If you ignore your competition, you hamstring your small business. While you're busy ignoring them, the competition may be chomping away at your market share. If you don't know what the competition is up to, you can't make the intelligent decisions that will keep the customers you have or entice new ones.
But as a small business person, how can you gather the competitive intelligence you need to keep or expand your market share? Here are Six Ways to Find Out What Your Competition Is Up To.
Once you've gathered the information about your competition, what are you going to do with it? Well, as Stefan Töpfer of The Small Business Blog points out, the traditional purpose of gathering competitive intelligence is to give your business the winning competitive edge; by developing a good understanding of your competitor's business, your competitor's weaknesses can become your strengths!
But in another post, Collaborating With the Enemy: Competitive Advantage, Stefan describes how Brian Scudamore, owner of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, works with competitors to solve common challenges ...giving another potential use of competitive intelligence, finding the competitor or competitors that would be the best fit for a collaborative approach.
One last note on this; notice that in the example the firms Brian Scudamore collaborates with are both out of town. I suspect this is a necessary condition for the success of a collaborative approach. What do you think?
More on Competitive Intelligence
- Competitive Intelligence Through Websites
- How to Do a Competitive Analysis
- What's the Competition Doing? (About.com Business Management)
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“…the firms Brian Scudamore collaborates with are both out of town. I suspect this is a necessary condition for the success of a collaborative approach. What do you think?”
Maybe, in a trade association setting. We are our communities industry leader as a franchisee of Brian’s. We are constantly challenged by copy cats who tend to be underfinanced and poorly trained. Collaboration with these ‘brand’ thiefs could confuse our customer’s and possibly reveal internal weaknesses that would be quickly exploited. Like politics, all business is local!