If you imagine your business to be a river and you were riding a canoe – would you be floating or paddling? These activities mean two different business attitudes: floating is when you are defensive and paddling is when you are on the offense. It is up to you how you would like to run your business.
Today’s business environment is high competitive. To survive and prosper in this kind of climate, if you are not offensive you run the risk of being thrown around like a discarded ball. For instance, when you find that your advertising is not working a defensive business strategy is to wait and watch to see if things improve in the future. The offensive strategy is to get control of the situation and proactively attempt to fix whatever is going wrong.
Take the case of one of the most important aspects in business, called ‘competitive intelligence’. This is the knowledge and skill needed to successfully outdo the competitor by deploying several offensive competitive strategies. In case you are not too familiar with what competition is doing then your business days are numbered. Take a look at the example below:
Imagine you have a high-margin profitable product and a direct competitor drops his price. If your first reaction to this situation is to drop the price of your product also, you need to stop and re-think. Ask yourself whether this could affect your competitive advantage. In case the answer is ‘yes’ then do some souls searching with the following questions:
• Was the price drop unequivocal or the competitor has altered/modified some features/benefits?
• Is the price drop adequate to influence buying behavior?
• Can the competitor manage to handle the surge in demand without affecting product or service quality and negatively impacting customer satisfaction?
• Is the price drop applicable for a single territory or is it all-pervading?
Your competitive edge comprises of several marketing and product attributes like branding, product design, services, etc. The most effective strategy can only be implemented if you have a thorough and updated knowledge of competitive activities. Only through knowledge can you protect your competitive edge. The most authentic source of market intelligence is your own sales force.
Sales people are in an advantageous position as they are in direct contact with customers and can gather the latest competitive information and customer feedback. But sales people are busy selling. It is your responsibility to explain to them the importance of gathering information about competitors and what strategies they are implementing in the market place. All information is equally important – both about direct and indirect competition.
To enable your sales force to gather competitive information, you must prove to them that the process is of value to them. This entails some hard work for you as there is enough information available internally, which you have to collate. Call reports, won-lost reports and sales records have to be studied to watch for red flags and market trends. The deployment of a competitive strategy may look small and insignificant till it is added to the other strategies deployed in other territories or part of a global implementation.
All your research findings can be co-related to other information and data collected from industry and published sources. Collating all this information can enable your sales force to combat competition more ably. Once you make your sales force understand the importance of the process as you embark upon a knowledge sharing exercise, you will surely receive reciprocal co-operation from them as they see what is in it for them.
Competitor information is not only restricted to the members of your sales force. Accounting, material procurement, HR and other functions attend conferences and seminars where they meet their counterparts from the competing companies. These people can add valuable tips and information on competitor activities. Simply ensure that they know the importance of the information and you have motivated them enough to share with the rest of the company.
In summary, if you are not paddling and not on the offense but simply floating, you will soon lose your competitive edge and find your business getting ousted.
