How do you view your competitors?

Do you respect them?

Hate them?

See them as taking food off your table?

I once did a consulting project for a very successful entrepreneur who told me

“Every business needs an evil empire to conquer. It drives everyone’s performance.” That’s certainly one way of looking at it!

Today, I want to challenge your thinking a bit and offer some ideas to help you leverage your competitive landscape differently.

1)    Go “See them play” Years ago, when I played in bands, I would always go to see the other bands “play”. Truth be told, it pissed off my band. They felt I was supporting the other team. I did it so I could learn their secret. What did they do to pack a club? How did they get the crowd going? Was the guitar player good or was he just some poser? This theory translates extremely well to business. If your competitor is doing a speech somewhere, why not go check them out? If they are on Twitter, follow them. Linkedin, same deal. If my competitor writes a blog, why wouldn’t I stop by and learn? And let’s be clear. The spirit of this isn’t to be sleazy, or rip them off. Hell no! Its to learn how to get the result they’re getting. Its about losing your ego and opening up your learning opportunities and other opportunities as you will discover when you read further.

2)    Interact With Them! Yep, I just said that and God forbid we talk with the enemy. So let’s take the concept of going to “see them play”. If I catch a speech or a webinar, I will always introduce myself and offer some kind words. If one of my competitors says something cool in a Linkedin discussion or on Twitter (what you don’t follow your competitors?) I’ll use that as an opportunity to connect with them. Once one of us loses the ego and demonstrates some semblance of maturity, it encourages the other party to do the same. That’s when additional opportunities become available.

3)    Refer Business: Perhaps we compete on two products or services but one of us offers something that other person can offer to their clients? Perhaps we can throw business to each other if we ever have capacity issues? Emergencies happen too, no? Or (and this one’s a tough one) what if we get hit with a project or portion of a project that we know the other company could offer something better? Now comes the difficult part. What if we did something like that not in the hopes that our competitor reciprocates, but simply because that was the best thing for the client?

4)    Mastermind Group: You’ve heard me talk about the power of Mastermind Groups before. How cool would it be, if we all lost the competitive BS and combined our brainpower to solve our most serious challenges?

5)    Create A Community: My friend Mary Beth Smith created the Girls Who Print Linkedin Group. Now unless there’s some fine print somewhere that reads “Membership open to girls who print and who aren’t competitors of  Mary Beth’s company” this is a community of competitors! How dare Mary Beth create a community where people can share ideas, best practices, resources and have a lot of fun in the process! Its brilliant and in the process, the Girls Who Print group demonstrates the power of changing the competitive construct!

6)    Career Collaboration: It’s a small world out there folks. You never know when you might find yourself either on the searching end or the hiring end. Why not keep all doors open!

7) Building Networks Before You Need Them: Perhaps we’re all guilty of short term “I either need it now or forget it” thinking. If we wait to build our total network until the moment when we need it . . . its generally too late. That’s usually when you come across as a sleaze because you come out of nowhere needing something from someone! Just sayin!

So here’s the deal. I’m not proposing group hugs and smores around the campfire. I’m not proposing that we never seize opportunities . . .

I’m just inviting you to create a competitive construct that creates options you don’t have today!

FYI: I’m having dinner with one of my competitors tonight and he happens to be one of the group managers of my Linkedin Group!

See ya on the battlefield! 🙂