how to deal with competitors - Learn Online

Your business competition and how to deal with competitors

Lesson Details:
March 03, 2020

Video Transcription: In this video let's talk about how to write the part of the business plan that talks about your competition which is the companies you're competing with I'm gonna cover some common mistakes people make in writing this section and I'm gonna explain the right approach mistake number one is essentially saying you have no competition that is something that might seem like a good thing to a new intrapreneur but it's actually a yellow or a red flag to an experienced person or an investor because if you have no competition why not is it a bad business to get into or have all the competitors died and you just don't know if the ones that died maybe you're standing you know on a bunch of corpses right of your competitors so it's a sign if you say that there's no competition it's a sign that usually 95% of the time the intrapreneur doesn't have a good deep enough understanding of their overall market so make sure that you don't say your competition if you do say no competition back that up why you so unique you have to back it up number two mistake is negativity towards competition you've got to stay professional I know it's easy to get resentful hateful almost sometimes because you know these are the people who are taking your lunch right they're taking your money your customers it's easy to get negative about them but you want to stay professional and sometimes people have they are so resentful that they can't even talk to their competitors but the pro tip really is this concept of co-op petition you're gonna cooperate with them and compete at the same time because they are some of your closest peers they're going through the same things.

You're going through what they're learning is what you need to be learning and every once in a while it's good to in every industry it's good to be in touch with your competitors so that you can help them they can help you and both of your business might grow together imagine on YouTube for example here a business on YouTube well there's millions of people on YouTube so you're competing against the whole world essentially so if you cooperate with a couple of other creators all of you you and the other couple of creators will do better and then you'll beat out the other million competitors so that sometimes competition is really good just for you to learn faster for your peers to learn faster and eventually for you guys to develop a good business relationship and growth your your individual businesses of course you don't want to share everything with your competitors don't want to share the biggest secrets but definitely there's gonna be a lot to learn from your peers so don't be negative towards your competitors see them as a learning opportunity and in the theme of not seeing yourself as you know not looking at them negatively don't say in your business plan things like we are better than our competitors because because you on day one when you're just planning you are usually not better than your competitors because there tend to be established that's why you know about them and they tend to be established and so therefore they are actually better what you mean to say is you know of course you mean eventually will be better but the right way to go about it is to say we are unique and different not better and what you want to do is present and put forward your unique differentiation because in fact if you are identical as the competitors there's not that much need for your business that business already exists so you have to be somehow a little unique a little different it's not always important to put that for example if you have one cleaning business it's varied it's very similar to another cleaning business but if in other businesses you do have to be unique and different and you have to put forward that differentiation and make sure that whoever's reading your business plan is convinced that your differentiation is going to be compelling to a lot of the target market so that those can become your clients that's really the key here put the advantages of your differentiations forward now.

Let's talk about how to actually write the competition section of your business plan in your plan list three to five competitors other companies and explain how you are different now let me give you some tips for actually how to come up with differentiation strategies here is a list that I made for you you can differentiate on quality quality can be across-the-board quality on everything or in specific things you can differentiate by being more accountant customer centric like you provide better tech support you provide more time with clients you can differentiate on design hello you know Apple meet Apple right they're huge thing was designed you can differentiate on use of ease of use and usability you can differentiate by being pricing yourself differently usually priced people price themselves cheaper but sometimes you can even price yourself premium pricing to get retain premium clients now you can also differentiate by providing some sort of initial spur teas for example if you're starting a restaurant and your chef is like the number one chef or she's been on some you know fancy TV show like Top Chef or whatever then of course that chef put that forward few restaurants can compete with that and then long term what you want to differentiate on is proven results and case studies of successful customers because nothing speaks better than actual result like you get better results for your clients clients achieve X more than competitors and show case studies that is extremely powerful that's hard to do in the beginning because you don't have clients but moving forward that's a very powerful thing to do so now you know how to think about your competitors how to write that section of your business plan and how to think about the differentiation of your business.

loader
Course content