Who's going to eat your lunch?

Do you ever feel like you have are constantly fighting for your business? Business can be cut-throat sometimes. You have to keep your attention focused on delivering results to your customers while keeping one eye on your competitors. Here are a few suggestions on how to keep your competitors from encroaching on your territory.

Make friends with your enemies.

You know the old saying, "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer." Well, one of the best ways to understand your competitors is to get close to them. The closer the better. Just because you spend time in the boxing ring with someone doesn't mean you can't be friends.

Usually, competitors don't compete in every area of your business. There are often significant areas where your business doesn't overlap. One way to get closer to your competition is to find ways to partner with other companies. Figure out how to address business that neither of you would otherwise be able to address on your own.

Another way to get close is to find a common enemy and work with to overtake that target. You see this happen all the time in business. A recent notable example is Yahoo and Microsoft joining forces to take on Google. There are even more opportunities for smaller businesses.

Trade shows or industry conferences are also great venues to talk about business with your competitors. Don't focus all your energy on your customers or the presenters. Make sure you walk around and meet the competition. Talk to them. Make friends. I guarantee that relationship will come in handy one day.

When you talk to the competition, don't just focus on the things that you can see from afar such as product features or their marketing campaigns. Ask about their partnerships, their sales strategy, their hiring practices, their funding activities. What is working for them? What isn't? They won't tell you everything, but you never know what they might say until you ask.

When you talk to your competition, reciprocate. Share some things about yourself too. Don't share anything that's confidential, but if you get a little, give a little. Sharing ideas can help both of you attack the market more effectively and grow business for both of you. You might have wondered if advertising in a certain publication would be worth it or not. Maybe your competitor can share his insights about it.

Sharing information with the competition is especially helpful in small or emerging markets where everyone is still trying to find their way. Even if the competition behaves like they have it all figured out, many of the same things keep them awake at night.

Make sure you have good peripheral vision.

You can only mitigate risks that you know about. If you're smart, you will think about the risks to your business and plan around those risks as much as possible. Whatch for the things that come out of left field. It's like the Donald Rumsfeld quotation, "there are unknown unknowns." Those are the things that will kill you.

How can you protect yourself from the unpredicatble? You can't. The secret is to constantly learn as much as you can. Minimize those unknowns as much as possible. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Ask your customers and potential customers what other ways they might have thought about solving the problems that you are trying to solve for them. Maybe there is something out there that you didn't know about.

Find others in similar lines of business. Ask what sort of risks they see for your market. Try to learn something new about your market every day.

Figure out what the barrier to entering your market. That can help give you an idea of the types of people or companies who might have the desire and the ability to become a competitor. Keep your eye on those companies too. Just because someone isn't a competitor today, doesn't mean they won't be a competitor tomorrow.

Know your customers.

Risks don't just come from competitors. Things happen inside your customers' companies that create risk for your business with them. Don't ever let yourself get into a situation where a customer move surprises you. Make sure you know your customers intimately.

Don't limit your scope of interest in your customer to just the users of your product or to the problems that your company helps them solve. Try to figure out what other challenges your customers may have. Maybe there is someone else solving a different problem for your customer that will eventually overlap with your business. You should be able to predict what sort of relationship your customers will have with your company at least a year in advance. If you can't see that far out, it's a good sign you don't know that customer well enough.

If your customers are consumers be sure to connect with them too. Encourage feedback. Show them that you listen. Customers are great sources of knowledge about the competition. Talk to them and let them help you find ways to make your product "stickier" and foster loyalty.

How do you figure out who's going to eat your lunch?


photo credit, januszek