Knowing Your Competitors

Part A: Prove the Idea Works

Always remember there is a reason your competitors are still in business. That sentence alone should change how you look at them. Most owners glance at the obvious things: what the competitor offers, what they charge, where they are located. That is a start, but it is the kind of research that makes you feel prepared without teaching you anything.

The deeper look reveals what they are doing well and what you think they could improve. But be careful with that second list. There may be a reason for something that looks substandard. It could be a cost decision. It could be something that simply does not need attention in that market. Or it could be something they are genuinely unaware of, which is your opening. You cannot tell which until you look closer.

Become their customer

Here is the single most useful thing you can do, and almost nobody does it. Become a client, or at least a potential client, of your competitor. Call them. Request the quote. Sit through the sales process. Buy the small thing. Have the problem and call support. Experience their business the way their customers do. If they ask who you are, be honest about it, and do not waste their time with a fake job. Then search your main service in your town, read their Google reviews (the three-star ones tell you the most) and look at what ads they run.

Why? Because you are about to design your own sales process, your own customer support, your own follow-up, and you have never been on the receiving end of anyone’s in your industry. A contractor who has requested estimates from three other contractors knows exactly how long people wait for a callback, what the paperwork looks like, and what it feels like to be ignored after saying no. That knowledge is worth more than any spreadsheet of prices.

Look for the void, not the fight

While you do this, keep an open mind. You may find a niche in the industry that gives you an advantage or an opening. Many businesses were started to fill a void that existed rather than to go head to head with the companies already there. The electrician who notices nobody in the area will take small residential jobs. The restaurant that notices every place in town closes at nine. You do not find these on the competitor’s website. You find them by being a customer with a need that goes unmet.

The distinction is between competing and positioning. Competing is saying “we do what they do, a little cheaper or a little better.” Positioning is saying “we do the thing nobody here is doing for the people nobody here is serving.” The second is easier to market and harder to copy.

The questions to answer for each competitor

Work through these for every serious competitor, and write the answers down rather than keeping them in your head. What are they doing well? What makes them unique? What did they do to get where they are, and what is their history? What has changed in the industry and the competition since they started? What could you do to market yourself where they do not already have a share? What is the most important thing the founder of that business could teach you? And what is the one thing the founder would warn you about, besides not going into business because the business will own you?

Those last two questions are the ones people skip, and they are the ones that matter most. Founders in the next county, outside your territory, will sometimes talk if you ask nicely. The person who has been running a plumbing company for twenty years in the next county knows things about your first year that no guide will tell you.

For a fuller competitive analysis framework, the SBA and other sites that offer sample business and marketing plans have detailed templates. Use them once you have done the human part, not instead of it.

What to do this week

List your three closest competitors, the ones your customer would actually call instead of you. This week, become a potential customer of each one: request a quote, visit, or buy something small, and note response time, what they asked, what they sent and how you felt. Then answer the seven questions above for each, in writing, and circle every gap that showed up more than once. That is your opening.

Plan on four to six hours including the visits and calls, spread over a week or two so the response times are real. It is free unless you buy something small to see the full process, which is money well spent. Doing this on your own is realistic and often better than paying for a report, because the discomfort of the experience is the lesson.