Competitive Advantage – Velocity Media

28 January 2015

Competitor Wars: How to Deal with Dirty Tricks

Being an entrepreneur is serious business. While some seem to thrive under the pressure of growth and competition, others harden, taking their focus off their own businesses to think up ways to sabotage their competitors.

Hiding under the cloak of anonymity their dirty tricks are many. They plagiarise your blogs, website content, promotions, newsletter, social media updates, products, services or innovations and claim it as their own.

Some open fake social media accounts to harass you through posts or subtly (and not so subtly) promote their own business on your page. Others leave scathing online reviews for products and services they haven’t even purchased, or pose as a complimenting customer to glean suppliers and trade secrets. Doing it all in an attempt to surpass you, distract you and break you.

While it can be distressing, annoying and downright unethical, the truth is you can’t control how your competitors will react. You can however, control how you respond. So before you go out and declare a full-scale competitor war, here are five tips to help you deal with their dirty tricks.

1. Feel satisfied that you are doing something right

Know that to cause such a stir and have your competitors scared you must be doing something right.

People don’t copy or get concerned about competitors with bad businesses or ideas. They get concerned about competitors with great ones. You are doing your job too well in their eyes and they don’t like it. See their jealousy as a compliment.

In fact the only time you really need to worry, is when they stop looking to you for their ideas.

2. Mind your own business

While it’s necessary to keep a check on what a competitor is doing, the minute they consume your thoughts and energy or alter your actions they’ve won. Stay focused on your business. Keep disrupting, keep innovating, and keep making your competitors uncomfortable.

3. Build your fans

I’m not talking about more social media followers here; I’m talking about actual raving fans. You want to create customers that love what you do so much they become your extended sales team and in this case your supporters and defenders.

Customers who have a strong relationship and emotional connection with you will start to notice (as will others) that your competitors are copying you or playing dirty tricks. What’s more they won’t be reserved with their opinion.

4. Respond with kindness

Use negative reviews as a way to showcase your character and customer service. There are countless examples on social media of how a complaint turned into a massive PR opportunity for a business.

Respond with kindness, show your customers why they love you and how positively you act under pressure. You will often build more rapport with your customers, fans and followers when they see you handle a negative situation positively and authentically. It will give them even more of a reason to believe in you.

5. Let them be their own undoing

People who act in desperation or greed always slip up eventually, and those who copy you will always be one step behind. So as tempting as it can be to lower yourself to their level and play their dirty games, don’t.

It catches up with them. It may not be in your time (or how you have plotted it in your head), but it does. The business world is too small for it not to.

So seek legal and business council if and when you need to, though make sure your main focus is on building your business and serving your customers.

Succeeding will always be the best revenge.

Amanda

9 June 2014

How to become a market leader (not a competitor follower)

In business it can be easy to get distracted by what your competitors are doing. When they bring out new products or services, branch out into new markets or change their course of action you can be tempted to do the same.

But when you change the way you do business or take an alternate course of action because of what your competitors are doing, they become the leader and you become the follower and you’ll always be one step behind.

So to prevent you from taking actions you may not have taken if it wasn’t for feeling threatened, here are three tips to ensure you remain a leader in your own business not a follower of someone else’s.

1. Stay focused on your customers, not your competitors

The best and quickest way to grow your business and expand your market share is to stay focused on your customer not your competitors.

The more you can get inside your customers head, the more relevant and targeted you can make your products, services and marketing. Give your customers what they want and they will not only keep coming back, they will also refer more people to you.

So be a leader, find opportunities to be different, stay focused on what your customer wants and continually value-add and innovate to give it to them. Do this and you won’t have to worry about your competitors. They on the other hand will have a lot to worry about with you!

2. Anticipate needs and trends

A true market leader will not just meet current customer needs and wants, they’ll also anticipate future needs, wants and trends.

Look for patterns that are forming, frustrations that are growing, trends and technology that are going to impact how you provide and deliver your products and services or how you customer will use them, and watch for what no one else is doing. Most importantly listen to what your customers are saying – and not saying.

If you are taking these market-leading actions yourself, you’ll have no reason to follow what your competitors are doing, you’ll already be on it.

3. Play on your strengths

Each business has it’s own strengths. It could be your knowledge, specialist staff, results, your high quality products and services, your level of customer service and follow up, your creativity and ideas, your industry experience, your client base, your large budget, your size and infrastructure, your available resources, your website and quality of content, your entrepreneurial thinking, or your agility.

Whatever your strengths are, use them to your best advantage. Too often we focus on other peoples strengths and our weaknesses. But for a competitive advantage in business you need to be focused on your competitors’ weaknesses and developing your strengths.

How do you ensure you are leading not following?