Competition is not necessarily an obstacle in your way to success. It can be a boon for entrepreneurs if they see it as a challenge and get inspired to work harder and smarter.
Successful businesses thrive under the pressure of competition. Your rivals can help you grow by giving you a run for your money and act smarter to remain in the picture.
But before you compete with your rivals, it’s essential that you compete with yourself. The biggest challenge for any business is in the four walls of its office. The day to day execution of the work with the available resources, coming up with a strategy to get ahead of your competitors as well as establish a strong foothold in the market are some of the the biggest challenges for any company.
So make sure, first, you are competing with yourself and then with your rivals.
To know more about how your competition can help you grow faster, take a look at the points mentioned below:
1. Avoid complacency
If you are a sole supplier in the market, you will never be innovative because you don’t have to be. Sadly, this will end up killing your own creativity.
On the other hand, if you have smart and tough competitors, they won’t let you be inactive and keep you on your toes always.
2. Develop self-awareness
Your rivals force you to develop self-awareness to remain in the competition. You use all your weaknesses and strengths to create a unique value to reach out to your target audience.
Slowly, you start paying attention to your shortcomings and look for ways to overcome them. This certainly brings improvement in you and enhance your business skills in the long run.
3. Encourage differentiation
In a healthy market, your competitor will consistently come up with better quality of products and customer services. To overcome this, you have to be in the competition and offer them something that is superior to the products and services that are already in the market.
As a result, your customers will have more choices as well as demands for a specific type of product.
4. Promote partnership
By creating an alliance with your peers or like-minded entrepreneurs, you can exchange tools and technology, cross-advertise each other’s product and services, collaborate on research and educate customers and contribute to expanding the market size. This way, you will grow your business faster and fortify your business relationship. Who knows, one day you might collaborate with one of your biggest competitors.
But, for that, make sure that the products of your partner company are related to your own so that you can promote both the products together. For example, your main products are a notebook and your partner’s main product is a promo pen then you can easily advertise both the stationery items together.
5. Long-term planning
If you don’t have real competitors, you will put all your efforts in maintaining day to day business exercises and functions. Eventually, you will lose your hold on bringing in new products. And when the new competitors join the market you might not be ready to fight them off.
So in the long term, it’s good to have challenges to accomplish more over time and be prepared to make adjustments as and when necessary.
6. Mutual learning
Competition in any field develops mutual learning among rivals. They secretly and carefully read the market position and demands of the customers. They explore the different working style and resources of their peers and use this knowledge in growing their own operations and running the organisation effectively.
It goes without saying that they learn new ways of managing a business from one another.
7. Narrow down a niche
Its okay if someone is better than you at certain functions and things. Your customers have the right to have the best products and services for their needs. By narrowing down the niche, you can create a competitive edge that prevents further competition.
- Prioritise customer needs
You can focus all your concentration on being a customer-oriented company instead of investing all your energy on outdoing the challenges. This way, you can boost the loyalty of your customers.
Don’t forget it is your customers, not the suppliers who hold the power to make or break your brand.
We hope, after reading this post you will see the competition as a challenge and not as a threat.
