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Chapter 4
Sizing Up Competitors and
Staking Out Market Share
In This Chapter
ᮣ Getting a handle on the competition
ᮣ Winning market share from direct competitors
ᮣ Overcoming your secondary competition
ᮣ Unveiling your phantom competitors
ᮣ Raising your competitive ranking
ᮣ Anticipating your future competitive environment
No matter how unique your offering, no matter how much you think you
play on a “field of one,” even if you’re the only hitching post in a one-
horse town, you have competition.
Every business has competition.
When Alexander Graham Bell called to Mr. Watson through his newfangled
invention in 1876, even he already had competition. He held in his hand the
one and only such device in the whole wide world, yet from its very moment
of inception, the idea of the telephone had to fight for market share. It had to
compete with all the existing and more familiar means of message delivery —
plus it was certain to spawn a crop of copycat products to vie for message
delivery in the future.
Competition may not be obvious. It may not even be direct. But it is always
there. The sooner you face it and plan for it, the better. This chapter shows
you how.
