What You Can Learn From Your Competitor - The 8 Step Process!

2016, May 10th

Do you know one of the following situations?

You have a great product and want to launch it in an environment, where competition is already present.
You have already done your best in order to market your excellent product successfully. But your competitor wins market share anyway.
You are established in the market and new competition appears on the horizon.

How do you deal with it?

Do you remain in a relaxed, creative and constructive spirit? And are you ready to go one step further? Then please jump directly to Step 3.

From my work experience I know, that many clients react with anxiety, envy, anger, rage and whatever mixed feelings. Or the competition is just “obnoxious” (please insert random cuss word) and the customer just doesn’t recognize or understand your brilliant product correctly. Or do you hope in a paralyzed way that your customers stay loyal with your established product? Or do you ignore the competition because you think that your product is the best anyway? If it is like this, do you fancy looking at this topic from a different perspective? Then please start with Step 1:

1. Step: Change of Perspective

Ask yourself:

What do the customers especially love about the competitor?
What makes the competitor product more attractive for the customer?
What can I learn from the competitor?

With this mind-shift you bring yourself from lethargy or short-term hyper-activity to a constructive attitude and your responsibility. From this point you are creative and capable of strategic acting again.

2. Step: Mental Aikido

Use your upcoming negative emotions in a constructive way. Here is an incredible potential of bound energy, which want to be used. Focus on your goal. Fight FOR your product and your success instead of AGAINST the competition!

3. Step: Honest Self-Reflection

Now you can ask yourself and your customers from a powerful position: Where do we have gaps? How can we get better? These are starting points for continuous improvement and meaningful innovation.

4. Step: David and Goliath

Which strength results from my specific size and market position?

How can I serve my clients best and in a different way?

5. Step: Precise Analysis

Have a very precise, down-to-earth and respectful look at the competition:

Which needs does the competitor product fulfill better than our product does?

What do they have / do, what we don’t have / do?

Where are the “gaps“ of the competition, which call for innovation in order to really serve the customer?

6. Step: Walking in New Shoes!

Change the roles. Get into the shoes of the competition. Be the competitor:

How would we behave in their position on the market within the next year: strategically and tactically?

E.g. Competitive Simulations offer excellent insights for that purpose.

7. Step: Transformation

Get back into your own shoes. You are your own company again.

What did you learn from step 3-6?

With which meaningful innovations can you win or even be disruptive?

8. Step: Just do it!

Develop an execution plan with actionable steps. What are the priorities?

Who is responsible? Clear definition of RACI.

Implement it step by step on a daily base!

Thus Competitive Intelligence can be really intelligent: Far beyond risk mitigation it thrives on your innovations!

Lots of success!

Annette Freund

FREUND INSPIRED MOVE

Annette Freund is Founder and Managing Director of the consulting company FREUND INSPIRED MOVE in Switzerland. She is inspired by change processes: Strong Individuals! Reforming Teams! Transforming Organizations!

She provides her services in German and English speaking environments.