For most of us in business, there is someone else other than us competing for business in our marketplace. That means that customers have choice when it comes to buying your products or services. So how well do you know all the players in your marketplace? How competitive are they? What do they do better than you? What can you do better than them? What is your competitive strategy? Because if you believe you have a monopoly in your marketplace, beware! It won’t be for long.
This week I want to focus on your competitors and a strategy that I always work through with my clients to make sure they understand exactly how they compare to others they’re competing against. To not do the exercise is opening yourself up to massive risk of being picked off by another player in your industry without you even knowing it! The exercise is a competitor audit.
The starting point is you and your business. Chances are you can answer all of the questions I am about to list down which I consider to be important criteria when comparing yourself to your competitors. Ask yourself the following:
- What are your key points of difference?
- What is your pricing strategy?
- What is your product range? (Key features and benefits)
- What is your marketing campaign?
- How much do you advertise in the market place?
- What customer attraction strategies do you employ?
- What share of the market do you have?
- What are your key strengths that you can leverage?
- What are the areas of weakness you need to protect in the marketplace?
- How many customers do you have?
- Who are your most important customers?
- Who are your suppliers?
- What are your distribution channels for your products and services?
- What is the quality of your products and services?
- What is your customer service experience like?
- How big are you as a business? (revenue, employee numbers, locations)
- What is your current growth rate?
If you were to now ask the same list of questions of your competitors and rated them out of 5 on each question (1 = not worth thinking about to 5 = major concern), how would they compare to you? This is a very important exercise to understand where you currently fit in the competitive landscape. From here you can start to ask specific questions about what you need to do to get and stay ahead of everyone else out there.
So don’t delay! List your top five competitors and do the exercise now!
Build massive momentum!
