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Have you ever lost the sale because the prospect decided to go with your competitor? In the world of business, there will always be other businesses competing with you for your customers.

Is there a way to decrease losing business to the competitor and increase the chances of them choosing you? Absolutely! It starts with knowing, understanding, researching, and learning from your competitors.

Here are 8 steps to help you learn more about your competitors:

1. Identify the company name
2. Names of top executives and sales people
3. What services they do and do not provide
4. How much they charge
5. Who they target their marketing to
6. How they find clients
7. How they position themselves in the marketplace
8. Their strengths and weaknesses.

Invest some time in studying and learning from your top competitors, especially the successful ones. After completing Steps 1-8, you can now identify, create, and offer new ways to present your product that your competitor isn*t doing.

This can include offering services they don*t offer, creatively packaging your fees and services, providing benefits they don*t, ways to better market your services, and positioning your services against their strengths and weaknesses.

Let me say a little bit more about *strengths and weaknesses.* The most effective way to learn about your competition in depth, and position yourself against them, is to do what is called a *SWOT* analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

There are many ways to uncover information about your competition for their SWOT analysis. Here are a just a few:

* Search the company website. You'll be surprised how much you can learn about them.

* Call, or have a friend call, as a potential client and interview their sales person.

* Walk into their place of business, or have a friend walk in, and be a potential customer. Observe how they help you and ask questions.

* Ask them to send you their marketing or media kit about their product.

* Sign up for their newsletter or ezine.

* Use Internet search engines to find out information (google.com).

* Look in local newspapers or trade magazines.

* Interview their past clients.

* Use a business website (hoovers.com) to learn about the financial state of the company.

You*ve now done your research and have enough information about the competitor to create their SWOT analysis.

Every company and person has strengths and weaknesses, including you. It's just as important to know your strengths and weaknesses as it is to know your competitors. You*re in a better position to sell against the competition if you have a clear picture of how you compare to them.

The next step is to create your S.W.O.T analysis for your business. Now take both S.W.O.T. analyses and compare them, survey the similarities and differences, and think of new ways to market your business. For example, you may have noticed they offer lower prices. Look for creative ways to repackage your pricing. You could offer a payment plan, lower your prices by removing a service, or offer a special discount for a limited time.

With all the knowledge you*ve gathered, you now have all the confidence you need to powerfully differentiate yourself and win over the business.

ASSIGNMENT:

* Create a S.W.O.T. analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) for a competitor and do the same for yourself.

* What are 5 ways you could market your services that would take full advantage of your competitor's weaknesses?

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