If you are ever in a situation in your business where your revenue or profits falling year-on-year it’s really important to find out why that’s happening. You know, a common response to the question “why is your revenue fallen?” is “well it’s the economy you know it’s really tough out there” and my response to that would be “well are there any businesses out there in your industry who are actually doing quite well now?”. And what I’m looking for is what can we learn from that other people are doing and those other people of course could be your competitors.

I think it’s really important to do a periodical review of your competitors.  Find out what it is that they’re doing relative to what you’re doing and maybe pick up some tips and tricks as to what you could do differently or better, to grab some market share back.

So here are five ideas that you could implement to do exactly that.

First, of all ask your team because they’re closest to the coalface they’re dealing with customers customers who probably had sought to competitive as well as your business and they’ll be able to give you some feedback as to what they’re hearing in the marketplace

Secondly, grab some promotional material some brochures any other material he can get hold of from your competitors and see what they’re doing or go to their website see what they’re promoting right now make sure that you’re on the same page as them in what they’re doing.

Thirdly, ask customers and suppliers find out where you’re better but also ask them to be honest and tell them where you’re weaker than your competitors is.

Number four, analyze your strengths and weaknesses maybe you just do a brainstorm with your whole team and list out all of the strengths you have in your business and then all of the weaknesses you have as well and then pull together an action plan of the top three items that you’re going to change
and then..

Number five, of course is most important get an action plan together and then implement that plan your account doesn’t help you with this they can do some mystery shopping for you they can do some analysis work they can facilitate workshops they can pull some reports together to help you understand how your competitors are doing relative to your business with the goal of course of improving your revenue and your profitability.

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Kerri Bainbridge and Andrew Elphick

Anywhere Team NZ

Collaborate, Mindset, Learning