How To Make The Competition Irrelevant as an CEO/CXO
The Coca Cola vending machine outside your office sells 100 cans per day. You arrive one morning to see a Pepsi vending machine has arrived next to it. How many do they each sell per day?
Most assume that each machine sells about 50 cans per day.
What actually happens is that both machines sell 150 cans per day.
Previously people passing the machine were asking themselves “Do I want Coca Cola or not?”
The addition of the new machine changed the question, “Do I want Coca Cola or Pepsi?”
Or more accurately.
“Am I the sort of person who buys Coca Cola or Pepsi?”
Competition is a good thing. Which is to say, other people offering the same sort of thing as you is a good thing.
It moves people from asking if they are the sort of person or company who buys THAT, to asking WHICH do they buy?
It’s an identity decision, an emotional decision as well as a practical (in this case taste) decision.
The real problem with looking at the competition is, ATTENTION.
I’ve seen it grip both organisations and individuals alike.
A competitor wins a client, announces a big achievement, does a cool marketing campaign and they shift their ATTENTION.
It’s shifted from what YOU are doing, from serving YOUR clients, refining YOUR product or service, from getting more clear on YOUR message and how to share it.
To GUESSING
What THEY are doing, how THEY are serving their clients, how THEY are sharing their message and what THEIR message is.
And ultimately guessing how successful they actually are and what is even causing that effect.
Guessing or mind reading is a minefield of uncertainty.
As soon as you step into someone else’s business or someone else’s business you are out of YOUR mind (or business).
This is the definition of THREAT or stress from a neuroscience prospect:
1. The inability to accurately sense and interpret the environment.
2. The inability to formulate a response to the environment.
3. The prediction that the environment holds something that we result in loss of resources.
All of the above is exactly what happens when we place our attention on the competition.
We are lost, confused, uncertain, unsafe and predicting our own demise.
Ultimately our ATTENTION is better focused on delivering and developing an incredible customer experience and attracting others who want the same.
And it all starts in one place IDENTITY.
Who are we?
What do we value?
How do we demonstrate that at every stage of the business?
What are we doing that is standing in the way of this?
Coca Cola lost their way once in 1985, they release “New Coke” with a new recipe in order to compete with Pepsi.
It was considered a national disaster and Coca Cola has to resort to selling off the stock at rock bottom prices. They reversed their decision just 77 days later.
It is knowing who you are, what you value, how you’ll demonstrate those values and constantly refining, that makes individuals bullet proof to stress while making organisations bulletproof to the competition.
Reap all the benefits of competition while facing none of the drawbacks.
Is your attention on the competition or defining, refining and aligning with your values?
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