Sun Tzu expressed it in many ways with respect to preparing for war when he wrote “know your enemy.”
Preparing to compete in business is similar; you need to know your competition in detail. As in war, you don’t want to enter the battlefield with the wrong weapons, deploying inappropriate tactics, with too few people, or engaging on the wrong terrain.
Before you launch a new product or service, you need to be prepared to answer a lot of questions about your competitive position.
Your basic marketing strategy and product plan needs to be founded in a sound understanding of what it takes to win. Have a solid and realistic understanding of what you are up against. This leads you to respond in a way that overcomes all objections you are going to experience from customers or investors.
In this blog, Bill Warner, writing in entrepreneur.org details
- What you need to know
- How to use the information
- Strategies for winning
- Proceed to win!
See the full article here:
http://entrepreneurship.org/resource-center/questions-to-answer-when-analyzing-competition.aspx