6 Reasons Why You Should Love Your Competitors
October 19, 2007
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The attitude of some business owners towards the competition amazes me. Lets face it, no matter what type of business you are in you are going to have competition: And I would hate to be in a business where I didn’t have at least a couple of good competitors. Here’s why:
1. It Means You’re Wanted: If there is very little competition, you have to ask yourself if there is really much of a market for your business. If there’s a lot of demand, it’s realistic to expect some good competition.
2. They’re Not All Bad: I’ve listened to people tell me they have competitors but they’re useless. This is one of the silliest things I’ve ever heard. Don’t fool yourself. If they were all that bad, they wouldn’t still be in business.
3. You Can Benefit From Their Marketing: In all business your product or service needs to be good enough and your marketing needs to be excellent. If your competitors are good marketers, your customers will be exposed to your product or service more often and they’ll be more likely to buy.
Remember most customers don’t buy because they desperately need something. In fact if you sell kitchen’s, they’re just as likely to change their minds and book a holiday instead than they are to buy from another kitchen supplier.
4. They Help You Improve: Good competition will ensure that you constantly try to improve what you have on offer. And this continous improvement will help keep your enthusiasm up, and help you to grow.
5. If They Think You’re Worth Competing Against Then You Are: Initially, I was disappointed that some of my best competitors noticed me almost as soon as I started my plumbing business. After all, they’re big national companies, so I was hoping to fly under the radar for a while.
One of them actually used a keyword hacker to hack into my site, then used what they found to improve their SEO and their Adwords campaign. They even tried to block me from viewing their new landing pages. And at first this irked me a little. Then it dawned on me that they wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble if they didn’t see me as a good competitor.
6. You Can Learn From Their Improvements: When your competition is constantly improving you can learn from them. For example I liked some of the things my competitors used on their landing pages and this inspired ideas on how I could improve my own. But, this doesn’t mean I decided to copy what they’d done. You should never do that. Use your competitions ideas by all means but make sure you’re offering something different.
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13 Responses to “6 Reasons Why You Should Love Your Competitors”
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And it’s important not to criticise your rivals. It is better to draw objective comparisons.
If your rival charges less, then that helps you differentiate - you should stress your added value. People will often pay more and be wary of taking the cheaper option.
Obviously the converse is true. Make sure you give a valid reason why your prices are cheaper - perhaps you have a system which drives efficiency. And if you can prove you deliver that little bit extra for less, then a competitor is a very useful benchmark to use to help you win a client.
Embracing competition had always worked for me in my freelance efforts
I completely agree that a successful business person learns as much as they can from that which surrounds them.
And of course I used to speak to them now and again on the phone to compare what we were doing, and exaggerate about how many jobs we’d done recently!
During Carlisle floods a parcel delivery guy started going on to me about what a rip off one of our competitors prices were. I think he was pretty shocked when I started defending them.
Modern worker - exactly, and we should never stop learning.
Rivals are an opportunity for clearer and more focused thinking. And that got me thinking.
So I wrote a long post about clearer thinking!
Thanks for the inspiration! Hadn’t posted much this week. Been on another planet, wetting myself about a presentation which wasn’t nearly as bad I thought it would be!
Hi Ian - noticed you hadn’t posted much this week. And to think I typed all that in agony with one hand!
Glad presentation went well though. How on earth do you find all those solicitors?
Hi Catherine,
You’re doing a great job with one hand. Hopefully, you are feeling better.
Competition is great for all of us. It keeps us on our toes, gives customers choices, and keeps prices fair.
In our business, I had to self educate when it came to getting prices for job materials. I quickly learned that I could not just look at the “bottom line” of a bid. Often, things were missed, or calculated incorrectly, and if I went by the bottom line only, could end up spending much more than the stated figure.
In turn, I try to educate our customers if we are bidding a job. I spell everything out in detail. I want them to know what they are getting for the price. Often, we have gotten a job, even though our price was higher. The customer felt like they were getting a complete job. We try not make the customer have to guess, if something is included.
Over the years we have been seen some of our competitors bids, and they are so vague, even I would have a problem signing the contract. It leave too much room for loopholes.
Some of our competitors are notorious for soliciting our employees, however, we refuse to stoop to that level, and do the same to their employees.
On the other hand, we have had competitors refer us to a customer, due to the fact, they know we have expertise in areas, they don’t understand. To us, that’s a great compliment.
Good stuff, Catherine - and I thought I’d had a few problems!
Thanks for your kind comments on my blog.
Finding the solicitors is relatively straight forward. We simply email them an irresistable invitation!
Mind you only 40 out of 65 turned up. We should have spotted two other major events in the city that night - alot of them went to the Turner prize opening party at the Tate in the Albert Dock.
Oh, and we also used some proactive word of mouth. We emailed an invitation a well-known lawyer. And we asked him to forward it to the same list saying something like “I’m going, do you fancy coming too?” That got alot of people going.
Keep your friends close but your enemies closer, eh? I will vouch also though that this is very effective. I have learned a lot from closely observing my competition and trying to recreate how they became successful. There is something to learn from each opportunity.
That being said, however, just imitating them won’t mean you will become successful. True success will come when you can learn from what they do and then expand upon it in ways not previously tried.
Ian 40 out of 65 is bloody good. I can’t imagine persuading 40 solicitors to go to an IT event in the evening.
Nick - very true - you have to be different, or you will not stand out.
What you say about contracts is so true. I think customers tendto have more faith in you if you spell everything out clearly in black and white.
It’s funny you should mention staff poachers. They are so annoying. In my last business, a competitor tried to poach my husband - he wasn’t my husband then but he did live with me so they can’t have done their research very well!
Catherine,
That’s funny about the competition trying to “poach” your husband. They could have been in for a real surprise if he had gone to work for them, and became a “spy” for you.
I say, be careful if you decide to get into poaching. You may get more than you bargained for.
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