Competing with everyone

Your competition’s employees in LowRentEconomyIstan are willing to work this hard – and not for $50K a year. Maybe for 50 cents a day.

Someone mentioned to me privately after reading Where were you that if he didn’t know better, he’d think I was trying to put a guilt trip on folks.

He didn’t mention it (though I know he realized it) that my real point was that anyone used to competing locally has already found (or will soon find) themselves competing in a statewide / regional / national / global market.

How you react is the critical thing.

Whaddya do, wait, whine or work?

A friend’s business is facing a similar challenge.

For two decades and then some, they’ve competed against local and in-state firms.

That’s all changed now.

In the last year or so, every single opportunity they’ve bid on has had national and regional players at the table.

My guess is that some of you are experiencing the same thing.

In that environment, in their market, qualifications aren’t likely to even make it into the discussion before local firms get pushed off the table.

The national firm’s materials will make them the obvious choice (where have you heard that before?) because a local firm’s marketing materials, sales expertise and experience will be *normally* be hard pressed to match that of a national firm.

Of course, those processing the bids won’t acknowledge it and they might not even realize they’re doing it because worst case, it happens subconsciously as if they were staring at a pretty girl or a handsome man.

Because they have to compete on a bigger, shinier stage, these firms have honed their image and their materials over years of competing with other national and regional firms. It’s quite possible that some of them have had to battle it out with international competitors.

That leaves the local firm with the same choice we discussed a while back: Wait, Whine or Work.

Again, we circle back to “what other people do”. What do they do to succeed that you don’t yet do? It doesn’t matter how important *you* think these things are. What matters is how important they are in the minds of your customers and prospects.

In simple terms: What’s the market think? How do they buy? Why do they buy? What puts them over the edge?

Your reasons don’t mean much. Theirs mean everything. Either you deal with global competition or it’ll deal with you.

Waiting around for some Senator to “fix” your competitive problem isn’t gonna help. Fix your competitive position yourself. It’s faster and a lot cheaper than a politician.

Tagged as: business, Competition, Marketing, Positioning, Small Business