Keeping track of your competitor’s activities can be challenging, but knowing about new activities and events is critical to your own success. If you’re in an industry with very similar products and services, you can learn a lot from the competition and even strategize how to make your company take the lead with a competitive edge.
First Steps
The first step in reviewing the competition is simply identification. You need to know who they are, how big they are, and what type of market share they have. After that, it’s important to start monitoring activity in as many ways as possible. If you’re running a magazine, keeping track of ad rates and packages is a simple way to make sure your pricing is aligned with the market. If you’re running an online store or boutique, finding at least 5-10 other retail outlets on the web can help you track trends, site popularity, and web statistics with online tools such as Alexa and Google Trends.
Important Questions
You can learn a lot about a company with basic market research, and this might take the form of playing the customer. Mystery shoppers do this type of research all the time, but if you can’t afford the services, you can easily handle the task on your own or turn to your administrative team for help. Creating a checklist of questions before picking up the phone or making a visit will help you get exactly the information you need.
Critical areas to review the competition include:
Special offers and discounts offered throughout the year
Upcoming product promotions or company news
Testimonials: are they positive or negative?
Return policy information
Ad rates and related media information
Pricing models and range of prices each season
Any online store information, blogs, and media/press info
Flyers, brochures, and tangible marketing materials
It can be helpful to create a company profile of each competitor and keep it on file for easy access. Developing a simple electronic version is another way to access the data and research when you need it, and makes it much easier to consider your options when you’re trying to calculate pricing models or working on product development.
What are some other ways to keep track of your competitors? What works in your company or organization?
When your to-do list starts to feel overwhelming, reorganizing the workspace might help you get through the pile much faster.
A clutter-free workspace also helps reduce your ‘mental’ clutter and makes it much simpler to finish a task.
Think about how many extra steps you have to think about when you can’t find a file or notepad. By eliminating the extra thought processes involved in finding what you need, when you need it, you’ll be able to think more clearly and get the job done! Here are some tips on making your workspace clutter-free and get into high-performance zone in no time:
The power of one. Start a fresh new habit this week, making sure you only touch or ‘mentally address’ each item on your desk once. This means paperwork is scanned quickly then filed away, a note or message is reviewed and posted where it needs to go, and letters are opened now and handled immediately–or set in the outbox for later. Making a habit of only touching each item once will stop you from wasting mental space checking, reviewing, and thinking about the same item over and over again.
Create an outbox for your desk. This pile is solely for letters, envelopes, and items that need to be distributed to other people or other rooms. You can organize this at the end of the day, and having it physically in front of you will help you get rid of excess material much more efficiently.
Invest in a storage system or shelving. If your work demands piles of paperwork on a regular basis, take the steps to create folders and files that keep the papers off your desk as much as possible. If you work in a paperless office instead, make sure that notes and other paper clutter have been filed or sorted so you don’t distract yourself while focusing on the screen.
Keep magazines out of sight. Unless you’re using the material for your work, magazines are an easy distraction when you need to focus on the job at hand instead. Magazines, media materials, and even books can be stored in their own shelf; and far from your peripheral vision!
Clean the desk completely at the end of the day. Organizing and filing for just 10 minutes before the end of the day will help you get a fresh start the following day and ensure that any post-it notes and simple notes have been transferred to your calendar, PDA, or other organizer; when you’re done, throw out the notes so you’re free of the excess paper.
Remember that efficient thinking requires you to take as few steps as possible to complete a task; the steps you take to make your work environment work for you, the easier it will be to get your projects done.
Everyone has “something” that they want to hear. Find out what it is by listening to the way they react to what you are saying. If you notice something you said appealing to them, then exploit that and start focusing your pitch around that particular “something.” Stay sharp and look for those clues, e.g., a smile, smirk, raised eyebrows, a laugh, etc.
2. WIIFT? (What’s In It for Them?):
The only way you have a chance of convincing someone is by openly stating how they are going to benefit from whatever you are offering. Don’t make the mistake by focusing the conversation on “you.” Take yourself out of the equation and focus on “them.” Let them know what they’ll get: money, equity, fame, and increased sales, whatever it may be. Just let them know.
3. You need to be a ball of energy:
When selling an idea to someone, you need to be extremely, extremely enthusiastic. You don’t have to be bouncing off of walls, but energy should be pouring out of you. Passion! Determination! Confidence! You need to project your voice, use inflection, and really sound super positive. This energy will be absorbed by whomever you’re speaking to.
4. Paint a picture:
A lot of convincing comes down to how well you can tell a story and paint a mental picture for someone. Bring people on a journey of your vision. Start with an attention-grabbing opening that immediately pulls them into this story and keep it alive with appealing to their senses. Make them imagine that it’s 5 years down the line and that you’re both on top of the world.
5. Be Charming:
Being polite and respectful are definitely prerequisites for convincing. Let the other person know that you’re not just here to convince, but to also build a lasting relationship. Smile a lot. Give them genuine compliments. Let them know how much you value their time for listing to what you have to say. And even if you aren’t able to convince then, keep in contact — who knows, there still may be future potential.
If you’re like me, you have tons of books all over your room, office, desk, bathroom, all over the place. You probably don’t have a clear-cut system of organizing your books and are content with them living all over your office/house/apartment. If you’d like to throw some organization into the mix and actually start using those vacant bookshelves, there’s no better time than now. Sometimes things can become too messy and we’ve all experienced that time when we couldn’t find that one book that we absolutely need.
As an entrepreneur my whiteboard has become a must-have for my startup. Brainstorming ideas, sketching website designs out, and working out problems are all a part of using the big whiteboard that’s hanging up on my wall. I paid around $50 for mine, but you can cut that price in half by making your own:
…some white tileboard from the bathroom section of Home Depot will work just as well. 4×8 sheets are under $20, letting you cover an entire wall for less than the cost of buying something off-the-shelf. Cover that woodgrain panelling with dry erase paradise using the tips from Kevin Kelly’s Marker Board Walls.
"Young and Hungry: The New Entrepreneur" will take you on a journey of two young entrepreneurs who share their thoughts, experiences, and lessoned learned while in the process to finding success. Everything from discussing entrepreneurship with your parents to building a business team -- it's covered in this book. Read now »
If you’re like me, you have tons of books all over your room, office, desk, bathroom, all over the place. You probably don’t have a clear-cut system of organizing your books and are content with them living all over your office/house/apartment. If you’d like to throw some organization into the mix and actually start using those vacant bookshelves, there’s no better time than now. Sometimes things can become too messy and we’ve all experienced that time when we couldn’t find that one book that we absolutely need. 
…some white tileboard from the bathroom section of Home Depot will work just as well. 4×8 sheets are under $20, letting you cover an entire wall for less than the cost of buying something off-the-shelf. Cover that woodgrain panelling with dry erase paradise using the tips from 
