Doing Business Competition Analysis

One important step before you start a business is doing business competition analysis / competitor analysis. You should review the literature of the competitors, to see how they represent their business and what kind of public image built. Business literature often includes mission statement and also identify products and their specific services.

Here are the steps in doing competition analysis for business that you needs:

1. Do as customers with enough money. Phone a competitor in your area and speak with a representative from the company as you are the potential prospects who are looking for information. You can ask by use 5WH formula (Who, What, When, Where, Why and How) to provide intelligent questions and get answers about the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. One of the most important things you need to successfully do is make they send their sales & information to your package, where the package will be explained about their products and services. Your business competitors literature will tell you in detail about their public image, and besides that, you can learn the strengths and weaknesses of products and services they offer in detail.

2. Phone competitors outside your area. Then you can call the company which are similar to your business (or your already to plan) outside your area, where you are not considered as their rivals. As such, they do not feel threatened when you ask questions. When you talk to competitors far away like this, your approach should be more “straight-forward”. You can tell the owner or manager, that you are thinking to open a similar business and expect to enter / input from them. Often they will be happy to provide input about their industry, business as a whole and more free information to you.

3. Finally you can do “in-field competition analysis” by doing telemarketing to the prospects and ask if they know your competitors, had a business relationship with them, and others. By doing this, you also do prequalification of potential prospects who never do business with your competitors, and open opportunities for sales. In addition, when you are out doing sales calls, you can perform the same way when talking with prospects and you can find out what they liked and what they do not like about your competitors. Once again, you can open the possibility of sales by identifying points of differentiation your against competitors.

By doing the steps above and phone-sharpen your skills, you will certainly get a lot of useful information about the business you’re considering. Good luck!