Plastics Decorating - January/February 2008 - (Page 46) BUSINESS MANAGEMENT continued from page 45 publications (which may cover your competitors) and listening to competitor scuttlebutt in your community. To continue your investigation, begin to inspect your competitors’ advertising in both consumer and trade media. You’ll learn about their product line and capabilities. At trade shows, stop by the booths of your competitors. They’ll be putting their best foot forward here. Pick up their literature and observe their product displays. And if you notice that your competitor is making a presentation at a trade meeting, don’t miss the opportunity to attend. Go a step further and conduct a formal competition survey. Call or write your competitors, requesting product and pricing information. Observe the speed and nature of the responses you receive, and the content of any ensuing contacts your competitors make. A step further still: consider a service analysis, using a ‘mystery shopper’ or ‘mystery customer.’ This shopper, a trained employee or consultant, can visit or call competitors with pointed questions about product quality, delivery, past performance, or specific issues you’re concerned about. The answers often will reveal information about your competitors’ philosophy, product performance, and market strategies. At times, you may need to gather in-depth qualitative information on your competitors. This is the type of information you can obtain only by talking with other people. Make a list of questions you’re trying to answer: new product lines, weaknesses in the market, or service response, for instance. Pose those questions to your peers, or to the peers of your friends and colleagues in other industries. Next, move to your suppliers, who may have extensive information about your competitors. And don’t hesitate to take the opportunity to chat with prospective employees about their experiences with your competitors. As you ponder all these business intelligence opportunities, remember that you need not – and should not – pursue all of them. The secret is to identify a select few intelligencegathering strategies that you can call your own. Work those strategies into your day-to-day routine. Make it a point to ask a competitor-related question or two of a visiting sales rep or spend time gathering competitor information from the Internet once a month. The result: you’ll learn how to stay a step or two ahead of your competition and you’ll learn more about your own hidden business potential as well. n 46
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