To understand the strengths of your products better, you must understand your competition and your positioning. What are your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses will give you a better understanding of your positioning in the market?
Why do people buy your products or services instead of others offered in the same category? What benefits do you offer at what prices, to whom, and how does your mix compare to others? Competitive analysis has become an essential part of business marketing activity and strategic planning.
What does a successful salesperson look for about competition?
- Product and services and how do they sell them.
- Product Pricing.
- Discounting structure.
- Distribution and delivery.
- Customer schemes.
- Innovation in products and business strategies.
- The number of employees and their expertise.
- Usage of new technologies.
- Hierarchy of employees.
- Annual performance.
- Marketing activities.
It is of utmost importance to gather information not only about your competitors but also of their customers.
- Who are your competitor’s customers?
- What products do the customers purchase in the market?
- The strengths and weaknesses the customer sees in your competitor.
- Who are your competitor’s target customers and markets?
How does a successful salesperson use this information?
The information gathered on the competition needs to be evaluated first. This evaluation will reveal if there is any gap your competition has overlooked. This gap needs to be exploited.
Finding information on competitors
You can find a lot of information and market data on the Internet. Company Website provides a lot of useful information. Industry associations, industry publications, media coverage, information from financial communities, and their own marketing materials may also be a good resource to identify the performance and position of each competitor.
Make a list of information that you have gathered for all your competitors. List down the strengths and weaknesses of each of them against yours. Categorize this information. Find out what you can learn from your competitors. Can you do something better than what they are doing? Learn about their best practices which could be adopted and also their negatives that could be left alone.
This is one reason why athletes and coaches watch hours and hours of videos about their competitors or opponents. They do this in order to find out their weaknesses and strengths and how they could be exploited. This is exactly what you have to do as a salesperson.
Competition is good. It makes us better. It keeps us on our toes. Competition creates better products. Competition keeps you active and dynamic and competitors push you to achieve more.
