It is Not the Market, it is Your Competitors

With demand for staffing, executive search and services/solutions in decline, growth cannot be achieved by growing "on pace with the market." To retain market share and grow, even in a difficult economy, taking business from competitors is essential. To sell effectively against competitors, you may find the following article interesting and helpful.

Profiling Your Competitors
by BNET Editorial

To pull ahead of your business competitors, you need to build a detailed profile of their strengths, weaknesses, and relationships with customers. With that information, you can compare the performance of your business with that of your main competitors, measuring factors that are important to quality of service, and use the comparison as the basis for performance improvement.

Competitor information can be obtained from many different sources, starting with what your competitors say on their own Web sites and in their brochures and annual reports about their capabilities, resources, and plans. You can find information about competitors in the press, trade publications, industry surveys, and on the Internet.

What You Need to Know
Who are my competitors?
Depending on the size of your company and the products or services you offer, you probably already know your competition—from advertising, trade shows, or even your customers. Never assume, however, that you know everything you should know about the competition. Who else is offering what you offer? Many products and services could be classed as non-essential and so customers may be choosing to spend their discretionary budget between two very different market sectors. Are you losing business that way? Is a larger company hurting your business by giving away a competing service as a promotion device? Always be alert to the different ways that others could be taking business away.

Why is competitor intelligence so important?
You need to understand what competitors are offering so you can offer at least as much to customers. Your marketing campaigns or product launches can be affected by what your competitors may be doing at the same time, so learning what you can about their plans is important. You also need to be aware if a competitor is threatening to take away your important accounts. Unless you monitor competitor activity and take appropriate action, your business faces an unknown risk.

Should we use an independent research company, or conduct the research internally?
You can conduct the research internally, provided you or your staff has the time. Much of the source material is in the public domain, so you should be able to obtain it yourself. Don’t overlook the wealth of information you already have in your company or can gain through your own contacts. If you wish to research customer attitudes toward your company versus your competition, you may need to use an independent research organization. Customers may not be completely honest with your own representatives.

How reliable is published competitor information?
Use your critical thinking skills to assess the accuracy and quality of any published information that is used for research. Make sure the information you find is current and that it comes from reliable sources.

What to Do
Identify Your Competitors
Competitor information helps you to identify how you can gain a larger share of the business from your competitors and how to protect the business you have.

Ask yourself:

How many competitors do you have?

Do they compete directly or indirectly?

Who are your major competitors—those that threaten to take away your most important customers?

How much of your business do these competitors threaten?

Quantifying the threat helps you to prioritize your own activities.

Where are your main competitors located?

How do they compare in size (to your company and to one another)?

Are they growing?

How do your products compare with your competitors’ offerings? Think about price, methods and quality of distribution, brand image and reputation, service quality etc.

What are customers’ attitudes toward your competitors and toward your own company?

Can you (or your customers) identify any weaknesses in your competitors?

Who are your competitors’ main customers?

Which of your customers might switch to your competitors, and why?

Which of your competitors’ customers do you want to win?

How strong are your competitors’ relationships with key customers or key decision makers?

How long have they been dealing with them?

Have your competitors invested in links with customers that would make it difficult for other suppliers to make inroads?

Does your company have the skills and resources to overcome the competitive threat?

Compare Your Key Competitive Factors
Listed below are a number of factors that are important to meeting customer needs. On a scale of 1 to 10 (where 10 is the best in the market), how does your company rate? Consider each factor carefully, then use your results as the basis for a program of performance improvement. Emphasize the things that matter to your customers rather than to your own opinions:

Evidence of an excellent service culture, for example, problems quickly resolved by frontline staff rather than referring customers to higher-level managers

High levels of after-sales service and support offered

Product adapted readily to meet customer specifications

Evidence of commitment to quality measurements, for example, measurements from your industry

Commitments made to customers—for example, offering money-back guarantees or precise delivery schedules

Evidence of feedback encouraged—for example, comment forms or toll-free telephone number made widely available

Flexible approach to pricing, such as the use of price incentives or financing plans to appeal to different types of customers

Willingness to negotiate prices for important customers

Staff knowledgeable about the product and willing to use knowledge to help customers

Good reputation with agents, distributors, and other intermediaries

Overall good reputation with employees as well as customers

Make Use of Your Sales Force
By talking to customers, your company’s sales representatives can find out about competitors’ direct sales calls, marketing campaigns, special offers, and new developments. They can obtain similar information from retailers or distributors. Crucially, they can get a feel for the customers’ awareness and attitude toward your competitors.

Monitor a Variety of Public Sources
You can learn a great deal about your competitors from their own public information: corporate brochures, annual reports, and exhibitions. Check your competitors’ Web sites frequently for updates on their products, plans, and capabilities as well as any customer case studies or news releases that may be posted on the site.

Monitor trade publications (many are available on the Internet) and the general press for useful information about your competitors. You may have the staff resources to maintain a file of press clippings on your competition, or you may wish to hire a clipping service to gather material for you.

Look for published results of industry surveys, which can provide useful insights into your entire market as well as your competitors.

Analyze Competitors’ Promotional Activities
By monitoring your competitors’ advertising, promotions, exhibition presence, press activities, and Internet information, you can assess their strategies. These are some of the possible scenarios:

Heavy advertising expenditure could indicate a competitor trying to win greater share or attempting to remedy losses in that market

Price promotions may indicate that your competitors want to be perceived as value-for-money suppliers, or they may be an emergency response to declining sales

Press announcements about new production facilities could indicate that your competitors are trying to increase their business significantly

They may become more cost-effective and able to offer lower prices, or may be taking on additional overhead that they must finance

Announcements about new branch or dealership openings could mean that competitors are expanding into new territories

Recruitment drives may signal a change in direction, a growth strategy, or a sudden loss of staff

To gain a better idea of your competitors’ financial health, you may be able to obtain information from credit reference agencies

Hire a Research Company
If you do not have the internal resources to monitor competitive activity, you can hire an independent research company to perform all the tasks outlined above. You can also ask the company to survey customers to reveal their attitudes toward your company versus your competitors. Customers may be more willing to discuss their attitudes with an independent researcher than they are with someone from your company.

Consider Benchmarking
Once you have assembled detailed information about your competitors, you can benchmark your performance against theirs. Competently done, benchmarking will give you a baseline assessment of your company’s effectiveness in the marketplace and some insight into where competitors may be gaining the advantage over you.

What to Avoid
You Overlook the Obvious Sources
Some competitor intelligence is freely available from the Internet, the press, and other public sources and—most important—from your staff, your customers, and your competitors themselves. Information from these sources can provide a valuable starting point for developing detailed competitor profiles.

You Fail to Make Use of Competitor Information
Competitor information is valuable only if you use it to refine your own strategies or take defensive action to protect your business. Simply gathering information without analysis or action is wasteful.

You Act on Incomplete or Out-of-date Information
Be cautious about acting on competitor intelligence until you have as much complete, accurate, up-to-date information as possible. Published sources can provide only a partial picture, and more strategic information is likely to be confidential. This means that you may make incorrect assumptions in planning your response to competitor action.

Starting a New Job

So you finally made it to your new workplace. Now take a deep breath and walk in with a smile on your face. Keep your head up and remember to make eye contact. Be polite and friendly to everyone you encounter, whether it's the receptionist or the mailroom clerk, your colleagues or your new boss. Introduce yourself to those you meet and remember that it's okay to ask questions. People generally like to help others and it usually makes them feel good about themselves.

While it's okay to hold onto some of things you learned in your previous jobs and use that knowledge in your new job, remember that every workplace has it's own way of doing things. Your first few weeks or even months on a job is not the time to change the way things get done. Do not utter these words: "That's not how we did it at my old company." Your colleagues will just be thinking this: "Well, you're not at your old company and if you liked it so much why didn't you stay there."

Here are a few more tips to consider when starting a new job:

Tone down the star quality

It's natural to want to impress your co-workers by sharing all of your terrific ideas right away. Resist that impulse.

Most colleagues will be threatened by your new ideas and will reflexively shoot them down.
Why? Because a) they're new ideas, and b) they're yours.

Remember, your co-workers thought they were doing pretty well before you showed up.

Instead, win over your new officemates by simply doing the job you've been assigned to do as well as you can. Then pick out some easy wins, small accomplishments that won't ruffle anyone's feathers but will further demonstrate your competence.

Maybe there's a nagging problem that everyone means to fix, but no one ever gets around to doing it.

There's your first job. Get a couple of minor accomplishments under your belt, and you'll earn your office's trust. After that, your ideas will be judged on their merits, not on who's proposing them.

Don't be Mr./Ms. Personality

Start slow when you're developing relationships. At the outset, respect is more important than friendship.

Be pleasant, be polite - but check your ebullience at the door. You don't get to make jokes for a while or spout off at meetings - gregariousness in a newcomer can be off-putting. It smacks of trying too hard.

Let your work speak for you. After a few weeks, you'll have built up enough good will to let your true self shine through. Get the inside scoop

Here's the challenge: You want to learn the culture of your new workplace - how things are supposed to work and how they really work because of the idiosyncrasies of co-workers - as quickly as possible, but you don't want to come across as prying.

Start by figuring out which people seem to be plugged in. Then approach them with simple questions about process ("How does Ms. Jones like to be kept informed about Project XYZ?"), steering clear of questions about personalities ("What's Ms. Jones really like?").

Chances are good that knowledgeable co-workers will pepper their responses with both types of info ("Send updates by e-mail, and keep them short - Jones is a real cut-to-the-chase type").

This way you get the information you need without looking like you were angling for it.

Know your boundaries at work

The border separating professional and personal relationships isn't easy to patrol, especially at smaller, informal offices. But conversational boundaries help to determine the reputation of an employee and staff. Simply put, boundaries preserve integrity.

Whether you're a principal, manager or rank-and-file employee, taking the following advice will help to ensure that conversations with co-workers never distract from a productive, positive workplace.

Beware of feeling informal. There's generally no clear rule about where to draw the line, so a good rule of thumb is to avoid issues that might make someone uncomfortable. Such topics of conversation may include romance, physical appearance, health, race, religion and personal finance.

Refrain from gossip. Remember: Those who talk to you about others will also talk about you to others.

Most gossip and other inappropriate conversations occur in places that feel informal, such as elevators, hallways and bathrooms or off-site like parking lots, restaurants. But co-workers should never get the false sense of security that they're off duty in these locations.

It's better to pretend your personal microphone is always on. Don't say something if you don't want it heard or repeated.

Forge office friendships with care. When you're at the office for around 2,000 hours a year, you're bound to develop friendships with co-workers. Some may become confidants with whom you share personal details.

Make sure you know and completely trust this kind of co-worker friend. It's a risk any time someone has knowledge about details you don't want to make public, particularly if co-worker friendships fizzle.

Expect boundary differences. The workplace not only combines people of different backgrounds, ages, talents and skills but also folks of different boundary types.

People with "overdeveloped" boundaries often are brash and don't notice they're sharing too much information, while people with "underdeveloped" boundaries often believe it's not OK to protest such communication.

Getting along at work is often a matter of being flexible and willing to compromise. It's also important to be tolerant of individual differences."

Employ tact. If you have a problem with a co-worker, address what you can do to solve it. Talk to the offending person directly and privately. If a co-worker says something that offends or upsets you, try to respond instead of react.

Talking behind someone's back makes the situation worse. Choose a neutral place away from your work area, such as over lunch or in a quiet area during a break.

Give 'em something to talk about

You don't have to be on your own for long. Determine who the influential people are (they are usually the ones whose opinions other people quote), and find a reason to work with them.

Get on their good side (by being competent, pleasant and professional), and you may find that a whole lot more people have started to warm to your presence.

Think of it as the workplace equivalent of a force multiplier. Get other people to toot your horn. Buzz created by others is far more valuable than buzz you drum up yourself. Ask for help, then take charge

Ask questions when you need information to complete an assignment. It's much preferred that employees admit not knowing something and show initiative in learning it rather than costing time and money by struggling with it on their own.

But asking repeatedly gets annoying. Most managers say they valued someone who can take orders and execute them well without having to be told repeatedly what to do.

What is welcome, however, is the employee who is proactive about figuring out what needs to be done and then doing it. One of the biggest mistakes new recruits can make is to assume that when they have nothing to do that there is nothing to do.

Know the boss

Whether you love or hate your managers matters less than whether you know what they value and what you can do to make them successful.

You need to take initiative to find out what's important to your boss and organization. Your value as an employee is measured by your showing results valued by your organization.

Few bosses are consistent about giving helpful feedback. And often they won't express their displeasure with your performance until it's too late. So, said Hollander, it's okay to say to your boss early on, "it would really help me if you could tell me when you're happy or unhappy with my work."

Cultivate good relationships

Good performance is just one part of your success at work. How you get along with managers, colleagues and subordinates is another.

Perception of performance is often colored by the quality of your relationships. Act like you're running for office. You'll need a vote from everyone. (But please ... don't act too much like you're running for office. There's nothing worse than glad-handing politicians with visions of poll numbers dancing in their heads.)

Humor is a big plus, but only if you have a good sense of when to use it and when not to.

Showing respect helps, too. A boss who acts friendly and casual does not mean to imply that “anything goes” and that you don't need to treat him or her with the proper respect.

And, don't skip the deodorant. Be well groomed, even if casual.

Don't watch the clock

This is not the time to work 9 to 5. Try 8 to 6. There's plenty of time to slack off later in life and the boss will take note.

If you have to stay a little late to meet a deadline or pull some hours on a weekend without being asked, it shows your commitment. It shouldn't be routine without compensation, but here or there it can get noticed.

It goes without saying, do not arrive late, be absent or ask for time off in the first 100-days of employment.

Listen…are you ringing the cash register?

It is easy to get distracted by a “to do” list filled with B, C and D priority items to “clear the way” to concentrating on the A priorities, like driving revenue. The fact is, all lesser pressing items somehow take care of themselves when revenues are rapidly increasing.

Even if pending A priorities seem insurmountable, tackle each top priority items during prime time work hours and chip away, move the ball downfield and press through every day. Save email, administrative and "catch-up" work for after hours.

Instead, reach for the sales opportunity first and make growing, contributing and developing promising new avenues to drive your new organization’s top-line, PRIORITY ONE.

5 Tips to Jump Start Your Career this Year

In our search for top talent, LinkedIn is a resource to Direct Search Alliance, as it is for recruiters nationwide. More importantly, is it a career tool for candidates representing their skills and talents to the online community. As a reader of the LinkedIn Blog, I wanted to share this posting with prospective candidates -- simple but powerful advice.

by Kay Luo - LinkedIn Blog
Here are five resolutions that professionals can make and keep this year, to jump start their career.

1. Build your online brand
Your online image can affect the way other professionals see you, just as much as your offline image. Create your own online professional brand by developing a LinkedIn profile. Make sure to keep information on your professional experience and other relevant information up-to-date. You may be surprised to learn how many recruiting executives use online networks to locate potential candidates. Also, if you're keen on building an impressive professional brand, make sure personal information intended for close friends stays private on the web. You don't want coworkers and potential employers looking at personal photos of your vacations and party shots. If you're curious about who is checking out your online brand, you can use LinkedIn's "Who's Viewed My Profile" feature to find out.

2. Be at the forefront of people's minds
In order to get leads and recommendations through your network, it's important to keep in touch with former colleagues as well as your present circle. LinkedIn allows professionals to remain at the forefront of people's minds by easily and efficiently keeping in touch. Using LinkedIn, it's easy to see who's been promoted, switched jobs, moved, won an award, and more. LinkedIn's InMail messaging system is a perfect way to reach out and keep your connections fresh, without cutting into your personal time.

3. Make smarter decisions
Being a great leader is not always about becoming an expert at everything -- it's really about knowing where to find knowledge and expertise when you need it. The LinkedIn Answers feature allows professionals to quickly and easily solicit input and gain perspective from their own connections or from the broader LinkedIn community. Learn how others approach new markets, revamp processes, and resolve problems. Draw on the collective knowledge of your trusted connections -- and their connections -- and benefit from the experience of others.

4. Prioritize how you spend your time
Everyone understands the importance of time management in today's accelerated workplace environment. Successful people are often sought after with requests from unknown people for meetings, events, speaking engagements, and more. The LinkedIn network can be used to quickly and efficiently check out these contacts and requests before committing. A quick search reveals anyone you might know in common, gives you a capsule impression, and helps you allocate your valuable time wisely. And if you need to prepare for a meeting, the Advanced Search feature can also save time by allowing you to find specialists on almost every topic, industry, or company you want to research.

5. Stay on top of what's going on in your world
If you want to be truly great at what you do, it's essential to stay on top of industry news at all times. LinkedIn News makes it easy for every professional to read the articles they need to read, by leveraging the power of their business connections. It starts by delivering news about key daily topics: a user's company, industry, and competitors, drawn from more than 10,000 publishers and blogs. Then, LinkedIn News uses the wisdom of each user's "crowd" of colleagues to determine the handful of articles that are the most important to their business -- the articles they need to read that day.