How To Embrace Your Competitors

1. Co-creation Is The New Black!

How To Embrace Your Competitor: Co-creation and collaboration in the form of venture partnerships, shared teleclasses, and more are the new face of business. We have to learn to work together, or we’re just tearing a stressed market apart. Finding places where our services compliment and reinforce one another’s strengths is the answer to the dog-eats-dog, competative climate of previous incarnations of marketing, business, and entrepreneurial pursuits.

Thanks To: LaSara Firefox Allen, MPNLP of Gratitude Games & Ecstatic Presence

2. Flies, Bees And Honeypots!

How To Embrace Your Competitor: Whether you are a bee or a fly, honey is sweet. This is the approach that I use when it comes to my competition.
I invite them to lunch, compliment them, point out how we are similar, and then propose a rule of fair play: we promote and never demote each other. After all, the city is large enough to handle all our businesses, and alliances trump rivalries any day!
Using this approach has increased my revenue, standing and reputation within the community.
Honey is money!

Thanks To: Doula Angelita of Resurgam BirthingWell8899

3. Playing Nice

How To Embrace Your Competitor: Ever notice all those car dealerhships next to each other. They realized that friendly competition can work to their advanatge. Just because you and your competitor have similar products doesn’t mean you can’t work together. Find a unique difference that your company offers that serves a different niche in a different way be it price, style, etc. Then even though you have similar products, you will find that you can both bring clients to one another who are looking for different features.

Thanks To: Craig Wolfe of CelebriDucks

4. Honey Is Better Than Molasses

How To Embrace Your Competitor: I feel the universe is abundant and there is enough for everyone. Now granted, I want my share; but, teaming up and using a kinder gentler inclusion method seems to be the wave of the future. Myself and three other women’s “pampering” providers are teaming up to do a woman’s fair. Technically we are going after the same discretionary dollars, but working together gives us a broader customer base to pull from in one locale,and also helps divide the advertising and other costs. Its win win win.

Thanks To: Sandy Wheeler of Sandy Wheeler Travel

5. Love Your Competition!

How To Embrace Your Competitor: Competition is a good thing as it means there is a need for your services. My favorite remembrance about collaboration with a competitor took place when my own prospect treated me very rudely. It occurred to me this person would be an excellent prospect for a pompous competitor I knew.

My intuition was right – the two of them hit it off! Both sent me notes of thanks. Eventually, a new client was referred to me by the competitor i originally disliked the most. It became a true win-win.

Thanks To: Elinor Stutz of Smooth Sale, LLC

6. Keep Competition Close

How To Embrace Your Competitor: Keep friends close and competition closer. I think you can learn quite a bit from your competition, and help each other out also. I talk to my closest competitor every week. We have traded product, done favors for each other, and watched out for each other with suppliers.

If you are an honest and upstanding person, you may even merge in the future. Don’t discount or shy away from your competition, embrace them.

Thanks To: Michael Jordan of BullyStickDirect.com

7. Your Unpaid Sales Force

How To Embrace Your Competitor: No one company can be all to every customer. When you open your mind to finding strategic partners, you create an unpaid sales force because now there are two or more individuals focused on earning the sale. Look to where you compliment not duplicate the competition. Find others who desire similar target market and share your high values.

Thanks To: Leanne Hoagland-Smith of ADVANCED SYSTEMS

8. It’s All About The Customer

How To Embrace Your Competitor: What are the goals of your collaboration? Are they bigger than either of you can do on your own? If they are, define the boundaries of the project, focus on the goals, and do the best possible job you can. If they’re not, forget it.

Collaboration is only worthwhile when 1+1 is at least 4. If 1+1 is 2, or even 3, it’s just not worth the time and energy.

A happy customer will remember you.

Thanks To: Stephen Balzac of 7 Steps Ahead, LLC

9. Your Competition..your Success

How To Embrace Your Competitor: Your competition…reach out to them, get to know them, embrace their successes, and learn from their failures. These are the keys to growing your business and becoming a leader in your industry. It is true that there is strength in numbers and by not fearing your competition and realize there is enough business to go around for everyone. By aligning myself with the industry’s bets and brightest, I am able to elevate myself and my position and together we all help each other grow!

Thanks To: Jim DeBetta of DeBetta Enterprises

10. Competitive Synergy

How To Embrace Your Competitor: Partnerships, affiliations, mastermind groups build collaboration, cooperation and communication. As women business owners, we can’t survive without these relationships. This promotes the continuing diversity of our members and their businesses, and provides us with opportunities for value- added products, services and resources. From a knowledge standpoint it raises our level of awareness of others difficulties and how we can help them and ourselves to accelerate our business results.

Thanks To: Marya Grier of NJAWBO

11. Playing Nice In The Sandbox

How To Embrace Your Competitor: I contacted competitors and offered to help them with exposure on our site if they would volunteer to help out our members. We have people from the same industry now joining forces to come to the aid of those who have no guiding light. Together we are building an awesome association, The Broke Wives Club. Collaboration has brought an uplifting energy to the group and we all play really well in the sandbox for everyone’s benefit and a greater purpose. Competition is so yesterday.

Thanks To: Siobhan Shaw of The Broke Wives Club

12. Partner Or Perish!

How To Embrace Your Competitor: Stop worrying about what the competition is doing and figure out how to join forces instead. Build strong relationships (especially when you don’t need anything), offer leads and – best of all – determine who among your competitors has a similar audience base but offers different products or services. Put your heads together and create a joint venture that brings out the best in both of you and offers your audience double bang for their buck.

Thanks To: Libby Gill of Libby Gill & Company

13. Two Halves Make A Whole

How To Embrace Your Competitor: Look to see what you have and what is missing. In my case, our company is designing custom T-shirts and promoting them on a competitors substantially large email list. In return, he gets to keep part of the profit as a finder’s fee. The customers are the biggest winners since they get a high quality product at a very good price. Cooperation, not just competition, also helps out customers in the long run.

Thanks To: Edwin Soler of Libreria Berea

14. Evolving Beyond Competition

How To Embrace Your Competitor: As we become more conscious as a species, we are recognizing that everything in the history of our universe, with the exception of man, has operated on the principles of cooperation, not competition. We are learning that the most effective way to “get” is to authentically give. So the best method of getting more of what you want is to adopt a mentality of abundance – there is more than enough to go around. And to practice helping those you formerly thought of as competitors as colleagues.

Thanks To: Chris Dorris of Christopher Dorris

15. Drop The Personal Grudge And L

How To Embrace Your Competitor: People often hold grudges against a competing company, sometimes for years, despite a complete change in the personal and strategy of the organization they hate. Holding such a grudge may defy logic, and destroy shareholder value if it prevents healthy collaboration. As an entrepreneur, decide if you can drop the grudge completely, and if so, move forward. Determine if your collaborator can do the same. If not, find another collaborator that you can work well with.

Thanks To: Joseph Joel Sherman of Business Tribes

16. Promote The Goat

How To Embrace Your Competitor: I learned to promote others. When you give before you receive it turns a SHEEP (Someone Having Excuses to Exercise Potential) into a GOAT(Generate Opportunities And Triumphs).

Thanks To: Derrick Hayes of WOE Enterprises

17. Fusion Always Works

How To Embrace Your Competitor: Fusion always works, doesn’t matters whether its your competitor or someone else, The basic thing to watch out is that you convert each others weakness into strength.The best part of doing this is that most of the organizations are well aware about the loopholes of there competition so they can easily workout a strategy for growing together.So if we believe that everyone is unique and joining hands makes it even better who cares about competition just collaboration makes the way.

Thanks To: Akash Sharma of Revenue Strategy Solutions Ltd.

18. It Is Mine, Not Yours!

How To Embrace Your Competitor: I was at a Mary Kay event and I was sitting next to this lady and told her all about AVON and the advantage and that our products were a lot cheaper and we had more then makeup. I met with her the next day at Starbucks and she signed up under me to sell AVON instead of Mary Kay. The lady that brought her to the Mary Kay event was not to happy, but I told her it was fair competition. I did not say anything that was not true. Then I bought some Mary Kay from her. The competition was fair to both.

Thanks To: Sheila A Caruso of AVON AND PRIVATE QUARTERS

19. What Makes You Unique

How To Embrace Your Competitor: Key in working with the competition is remembering what makes you unique from each other. For example, with the Victory Circles, some people might think we are a networking group when in fact we are a Master Mind group for women entrepreneurs. By reaching out to Networking groups and giving talks when applicable to these groups I have been able to do some JV partnerships. Looking at what you both do uniquely well can create new vitality of working with your previously perceived competition.

Thanks To: Cheri Ruskus of Victory Circles

20. Just Give Me The Cash!

How To Embrace Your Competitor: I recently hooked up with a professional event organizer to be a Strategic Partner. I’m realizing this will give me added credibility, and take some of the pressure off trying to arrange venues for clients who might want me to arrange their “readings” for them – something I don’t want to do. After all, my program is a how-to-do-it-yourself. Plus, I’ll get a percentage for the referral. Not too shabby.

Thanks To: Alice Shapiro of Poet’s Tongue

21. There Is No Competition

How To Embrace Your Competitor: My approach for dealing with competition is to simply avoid labeling anyone that way. All businesses are unique and should offer something that other companies don’t. (If that’s not true of your company, you have work to do!)

Don’t have a scarcity mentality. There is room for all kinds of businesses.

Thanks To: Alison Moore Smith of SeerStone Homes

22. If You Can’t Beat ‘em…

How To Embrace Your Competitor: A fellow twitter buddy saw my tweet about my poor beleaguered blog. She answered my tweet about where to find a domain name. She encouraged me to switch from Blogger to WordPress. She offered to do the switch for me — it was a lot of work and she did it for free. Like me, she is a blogger/product reviewer who stays home with her children. I was grateful for her help. My blog went from bleh to bling! I am very grateful for her help. We continue to share opps that we think the other would like.

Thanks To: Jill Berry of Musings from Me on Kids, Preteens,

23. Competitors Make More Together

How To Embrace Your Competitor: Two recruiters who are friends of mine did something remarkable – they turned their competition within the same niche to gold. One is the business development type, the other is the detail guy. By working together, they sourced a huge national deal that will not only mutliply their revenue but bring both a recurring stream of income for a long long time! That’s friendly competition for you.

Thanks To: Nancy Fox of Fox Coaching Associates

24. Embracing The Enemy

How To Embrace Your Competitor: Fellow entrepreneurs are all in the same boat. We’re all working toward the same goal; to live our own lifestyle and make money along the way. We’re allies; not enemies.

My best tip is to reach out via phone, email, and social media to other entrepreneurs in your field. Develop a rapport and offer referrals for their overflow work and offer yourself as well. If local, arrange a meeting to determine if you are a good match.

Thanks To: Michelle Hill of Winning Proof

25. When Two Come Together As One

How To Embrace Your Competitor: The best way to partner with a former competitor is to agree to accommodate each other’s needs. For example, both enterprises agree to outsource their work to the other when they are booked, or lack the expertise the client needs. Another example: If there is a need for extra storage for one partner, the other partner would accommodate in exchange for an in-kind resource. The whole point of partnership is to do, provide, and make a profit well above and beyond what an enterprise could do alone

Thanks To: Fran Briggs of Get Sponsors!

26. Expand The Market

How To Embrace Your Competitor: One of my competitors is also my friend. We are talking about offering some webinars together that are designed to inform our target markets about what problems we can help them solve. Doesn’t matter who the initial winner is in getting new customers, what matters is that we are working together to inform the public about what we do (distance education), thus creating a larger market overall. We’ll both win in the end.

Thanks To: Jan Schwartz of Education and Training Solutions

27. Competitor! Wait,collaborator?

How To Embrace Your Competitor: I don’t ever wish to destroy my competition.

Your competitors demonstrate there is a market need. Be grateful there is a need for your service.

Think of your competitor as someone you might collaborate with, if the values are in synergy. It might not be now; but it may well be in the future.

Keep a positive relationship with, and view, of your competitors. It does not mean you are in constant communication, but you are open. Life and relationships are constantly evolving.

Thanks To: Pamela Hawley of UniversalGiving

28. The Law Of Abundance

How To Embrace Your Competitor: The universal Law of Abundance states: “When you aid others to abundance, you have abundance yourself.” Abraham Lincoln said, “The best way to conquer your enemy is to make him your friend.” When you befriend people, they will help you. Most organizations and companies serve different needs. So, making friends with your competitors means that they might refer clients to you if you can serve that client better. There are more than enough resources when everyone thinks of the whole.

Thanks To: Laurel Clark of School of Metaphysics

29. Oceans Of Blue Not Red!

How To Embrace Your Competitor: What is more important than knowing your competition today? Collaborating with them! The key to success is connecting with your “Competitor” & finding ways to empower each other. Approach your competitor with respect & acknowledge their expertise. Identify what makes you both unique and then you can refer a client that may be seeking their service specialty, this will make you the hero & believe it or not this will increase your business through other referrals.

Thanks To: Robin Hardy of MMPA-Marketing, Media & Production

30. Share Market At Higher Price

How To Embrace Your Competitor: Ever wondered why gas stations insist on price cutting & teaching their customers to switch brands in search of the best deal? This is the definition of insanity and it will never help you grow your business!
Partner with your competitors – share the market at a price that can sustain your business – by this I don’t mean “price fixing”, I mean a concerted effort to discover your niche, specialize in an area, refer customers to competitors if you can’t do the work cost effectively.

Thanks To: Rhondalynn Korolak of Author of On The Shoulders of Giant

31. Live And Learn

How To Embrace Your Competitor: The best way to approach partnering is to concentrate on learning from their experiences. Take onboard what they have done and weigh the pro’s and con’s as to how they have performed better in areas where you may have lacked and take pride in areas where you have found yourself to excel in certain areas.A competitor can add to your strength and as well as be a threat. In my business I manage to pass work to a competitor when I’m unavailable-it makes sense to partner and be there for the cli

Thanks To: Chris Moore of Help It Crashed Again

32. Give Before You Receive

How To Embrace Your Competitor: I either invite my competition to a get-to-know-you telephone call or coffee (depending on if they are local or nationwide.) During the conversation, I learn about their skill areas and passions. Frequently, they are different from my own.

While talking, I share continuing education resources as well as marketing resources and any other assistance I can. By taking this approach, I have been able to give and receive referrals. Our clients are happier and our businesses are growing.

Thanks To: Stephanie Calahan of Calahan Solutions, Inc.

33. Don’t Mask Your Intentions

How To Embrace Your Competitor: From the beginning of the relationship, be upfront about your intentions. Communicate how you can help each other and follow through. Pay attention to the balance of the relationship. If you start to feel you are doing most of the giving, take a step back and reevaluate. If things do go awry, keep in mind your professional image and be mindful of karma. Don’t fight fire with fire – hold tight to your integrity and you will win every time!

Thanks To: Debra Medina of Spa Time Baby

34. You Are Unique…let’s Dance!

How To Embrace Your Competitor: I was scared of competition at first. Now I feel like embracing and shaking hands with all in the industry. I have acquired a “quiet confidence” that leads me to hold the belief that what I offer is of a help and service for those who seek answers in my niche of expertise. My product of help is unique and that’s the passion and purpose I share in an industry of others trying to do the same thing in their own way. This does not take away from me. So… let’s dance!!!!!

Thanks To: Carolyn Bartz of SECRETS OF CAT ATTITUDE REVEALED

35. Join And Conquer

How To Embrace Your Competitor: Previously in the field of freelancing many of us were in direct competition with each-other.

Now with the move towards ‘outsourcing’ and the loss of jobs to overseas providers, we battle against both a smaller marketplace and buyers who are distrustful because of bad experiences with untrustworthy providers.

I have found that joining forces with other freelancers (covering many fields of expertise) allows us to present ourselves as a premier solution to buyers. We work together

Thanks To: Grace Alexander of Grace Alexander Freelance Services

36. Partnering With Competitors

How To Embrace Your Competitor: If you can find a difference in what you are marketing to a similar audience then you can leverage your competition’s marketing with a Joint Venture or collaboration. A starting point might be blog posts and then up from there, mutual affiliates for the other. My focus is introverts in business; I’ve partnered with someone who specializes in introvert women who want more success as well as a career coach for introverts. It’s like doubling or tripling your prospect base – and everyone wins.

Thanks To: Patricia Weber of Professional Strategies Inc

37. A Rising Tide Floats All Boats

How To Embrace Your Competitor: Even though you have competition does not mean you can’t work together to make the business better. A rising tide floats all boats.

Thanks To: Gary Unger of Author / Consultant

38. Leverage Your Strengths

How To Embrace Your Competitor: The best approach when partering with those in your field is to look at everyone’s key strengths and act accordingly. I love working with other marketers as different people bring different approachs and skills. Partnering with the competition is a sign of true strength not weakness!

Thanks To: Beth Silver of Doubet Consulting