Create a competitive analysis grid comparing yourself and your
products and services to each one of your competitors. Be brutally
honest with yourself. Rate yourself on a scale of one to
ten, with one being the lowest and ten being the highest on
every measure. Ask other people inside and outside of your
company how they would rate you on these particular scales in
Comparison with Competitors.
Here are some questions you can ask: What is the size of
your company in comparison to your competitors? How long
have you been in business? What is your sales volume? Are you
a local company or a national company? Do you have branches
in other countries? How do your competitors measure up to
you in these areas?
Perhaps the most important question has to do with your
reputation. What is the quality of your reputation in the mar-
The Principle of Intelligence—Get the Facts!
ketplace? If researchers were to ask several hundred or several
thousand customers how they rated you against your competitors,
where would you appear in the quality rankings?
According to the PIMS studies at Harvard, which examined
620 companies over twenty years, the company that is rated as
the “highest quality” in its industry will almost always be the
most profitable company in that industry as well. How would
you rate your offerings in terms of quality in comparison with
your competitors? Are you number one? Number two? Number
ten?
Whatever your answer, ask yourself, “How could we
improve our rankings? What could we do to move up in the
scale of ‘quality perception’ among the customers in our market?”
This is a key question for strategic planning and organizational
development.
How do the prices of your offerings compare to that of
your competitors? Are your prices higher or lower? Why or
why not? Sometimes, changing your pricing structure relative
to your competitors can change your position in the market
completely.
What quality of people do you have in comparison with
your competitors? Do you have better or worse leadership and
management? Are your marketing and sales efforts better or
worse? How does your customer service compare with that of
your competitors on a scale of one to ten?
One of the most important actions you can take is to conduct
a regular customer satisfaction survey asking as many of
your customers as possible what they think about you and
what you would have to do to get more business from them.
Our company regularly conducts customer satisfaction surveys
for our clients. The results are often eye-opening, if not aston-
ishing. This type of market intelligence can lead to your completely
changing the way you advertise, market, sell, and do
business.
In what ways are your products or services superior to
those of your competitors? In what specific areas do you offer
greater value than anyone else? Why should a customer buy
from you rather than from a rival company?
In what areas are your competitors superior to you? What
are they doing right? What are they doing that enables them to
sell more of their products or services to the same customers
that you are trying to sell to?
One of the most important attitudes you develop in warfare
is to respect your adversary. Never take him for granted.
Always assume that he is intelligent and competent. Assume
that he is thinking every minute about how to defeat you, just
as you are thinking about how to defeat him.
In business, you should always admire your successful
competitors. Whenever they do something original or effective
in the market that enables them to get business that you want
for yourself, stand back and study their successes. Try to learn
from them. The more you admire your successful competitors,
the more you will emulate what it is they are doing well, and
eventually surpass them.
What are the strengths of your competitors compared to
you? What are their weaknesses in comparison to you? What
are the threats to their business that you can exploit? What are
the opportunities open to them that you can preclude by rapid
action?
