In order to know how you are doing in comparison to your competition, it is necessary to engage in examining and evaluating your competition. However, there is a fine line of evaluating versus obsessing over one’s competition. Find out an incredible process for examining your competition in this snapshot from an interview between Dale Beaumont and Julian Campbell.
Julian is a sought-after professional speaker and every week over 40,000 people tune in to hear his business wisdom tips on his regular radio show, Business, the Law and You. He is the author of Stop the Wheel…I Want to Get Off!, a book designed to help businesses owners get off the treadmill of their business, make bigger profits and spend more timewith their families.
Can you share your process for examining competitors?
Knowing and understanding your competition is an important factor in your business plan, but you should keep it in perspective. Any person involved in competitive sport, or even warfare for that matter, knows how important it is to understand the opposing team’s strengths and weaknesses, and how they will react to your strategy.
Business is no different. I often hear people running down their competition, saying things like, ‘They are all useless, we are much better than they are’, even if the competition has been successfully running their business for many years, which shows that they must be doing something right.
I suggest that you write the names of four major competitors on a piece of paper and then write down what they do well, what they do badly, what their marketing is like, how they are performing generally and how they are perceived in the market. This will give you a realistic basis for comparison in your business plan, and if you don’t know the answers to the questions you need to do some homework to find out.
A word of warning – you can go too far when analysing your competition, particularly if you get hung up on pricing. I had a client who focused on his competition so much that he became obsessed with worrying about them and what they were doing. He would stand at the door of his shop and count the number of people visiting the competition’s shop, wondering why some of his customers were visiting their shop. Fortunately, we managed to get him to change his focus and his business began to build again.
We need to remember that we live in a world with a population over 6.7 billion. There are more than enough customers to go around. When you provide superior quality products and your customers experience your outstanding service, your business will thrive with or without competition.
For more on Processes for Examining and Evaluating Competition in Business check out Secrets of Top Business Builders Exposed!
