Some business owners view competition like a pie—they think there’s a limited number of slices available. Everyone wants two heaping slices of strawberry pie. However, some slices are bigger than others. This point of view takes the position that there’s limited pie. Why can’t there be more pies?

Competition: a Good Thing, or a Bad Thing?

In capitalism, more competition is considered a good thing. The theory goes that with more healthy competition, prices will be driven down. In practice, it doesn’t always work that way. And again, instead of insisting that there’s only one pie to be split up in more and more tiny pieces, why not add in more pies?

Beating the Competition

Are you picking up on my theme that we should just have a lot more pies?! Many years ago I had a client (no longer with me) who launched with a wholly original product. They won over a great deal of business from their primary competitor because they offered something new and improved. They got a lot of that strawberry pie while their competitor got less.

Unfortunately, as the years passed, this client became obsessed with that old competitor “stealing” back market share. They stopped innovating and only focused upon their old nemesis, which further damaged their business.

Focus on your products, not your competition

Competition can be like a drug, an addictive substance pulling you away from improving your core products or services. You can’t control what your competition is doing, but you can control what you do for your business. So put your focus on creative tasks that improve your business and its products.

Conduct a Quick Competitive Analysis

As we’re taking a quick look at how competition is or isn’t affecting your business, let’s break it down into a quick analysis:

1. Identify Your Competition – The only way to measure how much competition you have and whether or not you’re ahead or behind in the competition game is through analysis.
   • How many competitors do you have?
   • Write out the names and locations, if relevant.
   • Are they all offering comparable products or services to yours?
   • Examine your competition’s customer reviews online. Can you gain insights to what you’re doing that’s better and/or different from the feedback?
   • If some competitors are similar but target a higher or lower market, they’re not a direct competitor. Note the differences between you.
2. Develop a Strategy – You’ll need to know the exact differences or similarities you share with each competitor. Review each of these features for every product or service:
   • Quality
   • Price
   • Speed
   • How is their unique offering different from yours
   • What can you do to stand out from other competitors in each of these areas?
3. Stay Focused on Doing the Steps to Compete – It’s easy to get sucked into an emotional response to what your competition is doing. Thoughts like, “I started doing that 6 months ago!” or “They just copied me!” or “That feature they’re pushing is misleading.”
   • Take deep breaths if you feel triggered by something your competition has done. Don’t get sucked down the emotional rabbit hole!
   • Focus on the facts and what actions you can take. If you have a legal trademark or patent, seek out legal advice.
   • Review your sales and website analytics among other reporting data. Is the competition truly gaining market share over yours? Or do you merely perceive they’re gaining on you because they’re doing more advertising. Analyze facts.
   • Don’t forget to examine the larger picture: Are decreasing sales truly attributable to competition or the economy at large? Are all your competitors seeing a decrease in sales?

Take Action to Slow the Loss of Market Share

Now that you’ve analyzed your competitors and their offerings, you should have a strategy for maintaining your market share, customers and have a “secret weapon” strategy to ensure they can’t cut into your business too far.

Competition doesn’t have to be a dirty word. Welcome those with similar competitive offerings. Get to know where their talents lie so that you can refer projects to them that are up their alley. Your customers will appreciate the candor. They, in turn, will send clients to you for the projects you specialize in. In this manner, you BOTH get plenty of pie!

See? You can create another pie! You can eat it too!

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More Elements of Business:

• Repetition – Marketing’s Secret Weapon
• Speed – Adapt Fast, Thrive Long
• Intentional Quality
• Business Style
• Competition

Elements of Business focuses on one word or short phrase about business. Given the demands upon our daily attention, it’s often daunting to consider the recommendations in an article. (It’s estimated the average American consumes about 100,000 words heard or read every day.) But a simple word or phrase may be enough to stir your grey cells on the task at hand.