| How to Prosper Because of Your Competition by Bill Dueease
Originally published in the September 2003 Issue of Link & Learn.
If you've been considering your competitors as roadblocks or hindrances, you have been overlooking an important springboard to success.
Business owners frequently consider their competition as the enemy. Many focus on "beating the other guy" because that's how they measure their success -- just like in sports, where one team has to beat the other to win.
However, by focusing on beating the competition, you will divert yourself from your real objectives: increasing profits, gaining more time, and gaining more control. Bottom line: you will succeed at these goals only by improving yourself and your business, regardless of the competition. However, you can use your competition to further your own prosperity. Let's look at how this can be done…
Phase 1: Face Your Competition
The first step in prospering because of competition is to identify and analyze the "Real Competition." It's frequently not readily apparent. Sure, your business might have a new and unique product or service, but when the needs it actually fulfills are defined, you'll discover that many other types of products and/or services fulfill similar (if not the same) ones.
The second step is to evaluate your competition thoroughly -- to know more about them than they or your potential customers do. You gain considerable knowledge and power doing this, which you will be able to use during the next step.
Phase 2: Embrace Your Competition
The next step is to embrace your competition. That's right! In fact, you want and need competition. Here are several reasons why:
1) Your potential customers need to compare your business and your products and/or services to someone or something else in order to see and feel that your products and/or services provide the best deal for them. Everything is relative, and comparison in buying is a very natural thing.
2) You need your competition as a place to send unwanted customers. That is . . .
a. You need to avoid and/or get relief from bad customer experiences. You quite often spend too much time, money and effort on extremely demanding, very price conscious, "unpleasable" customers, who almost always produce no profits and sometimes create losses. Even worse, they distract you from your best customers, who drift away in silence.
b. You might as well let your competitors deal with these problem people and thus probably overlook the better ones -- who might seek you out.
c. You show strength to customers when you don't fear competition. Many potential customers will try to threaten you and your business with "The Competition" as a negotiating tactic. Your confident understanding of your competitors and of your desirable customers will allow you to educate them to the real differences. This is how you can position your business favorably.
3) You need to be pushed to continually improve. Monopolies create terrible consequences. Competition creates a desire to keep getting better. By not improving, a business is not standing still -- in reality it's declining toward its demise.
4) Your competitors will frequently teach you new ways to reach your business goals. You will want to execute very profitable programs that follow similar, if not identical, programs previously instituted successfully by competitors. Does the term "re-engineering" sound familiar? Japanese automakers dissected American and European cars, then took the best features and combined them into very desirable products that filled many needs the other automakers failed to provide.
5) Your competitors will frequently supply some of your greatest business opportunities. They may choose to ignore your potential customers or interact offensively with them, or they may be incapable of providing the benefits that your customers want.
6) Competitors will frequently open up markets that did not exist before, allowing you and your business to move in and prosper. Sound silly? Look how fast food restaurants feed off of each other by congregating in certain areas, making it very easy for customers to pick from a number of choices.
Phase 3: Use What You Know
There are examples all around you of business owners thriving because of their competition. One couple, for example, started a cleaning business in the face of an overabundance of competitors and greatly prospered, even with higher prices. They were able to do this because they were the only business to quickly answer the phone with a live friendly person and to rapidly return all calls. Their competition actually drove excellent customers to them.
In another case, a development group created an extremely profitable new ski resort by concentrating on providing warm, courteous and ever-increasing benefits to their typical skiers. The existing ski area considered itself the "only game in town" and was more focused on treating their directors as semi-royalty - considering their paying customers lucky to have the privilege to ski there. The developers of the new resort feasted on the monopoly the others thought they had.
By using what you know now, you too can prosper because of your competition.
Copyright © 1999 by Bill Dueease
Bill Dueease is a professional business coach and co-founder of The Coach Connection; LLC where "connecting great people with great coaches" is their goal. You may receive a free copy of the article "Get Your Ideal Position: Go to Play Every Day" by contacting The Coach Connection: www.findyourcoach.com/0o-business-coach.htm
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