While you sleep, a system checks your competitors' prices

An appliance retailer calls me, annoyed: on three of his flagship products, sales had dropped for weeks without his understanding why. Looking into it, we found the reason in five minutes. A competitor had slipped just below his price, and he'd never seen it. By the time he noticed, he'd lost a month's sales on his best sellers. His real question wasn't "how do I cut my prices," it was "how do I stop being the last to know."

Watching competitors' prices by hand is an impossible job. Opening ten sites, looking up each product, noting the prices, starting again the following week: nobody keeps it up for more than a fortnight. The result is everyone stops, and everyone flies blind. It's exactly the kind of repetitive task with no judgement call that a machine does perfectly, every night, without ever tiring of it. Here's what that changes, and the trap you fall into at the start.

What it changes: from three weeks to one morning

We set up an automatic check of competitors' prices on his products that matter. Every morning, before opening, the table is ready: who's moved, in which direction, by how much. He no longer searches, he looks. A drop from a competitor that would have taken him three weeks to spot, he now sees the same day, while it still matters, not once the sales have already gone elsewhere.

And mind you, reacting doesn't mean blindly matching a lower price. Sometimes the right decision is to change nothing, because better service or faster delivery justifies the gap. The goal isn't to cut prices, it's to decide with full knowledge instead of just taking it. Knowing a competitor is cheaper already means you can answer with something other than price.

Deciding instead of taking it: an example

One morning, the table showed that a competitor had dropped well below his price on an important product. The reflex reaction would have been to match it, and so eat into his margin. We looked closer: that competitor was out of stock on the most popular version, with long delivery times. Rather than cutting his price, the retailer highlighted his immediate availability and fast delivery, right next to the price. He kept selling, at a slightly higher price, because he was offering something the other didn't have that day. Without the watch, he'd have known nothing; knowing, he chose his response instead of enduring it.

That's the real value of pricing information: it doesn't force you to cut, it gives you back the choice. Sometimes the right move is to match, sometimes to hold firm, sometimes to highlight something else. What's certain is that you always decide better seeing than blind.

The failure: at first, the system cried wolf

In the first few days, it flagged dozens of "drops" that weren't really drops. A competitor was running a weekend promotion, the system took it for a new price and fired an alert. At that rate, we'd have matched temporary sales and slashed prices for nothing. Too many alerts is like no alerts at all: you end up ignoring all of them. So we added a layer of verification that tells a real trend apart from a passing promotion, and only surfaces what deserves a decision. That sorting is what made the tool usable instead of tiring.

What you can do on your own this week

You don't need a system to start. Take your five best selling products, and for a week, note down every morning the price of two or three competitors on them. A simple table is enough. In seven days, you'll already see things: who moves often, who's below you, what you can relax about. This chore, kept up for a week, will tell you whether the subject is worth automating for your business, and which products to prioritise.

When tracking it by hand becomes unmanageable, that's where an automated pricing watch takes over. What you do with it next, on margins and decisions, joins steering your figures day to day; and if you sell online, it combines directly with a sales engine that converts.