Don’t Be Better than the Competition

Last week I was visiting with a customer, an online seller of branded sports apparel. Someone in the meeting noted that when speaking of the competition she completely ignored other brands, focusing on the other channels selling her product.

We asked why and and she said "The gap between [her brand] and its potential is far greater than the gap between [her brand] and it’s competitors." I thought that so well encapsulated my feelings about dealing with the competition that I would share it here.

Competitive analysis is a standard product management task and necessary sometimes. Sales people and prospects ask for feature comparisons. And when your product is closely comparable to another or when you are the discount brand, checklists can be useful for positioning. In my experience, though, much greater market success comes form staking out your own territory.

Think about it this way: would you rather have a conversation with a prospect about whether your feature list is longer than the competition’s or about the benefits the prospect will derive from your product? Which of those conversations would allow you to charge more? If you’re concentrating on market needs rather than competitive checklists, you have a chance at that second, more profitable conversation.

Similarly, would you rather spend your development efforts on duplicating the competition’s every feature so you can say "yes" when asked if you have it, or would you rather concentrate on building the features that will solve your customers’ problems? I’d much rather be thought of as great than as just better than someone else.

Building value that responds to market need puts you in partnership with your customers. They come to you to solve their problems. Getting into a checklist war with your competitors just invites your customer to look at you and the competition in the same way – to hold you both arm’s length.

So don’t be better than the competition. Be great.

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Published:
June 7, 2008 / 9:56 PM
Category:
Marketing, Product Management
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