16. Competitor Research

The time you spend on research will repay you many times over and in fairness, even though the short cuts save you time, you will need to put the effort in, in order to get the best results.

There are three areas of research you must explore if you want to get the most from improving your sales and profits…

  1. Existing Customer Research which we tackled in the last module
  2. Competitor Research (that’s now)
  3. Staff Research which we will cover later in the programme

If possible for each of these three types of research the same person must do all of it to preserve continuity. There are two stages/types of research we need to carry out –

Competitor Business Booster Analysis

And

Competitor Operational Analysis…

The really good news is you’ve already done some of the Competitor Business Booster Analysis – in module 5, turning Features into Benefits.

Step 1 is making sure you have more benefits than your competitors, so list all the features and benefits (if any!) that they talk about, and then make sure that your list is bigger and better and consists only of benefits because theirs’ are mainly or entirely features.

So you may need to revisit module 5, tidy it up or update it if necessary and the first of your two stages is done. So now we can move on to how you conduct the…

Competitor  Operational Analysis

At this stage you have a great understanding of the ‘marketing ability’ of the competition. Now we’re going to focus on a greater understanding of the competition, in terms of the strengths and weaknesses of their entire business (products, services, service delivery, staff performance with customers, etc.).

This analysis will enable you to focus on their strengths – and counter them – and more importantly, capitalise on their weaknesses. It will also give you areas to exploit which are currently not being addressed.

And in your Competitor Operational Analysis, there are two aspects to the research – Competitor Phone Analysis and then Competitor Visit Analysis.

But before you do anything, find out who your real competition are. Not your opinion.

Not prejudice.

The people who are currently stealing prospects and customers and sales and profits that COULD be coming to you.

  • Who are your competitors
  • How can you check you are aware of all of them
  • Who do your customers say are your competition
  • How much do you know about them already
  • What would you like to know

Each module starts with two relatively open questions which You Must Answer!

You then hit Save.

You will be emailed the rest of the module, which is in a Word compatible format .rtf and a link to a Google Doc, which will allow you to edit online.

This document contains the rest of the module, to include everything we know about the subject, links, examples, and of course further key questions for you to answer as well.

Being your document on your PC or in the cloud, you can save at any stage and go back to at any time too. In fact, this is probably the best way to tackle this work.

So let’s start this module by answering these key questions:

 

DOWNLOAD

This document contains the rest of the module, including everything we know about the subject, links, examples, and of course further key questions for you to answer as well.