Competitive Analysis Section of a Business Plan

Published 2026-09-24

If you're writing a business plan for a lender, an investor, or an SBA loan application, the competitive analysis section is usually where plans get vague. "We have no real competitors" or "our main advantage is quality" isn't an analysis, and readers who look at plans for a living notice immediately. Here's what to put there instead.

What the reader is actually checking for

Whoever's reading this section isn't looking for proof that you'll win. They're checking whether you understand the market you're entering — because a founder who doesn't know who else is competing for the same customer is a bigger risk than one whose competitors happen to be strong. Show you've done the homework.

A structure that works

• Name 3–5 real competitors, mixing direct and indirect (see direct vs indirect competitors if you're not sure how to split them out). Naming zero competitors reads as not having looked; naming twenty reads as not having prioritized.
• A short profile of each — their positioning, rough pricing, and their biggest strength. A sentence or two per competitor is enough.
• A comparison table across a handful of dimensions that actually matter to your customer (price, location, hours, specialization — whatever's relevant to your business specifically, not a generic list).
• Your competitive advantage, stated specifically — not "better service," but the actual, checkable reason a customer would pick you. If you can't state one specifically, that's worth sitting with before you finish the plan, not after.
• Barriers to entry — what stops someone else from copying you tomorrow. If the honest answer is "nothing," say so and explain how you'll compete anyway; pretending otherwise is more obvious to a reader than it feels while writing it.

A mistake worth avoiding

The most common mistake in this section isn't a missing competitor, it's overclaiming uniqueness. "No one else does what we do" is rarely true and reads as either naive or untrustworthy. It's stronger, and more believable, to name real competitors and explain specifically where you differ.

Getting the research done

The research behind this section is the same research covered in how to do a competitor analysis for a small business — this page is really about how to write it up once you have it. If you'd rather generate the underlying research first, ScoutBrief builds a competitor and market report from a short description of your business that you can pull straight from into this section. First report's free, or see a sample report.