My questions today are, who in your organization spends measurable time focused on your opportunities to compete and grow? Who listens to your customers to monitor their needs or mine new ideas? Who dedicates energy to evaluating related markets and opportunities that might exist? Who monitors your competitors’ offerings? Who is in charge of being a “fierce” competitor that wins your market every day, every month, every year?

Competition is a reality, and to lose your drive to compete is dangerous. Always be thinking of how your company will compete for market share. Here are three ways to think about competing.

You can sell more! – You can see more of what you have to a growing market. You can stay laser focused on your value propositions and sales activities to increase your market share. There is nothing wrong with this as long as you don’t fall into these traps — getting into a price war for market share, allowing a myopic focus on this strategy, failing to recognize market saturation for one or more products.

You can copy and improve on a product or service that is beating you – There should be no embarrassment in recognizing that a competitor has introduced a product or service that is costing you market share. In fact, you are not doing your job if you don’t recognize this. What do you do? The first thing you do is brainstorm on how you can take this idea and improve on/re-invent it to your advantage. Can you deliver the product or service with added-value? can you manufacture/deliver cheaper to the market and make good margins? Is your market position such that you can simply do a better job taking that to the market?

This mode of competing is the cornerstone of the disruptive technology model that has been so apparent in the information technology world. A company brings something new to the market. A company that is either more resourceful, more nimble, or more committed sees the real potential. This company then deliver a better version to the market and captures greater market share. Do you think Salesforce.com was the “first” CRM (customer relationship management) software company? No, but they delivered CRM in a way that no one had done before! The examples are endless.

Create New Market Share – You can innovate to bring an entirely new product to the market to fill an entire new “unmet” or “under-served” need. This product or service may take one of three forms:

  • Core market product/service – a product or service that fills additional needs in your core market. Who in your organization is looking for these opportunities? Who is listening to your customers?
  • Adjacent market opportunities – a product or service that fills a need in a relevant adjacent market. You capitalize on your core competencies and infrastructure to deliver value to a closely related market.
  • New market opportunities – a product or service that fills a need in a completely new market. You start something completely new based on a new idea or recognition of a new need that exist.

Whatever you do, don’t sit idly by while others out-compete you.