Love thy Competitor

I was just giving a client some advice and actually I thought it was pretty good advice, so I thought I'd blog about it. He just paid for the advice, but you guys can have it for free, but let's keep it a secret a from him, okay?

We were discussing competitors. He has a startup and has not yet come to market. So it's frustrating when there are competitors who are already out in the marketplace, making announcements and getting customers, while we fine tune the 1s and 0s that will become his product.

He's like to take a swipe at them, and I counsel heavily against it. It's likely that I'd council against it even if he had a product.

Years ago, I had a client who was very sharp at marketing. He used to tell me: "Love your competitors. Look at them as a prospect would look at them. Look at their product, their web site and find every reason why someone would want to be their customer.

Now, shut up and sit down, until you have that something and the market can use it.  Look at their website and find every reason why someone would want to use it.

Then make yours better.  Do not come to market until you can make yours better.

The idea is not to beat the competitor.  The idea is to help the customer win.

It's a lethal strategy.

Comments

[Donna Papacosta]

Shel, this is great advice for so many reasons. The money quote is your "The idea is not to beat the competitor. The idea is to help the customer win." Secondly, many customers (like me) don't like to hear someone slagging their competitors. When people do this, I wonder, "Is that all ya got? Don't tell me what's bad about the other guy, tell me what's great about YOU." The third reason: karma.

[Karim Tahawi]

Great post. Your client is lucky to have your counsel. What is interesting about your "swipe" comment is that most entrepreneurs, myself included, are constantly pitching their businesses to people and often what resonates in the communication is a positive or negative comparison to another company - sometimes a competitor. Here is an example from todays NYT: "DOUBLECLICK, ...is setting up a Nasdaq-like exchange for the buying and selling of digital advertisements."

So I think we entrepreneurs learn through our communication feedback that contrasting your business to another business, even a competitor, can be a powerful story telling mechanism. Of course, it may also be bad PR and give your competitors a reason to target you ;-)

[shel israel]

In the interest of full disclosure, Karim is the unnamed client referenced in this blog. Karim, you may need to reference other companies so that people can quickly get some sense of where you exist in the universe. But, when you think oif markets, it's about your relationship with customers. You compete best by giving your customers more of what they need, hopefully at a better price, but, of course, that zeros out at free.

[Damon Billian]

I think the hardest thing for a company to admit is that their competitor(s) might be better in certain areas than you are. Disparaging your competition, however, is very much akin to mudslinging in politics & should be avoided whenever possible.

My thoughts:
1. Point out the strengths of your company.
2. Admit weakness (es) (where/when possible; advise if you're working on correcting the weaknesses).
3. Try to build solid relationships with your customers (remember that customers will pay for service over price).