Ten ways to make your competition work for you

How much effort do you put into tracking your competition? For most of us, the answer is--not enough. You wouldn’t try to run your business with no regard for the law, or economic conditions, or your customers. But it is surprising how many people feel they can run their businesses with little or no regard for their competition.

There are exceptions. Pizza parlors carefully monitor competitive menus and promotions. I’m sure General Motors spends a lot of time keeping an eye on Toyota. And airlines pay close attention to competitive pricing and initiatives. But many other businesses pay only occasional and cursory attention to their competitors. That’s a mistake.

Here’s ten suggestions for gathering and (more importantly) making use of competitive information:

1) Reach corporate consensus on who your competitors currently are (this may be harder than you expect). Review this list regularly (semi-annually?)

2) Make someone responsible for tracking competition. It isn’t hard--your receptionist can do it if you tell them how.

3) Prove you think this information is important. Review competitive information regularly, and share your findings with the appropriate people.

4) Set up a grid comparing the details of your offering(s) to those of the competition. This can include anything meaningful-- prices, sizes, flavors, channels of distribution, store hours, shipping costs, return policies, etc. Look for differences and decide if they are advantages or disadvantages for you; then leverage the advantages and chip away at the disadvantages.

5) Benchmark competition by printing out all the screens on their website, then have someone look for changes on a regular (quarterly?) basis. Pay particular attention to pricing, product portfolio changes, service offerings, news releases, etc.

6) If your competitors are public companies, buy a share of stock in each so that you will receive their mailings.

7) Have your employees collect and forward sales collateral and advertising from the competition to the person you’ve made responsible for competitive tracking (another good reason to have such a person). Find a way to reward them for their efforts!

8) Don’t just watch established competitors. While start-ups may not be an immediate threat, they obviously feel they’ve found a significant chink in your armor, or they wouldn’t be entering the industry. Analyze them carefully to find out why they think you’re vulnerable.

9) Periodically (annually?) do a threat assessment that considers competition from outside the industry. It wasn’t a hard-copy carrier that crippled FedX’s overnight letter business, it was FAX machines.

10) Set up an exercise where you create combined teams of internal and external people with the assignment of putting you out of business. Then take a long look at the plans they develop. If they can think of it, so can your competition!

Having trouble finding time to watch the competition? Your CMO can set up a system for you. I’ll even monitor the competition for you, so you don’t have to. Let me know if I can help!