Being Competitive

This is a norm. It is natural to be competitive. It drives someone to excel better when there is a healthy competitive behavior. Unfortunately, most competition in today’s benchmark has drifted from its original intent and bringing out damaging outcomes. On one hand, in a competitive environment, one rises above challenges and the other, who retrogrades the objective of being competitive, finds all avenues in blaming everyone except themselves for their complacency.

Healthy competitive behavior will excel you.
Maximus @ MaximusPrimo.com

When you see your competitors rise above the occasion, do not take detrimental approaches in sabotaging their efforts. Instead, take time to research the advantages and disadvantages in their current approach. There is always a loophole; ask a lawyer, they know. If you find a circumstance that gives you the edge, then you will possibly have an added advantage to healthily challenge the competitors in return. All you need is to find it. Research is crucial.

The following list refers for your greater benefit in understanding how to be successfully competitive.

Your Competitors Success
Ask yourself, why the competitor is able to succeed when you are not able to do so. Do not be jealous or envious on their achievements. Negative energies will not be helpful to you and your team. Be happy that they have provided you an avenue of reference and constructive ideas that you would not have thought of on your own.

Differentiating Strategies
Did you do any research into their marketing and sales strategies? Have you compared notes with yours?

Big Budget
Are you giving a reason that they are a big budget company who can afford major advertisements whilst you are not able to? Are you aware that advertisements cost needs to be recuperated somehow, and most of the time, it becomes an added cost of what is being sold? Clients will need to pay more, sometimes exorbitantly for something that will cost less than half the price in the general market. Do you see your advantage here?

Big Players
Are you saying that they have been in the market for a longer time and you are a new player trying to find your footage in similar market?

Business Networking
Are your competitors having a large network of distributors or dealers? In reality, this is not an advantage, unless and when their resale business model is really attractive for the distributors and dealers. Have you got a resale business model that you can offer?

Reliability
Are your products lesser in quality, value, poor in design and functionality, not reliable or substandard?

Sales and Marketing Motivation
Are your sales and marketing team well motivated? Are they aware of the overall market situation? Are they actively strategizing changes to market penetration instead of using a derivative done more than a decade ago by the company’s founding director or shareholder?

Customer Loyalty
What are the reasons behind their customer loyalty?

Market Share
How many percent of the market share do you think they are currently holding? Is this data factual? In return, how many percent of the market share do you think you can possibly penetrate?

Core Business Advantages
What is the support system provided by your principal, if you are a sole-distributor in the local market, for you to find your advantage? Are you expected to come out with your own strategies based to your local market sentiments, sensitivities, pricing structure, reseller support system, after sales services and extended warranties? Did you notice any clues given here by me?

Recognition and Respect
The reason behind this is that you will have a clear conscience, without animosity, respecting your competitors and be able to generate an environment within your organization to motivate everyone to excel in the same process. It is not just about hard selling or finding profitability, whilst your organization rot to its roots, due to work frustration and toxic environment that you have created.

Remember, it’s a team for success that you are creating.
It is not forced labor.
Maximus @ MaximusPrimo.com

Many small and large organizations in the world have shown how they are able to create proper work and life balance environment that became mutually beneficial for employers and employees.

By the way, if you do plan to engage with third-party service providers on some applications that you can use for Work-Life Balance method, do review them first. There are many options out there. What’s truly important, is that you have reached out the consensus within your organization on what they would like to see in the overall changes.

Don’t jump in to implement a system that is marketed to you without you doing proper the research first. Please, when I say research, I do not mean writing your doctoral thesis! It is not surprising, many organizations implementing redundant systems, once every few years under so called productivity improvisation plan, yet all I see is frustrated employees who says their management have gone bonkers.

Motivating your colleagues is good, but once they are able to self-motivate due to the environment you have created for them, then it is a workable solution. Positive Attitude within your organization will render its rewards.

Being competitive and successful as your competitors is an achievement. The reason is that you have a good portion of the market with your competitors. The dynamism of this market sharing motivates your organization to keep on excelling without being complacent. Do not be too comfortable with your current market share just because you are having a good run. Keep on improvising and keep the momentum dynamically.