Insthinktive Thinking

Analyse Your Competition

Who sets the price for your product or service in your marketplace? Your competition. You are now living in a globally competitive environment. And competition isn? always obvious. Just ask Walmart. 5 years ago did they see Amazon as a serious competitor to them? In 2017 they may have had concerns, but when Amazon bought Wholefoods, the whole competitive landscape changed overnight. All 5 leading US grocery retailers share values dropped by an average of 5%. Overnight.

The analysts recognised what those Top 5 retailers recognised. Amazon was a completely different sort of competitive threat. It has a massive technological advantage over its rivals. 50% of US consumers already shop online with Amazon, now they had a company whom they clearly trusted offering them another option.

Amazon had already been testing their Amazon Go shopping format. All customers need is to register their mobile phones. As they select products they are registered by the software and when the customer leaves (with no checkouts to slow them down) their mobile phone is charged for the grocery shopping. What impact could a technological advantage like that have on the grocery market? Watch this space.

In this session, you’ll learn;

• How to create a SWOT analysis on your business.
• How to analyse and rank your competition.
• How to adjust your competitive strategy to reflect these elements.

Your SWOT Analysis

First you need to begin the process of conducting a business reality check. Now we?l continue this process by conducting a simple SWOT analysis.

SWOT Analysis

The SWOT is a simple tool to help you identify your business. GRADE YOURSELF FROM 1 TO 5

These are just some of the questions you can ask yourself. Once you have, move to the next stage and analyse your weaknesses.

Weaknesses

Do you have weaknesses in your sales and marketing? If so specifically where are you weak?

Do you have weaknesses in your team? If so specifically where are you weak?

Do you have weaknesses your brand? If so specifically where are you weak?

Do you have weaknesses your finances?

Do you have weaknesses your Sales systems? Specifically where are you weak?

Other weaknesses?

Opportunities

What opportunities lie ahead for your business?

Are their new products and services you can sell?

Can you enter new markets?

Are their business trends that suit your business model better?

Is the legal environment becoming more favourable?

Are economic conditions more favourable?

Do you have a technical expertise that is transferrable to other products and services you could sell or market?

Are there new export markets you can explore?

Are their new channels of distribution you can explore, for example online channels?

Are there services you can productise?

Threats

Are there competitive threats you need to be aware of?

Are there legislative threats to your business model?

Are their technological threats to your products or services? (For example the book and music industries failed to foresee the threats of digital books and music downloads in time and missed out on potentially huge new markets…

Are there environmental threats to your industry, products or services?

Key Takeaway

Sales leadership requires a ?eality check?on your business products and services. Using a SWOT analysis provides leadership with a simple and effective tool to help you analyse your strengths, weaknesses. Just as important, the opportunities available to you. Also by analysing any potential threats you create a more solid foundation for competing with your competition.

Competitor Analysis

Here is a simple action for you to take to commence your analysis of your competition. I suggest you analyse your Top 10 competitors. To make the process more manageable I suggest you work on one competitor per week. Even one hour on your competitor’s site could prove valuable.

However, in order for this to be as valuable as possible for you and your organisation, you must involve the team. Ensure both marketing and sales are involved in this. Many of the companies we work with do not have separate sales and marketing functions. No problem. Make sure you involve your sales team, both internal and external. If you have field staff, drivers, customer success managers, technicians, project managers they too can be involved in the process.

Ask them to analyse your competitors and score them on a number of key criteria that are important to your customers. It is an important distinction. It does not matter what is important to us. The customers ultimately will decide whether to choose you or not. So, you must either consult with them (which is highly recommended). Or if your internal team don’t have those relationships they can ?hink like a customer? They are customers themselves. So what is important to them when they choose who they buy from?

Competitor A (GRADE YOURSELF FROM 1 TO 5

Action

Once you have completed these assessments, combine the data from all of the team.

1. Assess all responses and agree a competitive score for each of your main competitors.
2. Rank all of your competitors based on their total scores.
3. Now rank yourselves, honestly against your competitors. How does your score compare to theirs? Where are you strong? Where are you weak?

Can you spot an obvious Competitive Advantage?

Is there a clear Value Proposition emerging from the data?

Now complete your Action Plan.

Need help with your sales strategy or planning? Contact Ronan directlycoachronan@Insthinktive.com.

Best regards

Ronan Kilroy

Ronan Kilroy | Insthinktive Sales Leadership Ltd. | Blanchardstown, | Dublin 15, | Office 01 8220523

www.Insthinktive.com

More Sales, More Consistently, In Less Time