Get to Know Your Competition

By JK Harris of Entrepreneur.com

Business is war and the competition is the enemy -- right? Wrong. Though competition is a fundamental aspect of being in business, savvy entrepreneurs know that viewing competitors exclusively as adversaries is shortsighted and potentially damaging. A better strategy is to build alliances with your competitors and let them help you become better and stronger. Here's how:

Know who your competitors are. This sounds basic, but it's a mistake many business owners and salespeople make. If you have a retail store, your competitors are obviously other retailers who sell similar merchandise (both online and brick-and-mortar). But that's not all. You're also competing with the businesses that are meeting the needs of your customers with products and services you don't offer and haven't thought about offering, and the businesses that might make your products obsolete. You need to know who all your competitors are -- not just the obvious ones, but the ones flying under the radar as well.

Find out everything you can about the competition. Don't get blindsided; pay attention to anything your competitors do. Set up intelligence files for each competitor. Look for articles about them in trade journals, newspapers and magazines. Study their Web sites. Use programs like Google Alerts to track what's said about them online. If possible and practical, shop them secretly on a regular basis to observe their operations firsthand.

Develop relationships with your competitors. Once you've researched your competitors, reach out to them. Join industry and business networking associations so and get to know the people who own and work for competing companies as individuals. You never know where those relationships might lead.

•  
• Loading Comments...
•