S1-E5. 3rd C of KYC - Know Your Competitor

Be Empactful

Thank you for joining us, the Host Bees, Shiva & Vineet on this journey of building Empactful Organisations.

Over the last few weeks, we introduced ourselves, spoke about the 4 KYCs to build your BS, and explored Knowing your Company and Customer. This week we explore the 3rd of the KYCs - Know your Competition!

This episode of "Knowing your Competitor" explores how you can partner with your competitor, analyzing your strengths and weaknesses with respect to the opportunities in the market, and analyzing your threats to see which can be converted into opportunities.

“If you can’t be where you want to be, then flap wings with those who are” - sage advice given by our meditating bumblebee to our friends Beevis and his brothers. With markets being widespread, companies cannot service customers everywhere.
It's then time to “flap your wings” or shake hands and partner with your competitors or similar service providers who can service those customers.

While “Partnering with your Competitor” sounds like a business oxymoron, it is what multiple companies in the world have been doing - for mutual benefit and/or larger marketplace development. However, it is important that the competitor you are choosing to partner with has similar long-term objectives and there is the synergy between the companies vision and mission - in other words - you look for collaborators through the lens of “See with your Heart and Listen with your Mind”.

An important and basic tool often used by companies to analyze their market position is the SWOT analysis - which can be limiting your market opportunities to your defined strengths and weaknesses. A new way of looking at the SWOT is as below, which allows you to explore opportunities, that you may not have considered earlier and then evaluate where you stand to be able to seize those opportunities:

Step 1: Start listing down every possible opportunity that you can think of – Don’t limit yourself – think blue sky!!

Step 2: Once you have the list, then write down the skills, attributes, and resources required to seize those opportunities.

Step 3: Honestly evaluate yourself against each of the opportunities – strong, medium, or weak!! The medium are areas of improvement and the weak are non-existent in your organization today and need to be developed

Step 4: The opportunities where you have the most strengths – are the ones that are ripe to be seized now – and these rest can be prioritized as per the strength evaluation!

An additional step is to analyze your threats, as you perceive them, as to why they are threats - the root cause, and then start putting in place the mechanisms to counter these threats, e.g., new skills or capability development where they lack, partnerships (even with competitors) for supplement or complement capabilities.

So let us know how you are flapping your wings with those who are where you cannot be and learning how to seize the right opportunity that the market presents to you.

Connect with us to share your experiences, comments, and stories:

Be Empactful:
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Shiva:
https://linkedin.com/in/shivakumarvs | https://instagram.com/valadisk

Vineet:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vineetngupta | https://instagram.com/vineatrepeat

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