For many small business owners the idea of working with the competition can make their blood boil. It seems counterintuitive. But after twenty five years of business coaching, I can tell you that some of best boosts in profit and revenue come from thinking outside of the box.
1. Buy and Sell Stale or Old Leads.
Your competition has old, stale leads that are just sitting in their database gathering dust. They may have purchased all that they could from your competition or perhaps didn’t resonate with any of their marketing efforts and never started up a relationship. But that doesn’t mean that they won’t purchase something from you. Consider asking your competition to sell you these leads for your own marketing efforts. They could mean a potential boost in revenue for you and opens up a new stream of revenue for your competition. It’s a win-win!
Also consider the opposite. Selling your stale and old leads to the competition.This is just the opposite of strategy 1. Every business has leads who will just never go on to do business with them, or inactive clients who are highly unlikely to come back and do business with them. These former customers may be a valuable fit for your competitor. Consider offering these leads for sale to them for a fee–which can be a percentage of gross sales or a set dollar payment per lead.
2. Do a Swap.
If the first two strategies sound enticing, consider doing a trade. You can trade your old leads but you could also trade active clients as well – especially if you have offerings that might compliment each other in some way. Catalog companies are famous for this, which is why when you sign up for one magazine you may get several others in the mail around the same time.
3. Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery.
When it comes to competition some small business owners will put their blinders on when it comes to what their competitors are doing. I strongly suggest that you pay attention. If they happen to be doing something that is working well, you can take that idea and implement it into your own business model. A word of caution however, just because your competition is doing something doesn’t mean that it is a smart business decision.
4. Work Together.
Instead of worrying about losing your clients to the competitor, how about sending them to them? It seems like a crazy idea, but if your client would be better served by a competitor’s product figure out how to make profit off the transaction. You can do a licensing agreement or private labeling deal or perhaps a distribution setup. And just like in the above examples, consider making it a mutually exclusive joint partnership where they send leads your way as well. Finally, you could even leverage your competitors to provide back-up capacity should you get a flood of new business. (Of course you’d need clear agreements in place to protect yourself, but done right, this is an easy way to have back-up capacity without any investment in additional infrastructure.)
With these four easy steps you can start working with the competition not against it- and increase your profit and revenue quickly.