt about the conclusions
    • Harsh – Be specific about what is wrong with the research methodology or results without being personal
    • Blow it up – Clearly state why the study should not be used as a point of comparison and provide contrary studies that prove the research is not reliable or the conclusions are flawed
  • Create a document that the whole company, but especially customer-facing team members can use to promote or cast doubt on the results including:
    • A one-line standard response
    • A paragraph they could copy & paste into an email or post to summarize the research study
    • A list of conclusions that the company wants to highlight or argue
    • Links to the research study
    • Links to other research that either supports or refutes this study
    • Internal research to support the position

In the end, you can’t control what someone says about you based on research or their personal opinion.  You can control how you and your customer-facing team react to the information.  Having a plan and communicating it can help your team reflect the values of your company while managing objections.