How do your customers solve problems now?

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Understanding the existing alternatives that your customers use to solve their problems is crucial when aiming to develop and market successful products or services. These alternatives — whether they are direct competitors, workarounds, or DIY methods — represent the status quo that your customers currently rely on. By identifying these existing solutions and analyzing their limitations, you can uncover valuable insights into unmet needs, customer frustrations, and opportunities for differentiation.

​​What are the alternatives to your product or service?

Knowing the alternatives gives you a clear view of your customer’s decision-making landscape. It highlights what your customers value, what trade-offs they are willing to accept, and what gaps persist in the current market. 
For example, if users are cobbling together spreadsheets, free tools, and manual processes to accomplish a task, it signals that no single solution fully meets their needs. This insight enables you to build products that offer greater integration, ease of use, or efficiency—qualities that directly address your customer’s pain points.

Why don’t alternatives fully satisfy your customer?

Understanding these alternatives reveals the specific shortcomings that your customers experience. These shortfalls might include poor usability, high costs, lack of customization, insufficient support, or simply the time and effort required to make the solution work. You can leverage this information not just to create better solutions, but also to shape compelling marketing messages. Demonstrating how a product overcomes the limitations of existing options helps build trust and quickly communicates value.

Additionally, studying current alternatives helps you avoid building “me-too” products that fail to stand out. Sadly, I see this a lot in my advisory and fractional CXO work. Many startups and even established companies fall into the trap of replicating features without addressing the core frustrations users have with existing solutions. By contrast, companies that deeply understand the competitive landscape and customer experience can focus on meaningful innovation—enhancing the user journey in ways that matter most.

Moreover, understanding existing alternatives supports strategic pricing, positioning, and customer segmentation. It allows you to determine whether to compete on price, quality, convenience, or a unique feature set. It also clarifies which market segments are most dissatisfied with current options and therefore more likely to adopt a new solution.

The Takeaway.

A thorough understanding of the alternatives your customers already use — and the shortcomings of those options — enables a company to build better products, communicate value more clearly, and position itself effectively in the market. It shifts innovation from guesswork to insight-driven strategy, ultimately increasing the likelihood of market success.

What about you? Does your organization fully understand the existing alternatives your customers use? Please comment – I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks,
Tom Myers

About the Author:  Tom Myers is an accomplished business leader with over two decades of success building organizations from the ground up with multiple successful exits. He holds strong expertise in designing and implementing winning strategies, change management, improving operations, driving business development through sales, marketing, PR, and strategic partnerships, and effectively building and leading teams toward a common goal. He has effectively served in C-suite and Board positions in for-profit and non-profit organizations, and currently offers Fractional CXO and advisory services via V2R Ventures.