Women's Business Coach: TIP OF THE WEEK: Love the Competition
Posted by Vicki Donlan on Sun, May 02, 2010 @ 02:10 PM
You are a small business owner -an entrepreneur -following your gut to build the business of your dreams. You believe you have developed the next greatest product or service that the world has never seen. You've put your life savings into your business and borrowed from family and friends for the startup costs to get the doors opened. You've had blinders on for the past three months while you were putting all the pieces in place to launch the business and just when you are ready to hold your opening you find out that you have a competitor you didn't know existed. You panic! How could someone else be doing exactly what you plan to do and attracting the same customers in the same geographic location? Is there enough business to go around? Is your dream of getting rich evaporating before you even get started?
The answer is if your idea is that good someone else was bound to think of it and get into business just like you. And, having competition is the best thing that can happen to any business. If you love the competition you can learn how to differentiate your business from hers and how to garner more attention for the concept of the business itself. For example, first having two new businesses doing the same thing in the same geographic location makes for an interesting story for blogs, social media sites, newspapers, radio and tv (cable). Get out in front of your competition and start talking about the industry. Get known as the expert in the industry and make sure to mention the competition as often as possible as another player in this growing arena. Competition in every industry allows customers to want what is being offered with more energy. An example is the more Starbucks focused on the coffee industry the more coffee there is being sold elsewhere. Would you have ever thought McDonald's would have taken such an interest in coffee sales? When an industry (product or service) gets hot competitors come out of the woodwork to compete for their piece of the pie and the more competitors the more customers are flooded with information about the product or service. Your job as a small business owner in this industry is to love your competition and find the holy grail that will make sure ever customer for this product or service stops in to check with you before deciding to buy. Competition is the best thing that can happen to any small business. Get to know your competitors well. Get to know how they do business well. Get to know what makes YOU different from the competition. If they do well so will you. But, only if you truly love the competition. Try it and see how well it works.