💡 Secrets of Competitiveness: Learn from the Pros
One of the most unpleasant feelings that can be experienced in business in general and in commerce in particular is when you see how a competitor sells. Seeing how a competitor sells is still bearable, but when a competitor sells to someone you couldn’t sell to – this is probably the most unpleasant feeling that a person engaged in sales can experience. Not only is the feeling unpleasant, but it also hits your self-confidence and mood very hard. To avoid such feelings, you need a strategy to increase competitiveness.
Every business man, every marketer, every sales specialist has experienced this feeling. In such a situation, you feel as if you have been betrayed or abandoned. On a rational level, you can control yourself, you can smile, pretend that everything is fine, calm yourself down, tell yourself that nothing terrible has happened. But on a subconscious level, you can’t do anything about yourself, an unpleasant feeling arises every time such a situation occurs.
Apparently, this is human nature. In order for someone else to experience this feeling, but not you, you need to have a high level of competitiveness. Competitiveness itself does not come. It needs to be created and for this you need a strategy for increasing competitiveness is needed. What does this mean? It means that working on the level of competitiveness is not a one-time action, but a targeted, consistent set of actions.
Source of competitiveness
It is generally accepted that high competitiveness is associated with a good price, good quality, a recognizable brand, and a wide range of products. Outwardly, this is true. But competitiveness also has an internal side. The internal side of competitiveness is an idea. If we are talking about the competitiveness of a product, this is the idea of the product. Based on this understanding, a high-quality strategy for increasing competitiveness is built.
It is at the level of the idea that the level of competitiveness is determined. When it comes to a company, then it is the idea of the company. If we are talking about a person, then it is the idea of the person. It is at the level of the idea that the level of competitiveness is determined. A strong idea has a high level of competitiveness, which means that the product, company or person who embodies it has a strong level of competitiveness. Why is that? Because it is the idea that creates pressure on the buyer, client, partner, and not the product, person or company.
The stronger the idea, the stronger the pressure. It's like with the wind. Wind is just a difference in air pressure. The greater the difference, the stronger the pressure, and therefore the stronger the wind. Different ideas exert different pressure. The pressure of an idea is felt inside, if it exists, of course. No one wants to deal with a weak idea, everyone wants to deal with a strong idea, because a strong idea makes you stronger. Accordingly, the strategy of increasing competitiveness is a strategy of strengthening the idea.
A Simple Strategy to Increase Competitiveness
The strategy for increasing competitiveness includes, depending on the type, 4 stages or 7 stages. A simple strategy consists of 4 stages. In order to strengthen an idea, it must first be highlighted using the appropriate legram and recorded on electronic or paper media. This is the first stage of working with an idea. It is very important. If you do not correctly highlight the idea, the scheme will not work, because it is not the idea that will be strengthened, but something unknown. To highlight an idea means to highlight the essence of a company, product or person.
Obviously, this strategy is only for those who do not want to change much, but are ready for only minimal changes. The second stage is to understand this essence, pass the idea through yourself, feel it in all its glory, taste it. After that, you can move on to the next stage. The third stage is to bring the product, company or person into line with the idea, make everything correspond to it, make the company, person or product 100% reflect the idea they represent. A person, company or product must convey by the very fact of their existence the idea they embody.
Once this is done, you can move on to the last stage – the implementation of the idea. The fourth stage is the implementation of the idea to the maximum number of people, because the power of an idea is in its prevalence. The more widespread the idea is, the stronger it is. At this point, the minimal strategy for increasing competitiveness ends, or rather, one cycle of increasing the level of competitiveness ends. Obviously, this strategy is only for those who do not want to change much, but are ready only for minimal changes.
Advanced Strategy for Improving Competitiveness
The advanced strategy of increasing competitiveness is more extensive. It is intended for those who are ready for more serious changes, then how it assumes them. The basis of this strategy is the fact that ideas differ in prospects and novelty. New ideas, as a rule, are more promising and this gives them maximum strength. It should also be noted that the idea has a life cycle. Therefore, for example, the strategy of small business development is built for a short time, for the duration of the cycle.
If the evaluation result is positive and you are satisfied, then you can continue and move on to the next stage. The essence of the life cycle of an idea is that at some point it appears, but then time passes, it is fully realized and leaves the stage and other ideas come to take its place. This must be taken into account and for this reason, the advanced strategy consists of 7 stages. The first stage is identifying the current idea. The second stage is assessing the prospects of this idea, determining the stage of its life cycle. If the evaluation result is positive and you are satisfied, then you can continue and move on to the next stage. If not, then you need to choose a more promising idea and only then continue.
In this case, the third stage is choosing a new, more promising idea. Then comes the fourth stage – identifying this new idea, identifying its essence and recording it on paper or electronic media. The fifth stage is to understand the idea, its essence, pass the idea through yourself, make it a part of yourself. The sixth stage is to bring the company, person or product in line with this idea. The seventh stage is the implementation and dissemination of the idea. The better this is done, the more pressure it will create on buyers and the more competitive it will be.
Competitiveness as a guarantee of survival
As for an individual or a company, a strategy for increasing competitiveness is developed simply for them. It is a little more complicated with goods. Rarely does a company produce or sell one product. Usually, a certain assortment is available. It is clear that each product from the available assortment is the embodiment of a separate idea. Due to the fact that each product is based on a separate idea, the question arises of having a list of ideas on the basis of which all products are formed.
A strategy for increasing competitiveness must be built for each product. One could say that it is necessary to build the entire range of ideas that the company is engaged in. The importance of the range of ideas is great. When there are many ideas, one strategy is not enough. A strategy for increasing competitiveness must be built for each product, taking into account the idea that the product embodies, but there must also be a general strategy for all products. It will be a synthesis of the strategies of individual products.
It is important to remember that some ideas gradually become irrelevant, their place is taken by other ideas, and therefore the products they embody also become irrelevant. Thus, we need to have not only a list of current ideas that embody existing products, but also a list of ideas that may be relevant in the future, and therefore programs for these products too.
An effective strategy to improve competitiveness
The strategy of increasing competitiveness is a very important tool. Among other things, it allows you to form the right marketing thinking. The right marketing thinking should be understood as the one that allows you to get the maximum result. Considering that the beginning of beginnings is ideas, the right thinking is the one that comes from ideas.
Strategy also allows you to fight competitors, or rather, defeat them. If we proceed not from ideas, but from goods or product ranges, then we can learn trends in changes in goods, but goods are consequences of some changes, not the cause. To understand why goods change, you need to know the changes in the ideal sphere. If we do not know these changes, we either will not know what to do next, or we will start making goods that will not sell, because the emergence of demand for them is unrealistic.
Strategy also allows you to fight competitors, or rather, defeat them. This is achieved due to the fact that, thanks to it, all activities are thought out and developed in advance. Competitors who do not use strategy do not plan their future. If they do, they do it incorrectly, because they approach it based on the product, not the idea. Accordingly, competitors will then have to catch up with you, and when you catch up with someone, you need to spend much more effort and resources, which can exhaust you and lead to bankruptcy.
How to increase business competitiveness
The strategy of increasing competitiveness allows you to look into the future with confidence. Based on it, you can begin developing products in advance that will be in demand in 3-5 years. If you start from the products, and not the ideas underlying them, you can develop products that no one needs. This is due to the fact that consumers determine what products they need, and not producers determine what products consumers need to buy.
In order to build a quality strategy and avoid bankruptcy, additional knowledge is needed. In turn, consumer preferences are not formed just like that, but are connected with the ideas that have been implemented or will be implemented in the future. Consumers have bought and will buy only those products that are needed to implement the ideas implemented in them. Accordingly, in the future, as soon as the life cycle of products that are currently being produced ends, all those who do not produce products for new ideas will be on the verge of bankruptcy.