Standardizing The Comparison Slide

On Friday I was meeting with an interesting company. Their presentation was going along well and then we hit the dreaded competition comparison slide. You know the slide -- it is the one where you try to make clear that your product/service is better than everything else in the market. I've written about the competition slide before. It comes in a bunch of different forms but it is usually a list of attributes that your product/service has and that your competition's product/service doesn't. The degree to which an attribute is held by your product or the competition's product is indicated by a number of different codes -- circles, checks, percentages, even smiley faces. And, of course, there are always degrees of attribute compliance. Circles become circles, half circles, shaded circles, empty circles, full circles. Checks become check plusses, check minuses, half checks, grey checks. Percentages are used with incredible granularity (how does a product have 36% of an attribute?).

Given the myriad of codes used to depict product superiority, I find myself spending the first minutes of any such slide just trying to crack the code. Is a grey check better than a black check? Is a black circle faster/slower/bigger/smaller/cheaper/deeper/whatever than a red circle? (hint: look at the presenter's product column -- whatever they've got is what you want). In this era of standardization, I think it is time to standardize the comparison slide. And, for the sake of debate (we all know it takes a long time to reach consensus on any standard), I propose a standard -- the Consumer Reports ranking system. We've all gone to Consumer Reports when shopping for a car or a vacuum cleaner or a stroller. We've all seen the Consumer Reports bubbles. And we all know that it is better to have a full red circle than a full black circle (let me review -- the good folks at the Consumers Union have determined that the full red circle is excellent, the half red circle is very good, the empty circle is good, the half black circle is fair, and the full black circle is poor -- got it?). OK, truth be told, I don't care if you adopt my standard. But I sure would like some standard, so that I can focus on the information in your presentation, and not on deciphering your code.

Comments

[Frank A]

Over the years I've presented and received many of these slides. I've learned two things:

1) Ignore these slides. Ask the presenter to "net-out" why they are different and why it matters. If they can't explain it to you in simple terms, then they won't be able to explain it to a customer either.

2) The most important purchasing criteria are often not on the slide -- because they're not features of the product. I've worked in the telco equipment space for years and, in general, the most important criteria is a badge that says "Alcatel," "Nortel," (still true even with their recent struggles), etc. The exception is when you are the only game in town for the product. If that's the case, however, it should be pretty easy to explain a company's differentiation.

[Sean]

In many situations, I've never understood why customers or investors think the company would have the best insight on how they rank against their competitors when their competitors are doing their best to hide information from them. It might be different if the competition is so well known that their functionality is taken for granted (i.e. my new whiz-bang word processor vs. Microsoft Word) but in that case, 1) it better be an awesome differentiator, 2) you probably don't need a complex matrix anyway.

[michael sippey]

(They're called "Harvey Balls," in case you were curious.)

http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=29050

and

http://www.sippey.com/archives/000952.php

[miko]

I agree, but the only way to standardize the comparisons is to use a neutral third party organization with some editorial system for such comparisons. Disclaimer: I work for the Middleware company and we are a neutral third party organization =)

Anyhow, easy way to cut through the BS is to ask for reference customers and ask point blank why they chose that vendor.

[kirk otis]

I understand the problem, lots of the charts take time for the audience to understand "language" before they can understand the information, but you miss a bigger issue.

The items, the features being communicated. The metrics are more important than the art used to communicate. For example one company will say ASIC for speed and the other company will say software for flexibility... and both will give themselves four nice, round, bright red Harvey Balls...

[Manu Sharma]

The bigger issue here is that Powerpoint is a dangerous tool to assess [or demonstrate] complex issues like probable damage to a spacecraft in an accident or the likely returns of a proposed investment.

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/discourse

[Abdul Kundi]

Dear David

My name is Abdul Kundi and I am founder of a start-up company that is planning to provide consumer services to cell phone users. While the engineers are working on the prototype I am educating myself in preparing for presentation to angel and venture investors. The information provided at ventureblog is priceless, as they say in mastercard ads. And best of all I don't have to pay equity for this education.

I salute to u and your colleagues for this education.

Regards

Abdul Q. Kundi

Ciphone.com (site not live yet)