Healthy market competition is imperative for a well-functioning economy. Easy economics: if there is competition between the same goods (or services), it will drive the prices down but increase the quality of the goods. Who doesn’t want that?! The answer, every consumer ever. You want to be the best option to increase your revenue and drive a successful business. So how do you present your company as the #1 option for consumers?
Easy. Beat out your competition. The hard part: where’s the time? Time has been a common theme mentioned in almost every blog. You need commitment to really sink your teeth in and learn about your competition. You have to make calls, ask questions, acquire prices, and get their inside information all while maintaining your secret identity as the competing business. You need what I call a “secret shopper” aka a VA.
VAs will do the overnight research on all comparative businesses and then make the calls by day. This is a 20+ hour a week time commitment and it’s something you specifically do not need to do. VAs can spend the time pretending to be interested customers and sift out the pertinent information that can be used to grow your business into a better competitor than the current options available.
What questions to ask:
- What are the features that make this business different?
- How do you go above and beyond for your customers?
- How much do you charge?
- What type of clients do you have?
- What are the key characteristics of your business I should know about?
For 40 hours of work a week at $7 an hour, that’s $280. I am confident in just 1 week of work with the proper guidance, you can get an entire analysis of your main competitors.
Hire your VA and say, “Hey, here are my ten competitors. Make a comprehensive PowerPoint report of each company including every trick in detail that they use (see questions above too!).
What’s our competitive advantage?” With less than $300 and a little creativity, you now have your competitors figured out. Get out of your daily grind. Work smart, not hard. Think about ways like that to leverage a VA to shop the sh*t out of your competitors and up your game! So what are you waiting for? Get out there and make more money!
